Senate debates Documents

Cybersafety Legislation; Order for the Production of Documents


Sarah Henderson

Sarah Henderson Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications and Digital Safety

10:14 am

I will withdraw the word beginning with 'L' so there's no confusion and I will say that Australians are sick of not being told the truth by this Prime Minister. In relation to the social media ban, which has been an utter failure under the leadership of Minister Anika Wells, the Prime Minister continues to tell all Australians that more than five million—maybe up to six million—under-16 social media accounts have been closed, discontinued, deactivated or all the other words that they've been using. In fact, that is a complete and utter untruth. We know that, of those accounts, approximately half—we're talking about millions—relate to Google's Gmail accounts, which have got nothing to do with the social media ban. When it comes to truth before this committee—and we're about to go into estimates again—I demand that this government and the minister, starting with the Prime Minister, start to tell the truth about the under-16 social media ban.

And while we're at it, on the hopelessly and deeply flawed proposed digital duty of care exposure draft, I am shocked and we are shocked that the government and the minister are proposing to remove the mandatory codes and standards which require digital platforms to detect and remove unlawful material and age restricted material—material like child sexual exploitation, terrorism, violence and other unlawful materials. There are 17 codes and standards that have been worked on over a number of years to provide very clear, prescriptive obligations on digital platforms and other online service providers. Now, in an absolute shock—which of course would dramatically reduce the safety of Australians online if ever this were to be passed—these codes and standards have been removed from the exposure draft. That shows that not only is this government not capable of telling the truth; this minister is not capable of doing her job.

Question agreed to.

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