Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Friday condemned senators who blocked proposed changes to the nation's social media ban for children, expressing concern that tech giants could destroy incriminating evidence during the delay. The amendments, intended to strengthen the powers of Australia's online safety watchdog, were referred to an eight-week Senate inquiry by the conservative opposition Liberal Party and the Australian Greens.
The government's proposed amendments aimed to enhance the authority of the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, to enforce a ban preventing Australian children under 16 from holding social media accounts. The ban has been in effect since December. Under the proposed changes, the commissioner would gain the power to demand documents and information from platforms regarding their efforts to keep young children off their services, an increase from the current ability to only demand information.
"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. He added that if the amendments had passed on Thursday, they would have been the date from which demands could be made, allowing fines to be issued.
The amendments also sought to grant the commissioner the power to request information from third parties, including age assurance technology providers, to verify claims made by platforms about their methods of excluding underage users. The proposed legislation would have doubled the maximum fine for platforms failing to take reasonable steps to exclude children to 99 million Australian dollars (approximately $68 million).
However, the conservative opposition and the Greens initiated the Senate inquiry, effectively stalling the amendments. The Labor Party government does not hold a majority in the Senate, making the passage of such legislation reliant on cross-party support.
Greens Senator David Shoebridge questioned the necessity of doubling a fine that has not yet been issued. "Doubling penalties that they've never used doesn't seem to me to be a meaningful measure," Shoebridge stated. "Is that really going to be the thing that keeps kids safe online?"
Opposition communications spokesperson Senator Sarah Henderson argued that the existing social media ban is a "half-baked law which is poorly designed, which was rushed, which is badly implemented and which is not working." She indicated that the opposition would scrutinize the bill, suggesting the amendments need to be more stringent.
The initial legislation, which received broad parliamentary support, came into effect in 2024, with the 10 targeted platforms given over a year to comply. Australia's approach to restricting children's access to social media has been closely observed by other nations considering similar measures.
Initial government reports indicated that over 5 million child accounts were removed, deactivated, or restricted following the ban's implementation. However, a report by eSafety in March revealed that seven out of ten children who held accounts on restricted platforms on December 10, when the ban took effect, remained active on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok.
In April, Inman Grant indicated she was considering legal action against these platforms, along with YouTube, for allegedly failing to take adequate measures to exclude children. She expressed satisfaction with the progress made by remaining platforms, including X, Kick, Reddit, Threads, and Twitch. Communications Minister Anika Wells recently stated that improvements have not been observed in monthly updates from eSafety since March.