Tammy Tyrrell (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Would you hand over your driver's licence to stream your favourite movie or show? You wouldn't. Who knows what Netflix, Amazon Prime or Disney will do with your information? You'd think it was pretty crazy. But new eSafety Commissioner rules say that, from December, search engines like Google and Microsoft will need to run age verification on their users. That means global tech platforms will need a way to verify your real age, not just the age you say you are—32, by the way.

I opposed the social media bans for under-16s last year because of this. You can't do age verification without handing over ID or some kind of personal data. Don't get me wrong; I’m not some kind of conspiracy theorist. But when every single person in the country has to hand over sensitive information to use Google, and we have no idea how it's stored or who has access to it, that's a real, tangible privacy concern. These new rules might not require your driver's licence, but the other options aren’t any better. Things like face-scanning tools or using AI all involve some kind of data about you being stored somewhere—data that could be used against you if it fell into the wrong hands.

The eSafety Commissioner is doing this to stop young people under 18 from seeing harmful content online, and I think that's really important. But forcing Aussies to hand over their ID isn't going to fix the problem. We need clear guidelines for platform safety features, including content-filtering options and better reporting mechanisms—technical changes, not privacy-invasive systems.

Most importantly, we need digital literacy education in schools. We don't just put young people in a car and give them a licence. We do hours and hours of supervision to check that they understand the dangers associated with driving and that they can drive safely. We should be doing the same with social media— (Time expired)