Labor urges Greens, Coalition to pass social media reforms after 'dawdling and delay'

Labor is urging the Greens and Coalition to pass laws that would strengthen the eSafety Commissioner's powers to gather information from social media companies and increase fines tech giants face for breaches of the teen social media ban.

When Labor introduced the bill in late June, Communications Minister Anika Wells said an eSafety investigation had suggested several major social media companies were exploiting loopholes in the law.

"The commissioner has found these companies adopting a number of dirty tricks to undermine Australia's law that are straight out of the big-tech playbook," Wells said at the time.

"It is clear ... that social media companies are deliberately failing to comply with our laws."

The bill would give the eSafety Commissioner enhanced information-gathering powers that Labor argues are necessary to ensure social media companies take 'reasonable steps' to prevent under-16s from creating or retaining social media accounts, as required under the ban.

In March-April, the eSafety Commissioner found 81.5 per cent of 10-15-year-olds were still using at least one age-restricted platform, a small decline from the 85.9 per cent it found before the ban came into effect on 10 December 2025.

However, the government has reported that more than five million social media accounts belonging to under-16s have been deleted, deactivated or restricted since the ban came into effect.

Meta — the parent company of Facebook and Instagram — said in mid-August that it had taken down more than 750,000 accounts and said those numbers would "continue to grow".

"We share the Australian government's goal of ensuring young people have safe, age-appropriate experiences online, and we are meeting our obligations under the law," the company added in a statement released at the time.

'Put politics to the side'

In early July, Greens and Coalition senators voted to send Labor's bill to a Senate inquiry, which eight weeks later recommended the reforms be adopted.

Wells said on Sunday that the decision to send the bill to an inquiry was "the kind of dawdling and delay that has enabled social media companies to get away with harming our kids for so long".

"We have to put politics to the side and pass this bill this week, so the eSafety Commissioner can hold social media companies accountable," she said.

When voting to refer the bill to the inquiry, Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson accused Labor of trying to "ram through" the new powers without proper scrutiny.

"Rather than Anika Wells' mad scramble to fix her broken ban, much more needs to be done to protect children online," she said.

The Greens also said Labor needed to go further.

"We need to urgently regulate algorithms, and make it clear that social media companies are responsible for the extreme harm their platforms perpetrate," the left-wing party said in its additional comments to the inquiry report.

'Digital duty of care' reforms

The regulation of social media algorithms is an issue that will soon come to the fore in Canberra, with Labor set to release details of proposed laws that would force tech giants to give users the ability to opt out of algorithms.

An exposure draft of the so-called 'digital duty of care' reforms is expected to be released in the coming sitting fortnight.

It would put the onus on social media companies to mitigate risk on their platforms, including actively removing illegal or harmful content.

The option to opt out of algorithms would be mandatory, giving users the choice to take their social media feeds back to the friends-only content they once were.

Several areas are expected to be identified as off-limits to minors due to the potential for psychological harm, including content that promoted harmful body image.

The changes would prevent boys from being bombarded with violent and misogynistic material, Labor's Matt Thistlethwaite told News24's Sunday Agenda program.

"Many Australian parents have said that they're concerned about their children being exposed to this material," he said.

"We think that the platforms have a responsibility to try and keep young Australian kids safe.

Greens call for larger fines

However, the measures could struggle to pass the Senate in their current form, with Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young saying proposed fines of up to $100 million for breaching the laws were insufficient.

Hanson-Young told reporters that tech companies would see such fines as part of the cost of doing business, and called for penalties to be calculated based on each firm's global profits.

"The power of big tech is so immense and you can't take them on and hit them at their business model with half-baked measures," she said.

"The government's really going to have to toughen up.

"Either take on big tech properly, or you'll end up putting in place a scheme that really does bugger all."

The Greens are awaiting details of the exposure draft before deciding how to vote, while Senator Hanson-Young has proposed her own bill, calling for an algorithm opt-out to be the default setting.

That measure has been the focus of a campaign by Teach Us Consent's Fix Our Feeds, which has been pushing for linear social media feeds to be the default option.

In a linear social media feed, content would appear in chronological order, with users only seeing posts from people or accounts they have chosen to follow.

The organisation's founder, Chanel Contos, recently said an algorithm opt-out was a good first step, but the measure did not go far enough to stop boys and young men being exposed to harmful content.

"It would fundamentally make the transition onto social media for 16-year-olds and other children safer, and it would bring the principle of affirmative consent to our screens," she told the National Press Club in early September.

Coalition says govt should focus on fixing ban

The Opposition is also yet to establish its position on the proposal, but leader Angus Taylor on Sunday expressed doubts about Labor's plan.

He said parents should have more control over what their children could see on social media, but he was "deeply sceptical" that the proposal wasn't an attempt to censor people's feeds.

Taylor accused Labor of butchering the already implemented under-16s social media ban, which the Coalition supported, adding the government should focus on fixing that policy.

"The government should be focused on that because it's not working," he said.

"So then going off and starting on some other thing ... there's good reason to be sceptical about that."

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