Communications Minister Anika Wells has accused major social media companies of “taking the mickey” out of Australia’s world-first under-16 social media ban, unveiling tougher powers for the eSafety Commissioner as the Albanese government steps up its confrontation with big tech.
The government on Monday introduced legislation allowing the eSafety Commissioner to compel technology companies and their contractors to hand over internal documents, including emails, meeting minutes and communications with third-party age verification providers, in a bid to strengthen enforcement of the landmark laws.
Wells said the new powers were necessary because the regulator lacked the legal tools needed to build Federal Court cases capable of withstanding challenge.
She said the expanded powers would also apply to age assurance companies working with platforms, including Meta.
Asked why doubling the penalty for breaches of Australia’s youth social media ban to $99 million would work when no prosecutions had taken place during the first six months of the ban, Wells accused technology companies of deliberately undermining the legislation, arguing some children continued to access social media without even being asked to verify their age.
“The independent regulator in this space is the eSafety Commissioner,” Wells said. “My job as the minister is to make sure that the laws she can use … are as strong as possible for her to form the strongest possible case to take to the Federal Court.”
The ban for under 16s, which took effect in December, requires platforms including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube to prevent Australians under 16 from holding accounts.
But research into the effectiveness of Australia’s ban found more than 80 per cent of children were still using social media. A study of more than 400 Australians aged between 12 and 17 by the University of Newcastle found the laws had resulted in “limited implementation, incomplete compliance, and substantial circumvention of social media restrictions”.
Wells said much of the research was part of a coordinated global campaign by technology companies seeking to discredit Australia’s laws before other countries adopted similar measures.
“These companies want these laws to fail,” Wells said. “They don’t want the more than 20 nations who have followed in the Prime Minister’s dare to continue it … that’s why we are making so clear today that we will not back down.”
France has passed legislation to prohibit access to social media accounts for children under 15 – with provisions for parental consent – while the UK announced plans for an “Australia-plus” ban for under-16s from next year, with additional restrictions.
Similar laws are also being considered by Malaysia, Poland, Spain, Denmark and Slovenia.
The legislation follows repeated warnings from eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant that her office lacked sufficient powers to effectively enforce the ban.
Inman Grant recently described the laws as “a very blunt force approach” that had been developed “very quickly” with only “very thin scaffolding”, telling this masthead that a regulator was “only as good as the tools and the resources that they’re given”.
The commission announced in March it was focusing its compliance and enforcement effort on investigations into five platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube – and aimed to decide on any enforcement action by the middle of the year.
An eSafety spokeswoman welcomed the proposed new powers, saying the regulator “stands ready to deploy any new regulatory tools” if Parliament passed the legislation.
She said eSafety had observed some improvement since its March compliance update but remained concerned about the five platforms already under investigation.
“Our complex investigations into these platforms are ongoing and our compliance and safety uplift work continues,” the spokeswoman said.
Snap said it had long argued it should not fall within the scope of the ban because it was a messaging-first service, but maintained it had already taken reasonable steps to comply with eSafety’s requirements through facial age estimation, government ID checks and bank-backed verification tools.
The company told this masthead it had removed more than 450,000 Australian accounts and was one of only two platforms, alongside Meta, to publicly disclose its enforcement figures.
Google, Meta and Kick were contacted for comment.
The logic behind which platforms are investigated remains hotly contested. At Senate estimates, Greens senator David Shoebridge pressed eSafety on whether platforms not under investigation, such as X, were therefore doing more than those that were. A source close to the matter suggested the five platforms under scrutiny were selected because of their popularity among young people, not because they had done the least to comply with the laws, suggesting that platforms investing most heavily in compliance face the greatest enforcement risk.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.
More:
Rob Harrisis the national correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age based in Canberra. He is a former Europe correspondent.Connect viaemail.
David Swanis the technology editor for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously technology editor for The Australian newspaper.Connect viaXoremail.
