Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Friday 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.
Amendments blocked by Senate inquiry
The government introduced amendments to Parliament this week aimed at increasing the powers of eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s online safety watchdog, to enforce the ban on children under 16 from holding accounts on platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. The ban has been in place since December.
The amendments would have given Inman Grant the authority to demand documents and information from platforms about their efforts to exclude young children. Currently, she can only demand information. However, the conservative opposition Liberal Party and the minor Australian Greens party referred the draft legislation on Thursday to an eight-week Senate inquiry. The center-left Labour Party government does not hold a majority in the Senate.
Albanese warns of document destruction
“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 the 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 empower the commissioner to demand information from third parties, including age assurance technology providers, to test claims made by platforms about how children continue to circumvent the ban. The bill would double the maximum fine to 99 million Australian dollars ($68 million) for platforms that fail to take reasonable steps to exclude children.
Criticism from Greens and opposition
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.
Background and enforcement challenges
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 that have implemented or are planning similar restrictions have been closely watching the progress of Australia’s ban.
The government initially reported that more than 5 million children had their accounts removed, deactivated, or restricted after the ban became law. However, 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.”
