MELBOURNE: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (pic) on Friday (July 3) condemned senators who blocked changes to a world-first social media ban for children, saying tech giants would use the delay to destroy incriminating documents that could be used as evidence against them.
The government this week introduced to Parliament amendments aimed at increasing powers of the eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s online safety watchdog, to enforce the ban on Australian children younger than 16 from holding accounts on platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube that has been in place since December.
The amendments would have given Inman Grant power to demand documents as well as information from platforms about their efforts to exclude young children. She can currently only demand information.
But the conservative opposition Liberal Party and minor Australian Greens party referred the draft legislation Thursday to an eight-week Senate inquiry. The centre-left Labor Party government does not hold a majority in the Senate.
"It is outrageous the delay because what the eSafety Commissioner has said very clearly is that that will allow the platforms to go and just delete a whole lot of material,” Albanese told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
"Whereas if it was passed yesterday, that would have been the date from which these demands could be made by the commissioner. So then fines can be issued,” he added.
The amendments would also give the commissioner power to demand information from third parties, including age assurance technology providers, to test claims made by platforms about how children continued to circumvent the ban.
The bill would double the maximum fine to 99 million Australian dollars (US$68 million) for platforms that fail to take reasonable steps to exclude children.
Greens Sen. David Shoebridge, who has always opposed the social media ban, questioned why a fine that had never been issued needed to be doubled.
"Doubling penalties that they've never used doesn't seem to me to be a meaningful measure,” Shoebridge told Sky News Australia.
"Is that really going to be the thing that keeps kids safe online?”
Opposition communications spokesperson Sen. Sarah Henderson said the amendments needed to be tougher.
"This is a social media ban which is failing; a half-baked law which is poorly designed, which was rushed, which is badly implemented and which is not working,” Henderson said.
"We will interrogate this bill properly and, frankly, I think the amendments before the Parliament need to be tougher,” she added.
Parliament passed the initial legislation with overwhelming support in 2024. The 10 targeted platforms were given more than a year to implement the ban.
Many countries who have implemented or are planning similar restrictions have been closely watching progress of Australia’s ban.
The government initially reported more than 5 million children had accounts removed, deactivated or restricted after the ban became law.
But eSafety reported in March that seven in 10 children who held accounts on restricted platforms on Dec 10 when the ban took effect remained on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.
Inman Grant said in April she was considering court action against those platforms and YouTube, alleging they were not taking reasonable steps to exclude children.
She had been satisfied with progress made by the remaining restricted platforms: X, Kick, Reddit, Threads and Twitch.
Communications Minister Anika Wells said this week she had received monthly updates from eSafety since March and "we are not seeing improvements.” - AP
