MELBOURNE, Australia — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is sharply criticizing senators who voted to stall updates to a groundbreaking law that bans children from using social media, warning that tech companies will take advantage of the holdup to wipe out records that could be used as evidence against them.
Earlier this week, the government brought forward proposed changes to Parliament that were designed to strengthen the authority of eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant — the country’s top online safety official — to enforce the existing ban. That ban, which has been in effect since December, prohibits Australian children under the age of 16 from holding accounts on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
Under the proposed updates, Inman Grant would gain the ability to require platforms to hand over actual documents — not just general information — about how they are working to keep young children off their sites. Currently, she can only request information.
However, the conservative Liberal Party opposition and the minor Australian Greens party joined forces Thursday to send the proposed legislation to an eight-week Senate inquiry. The center-left Labor Party, which leads the government, does not control a Senate majority.
Speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corp., Albanese made clear his frustration with the delay. “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,” he said.
He continued: “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.”
The proposed amendments would also extend the commissioner’s reach to third parties, such as companies that provide age verification technology, so she could test whether platforms are being truthful about how children are still managing to get around the ban.
Additionally, the bill would double the maximum penalty for platforms that fail to take reasonable steps to keep children out — raising the ceiling to 99 million Australian dollars, or roughly $68 million.
Greens Senator David Shoebridge, who has consistently opposed the social media ban, questioned the value of raising fines that have never actually been handed out. “Doubling penalties that they’ve never used doesn’t seem to me to be a meaningful measure,” he told Sky News Australia. “Is that really going to be the thing that keeps kids safe online?”
From the opposition side, communications spokesperson Senator Sarah Henderson argued the amendments don’t go far enough. “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,” she said. “We will interrogate this bill properly and, frankly, I think the amendments before the Parliament need to be tougher,” she added.
The original legislation passed Parliament in 2024 with broad, bipartisan support. The 10 platforms targeted by the law were given more than a year to put the ban into practice.
Several other countries that have enacted or are considering similar restrictions have been closely monitoring how Australia’s approach plays out.
Initially, the government reported that more than 5 million children had their accounts removed, deactivated, or restricted after the law took effect. However, eSafety reported in March that seven out of 10 children who had accounts on the restricted platforms when the ban went into effect on December 10 were still active on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok.
In April, Inman Grant announced she was weighing legal action against those platforms — along with YouTube — over allegations they were not doing enough to keep children off their services. She said she was more satisfied with the steps taken by the other restricted platforms: X, Kick, Reddit, Threads, and Twitch.
Communications Minister Anika Wells said this week that she has been receiving monthly reports from eSafety since March and that “we are not seeing improvements.”
