By George Christensen
Right now, you can still speak your mind online — post, share and connect freely — without handing your identity to the government.
But that freedom ends on 10 December 2025.
Labor’s new social-media laws will force Australians toward the government’s Digital ID system, turning what was meant to be optional into something millions will feel obliged to join just to stay connected.
The machinery is already built. What the government lacks is mass uptake, and this age-verification regime gives them exactly that. Platforms will be required to determine whether users are under or over 16, and the easiest way to comply will be by integrating with Digital ID.
In practice, you’ll be pushed to register, verify and use Digital ID simply to stay part of everyday online life.
Once that link is made between Digital ID and social media, the pressure will be relentless. Step by step, it will become the default key for everything: banking, travel, health, schooling, payments, even political speech.
The infrastructure already exists. This law is the lever that locks us in.
Here is what is really happening:
Labor wants platforms to verify the age of every user. And the government knows the fastest, simplest way to do that is by pushing people onto the official Digital ID system.
Once Digital ID becomes the standard way to prove your age online, it turns into a compulsory pass for everyday communication.
Today it is social media. Tomorrow it can easily extend to news sites, banking and even political speech.
If you refuse Digital ID, you’ll be offered “alternatives,” but they’re just as bad. Third-party verification firms will demand copies of your passport or driver’s licence.
Platforms will ask for ID uploads or video selfies for facial analysis.
Either way, your most personal data will be scattered, stored, and exposed.
Different pipes. Same destination: more of your identity and behaviour tracked, checked, and monitored.
It’s a privacy nightmare.
Mass age checks mean millions of passports, licences, and face scans being held in databases that can be hacked, sold, or quietly repurposed.
Once your identity is tied to your online life, every post and every click becomes part of a digital profile you never agreed to.
You, and your children, will be treated not as citizens, but as data points to be managed.
And who benefits?
Not parents. Not families.
Big Tech and bureaucracy will thrive.
Global corporations will adapt, even profit, while smaller Australian platforms collapse under compliance costs.
Regulators and Silicon Valley executives will decide who’s allowed online, while parents lose the right to decide what’s best for their own kids.
And beyond all that, this scheme is just bad policy:
- It punishes families, not predators. Criminals will find workarounds while ordinary Australians are treated like suspects.
- It hands Big Tech more power, not less. Small local platforms will be crushed, giving Silicon Valley even more control.
- It drives teens into darker corners of the internet. Cutting off mainstream spaces just pushes them to anonymous, unsafe sites.
- It weakens parental authority. Parents, not Canberra or tech giants, should decide how kids use technology.
- It expands surveillance instead of liberty. Today it’s age checks; tomorrow it’s speech control.
- It’s a headline fix, not a child-safety fix. Real protection means prosecuting predators and funding cyber units – not mass ID checks.
- It’s unworkable and intrusive. No system can perfectly verify millions of faces without mistakes, bans, and abuses.
But most of all, this scheme hardwires Digital ID into your everyday online life: turning your identity into something the state and corporations can watch, score, and control.
The Coalition can still choose the right side of history, but only if it hears from you.
Its own voters hate Digital ID creep, forced surveillance, and Big Tech control.
The party calls itself the defender of freedom, privacy, and parental rights, yet its backing for Labor’s laws betrays those very values.
A strong wave of signatures from Australians like you will make that impossible to ignore.
If Coalition MPs listen, they can tell their supporters they heard them, admitted a mistake, and chose to stand with families instead of bureaucrats and tech companies.
Repealing Labor’s social-media age-verification law gives them a clear, principled way to do it.
If they refuse, they risk a serious backlash.
Freedom-minded voters will remember that the Coalition helped build the digital checkpoint society and left families to face the consequences. They’ll turn instead to leaders willing to defend liberty against global-style Digital ID control.
Otherwise, Australia becomes a place where every login, purchase, and opinion is tied to a government-approved ID: a system where stepping out of line online can quietly cost you access to the services you rely on.
Bit by bit, we’ll have traded a free country for a controlled one, where permission replaces liberty.
This is urgent.
The age-verification system takes effect on 10 December.
Once it starts, it will be almost impossible to unwind, drowned in excuses about cost, complexity, and timing.
The best time to stop a bad law is before it bites.
That’s the window we have right now.
Thank you for standing up when it counts.
In solidarity,
George Christensen and the team at CitizenGO
P.S. If we stay silent, Labor’s social-media age checks will quietly become the main gateway into Digital ID for everyday internet use. Once that happens, it will be almost impossible to undo. Please add your name now to help stop it before it locks in.
More information:
“Social media age restrictions | eSafety Commissioner,” eSafety Commissioner
https://www.esafety.gov.au/about-us/industry-regulation/social-media-age-restrictions
“Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024,” Australian Parliament House (Bills & Legislation)
https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r7284
“Australia passes world-first law banning under-16s from social media despite safety concerns,” The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/nov/28/australia-passes-world-first-law-banning-under-16s-from-social-media-despite-safety-concerns
“Australia Banning Kids from Social Media Does More Harm Than Good,” Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/12/australia-banning-kids-social-media-does-more-harm-good
“Australia bans YouTube accounts for children under 16 in reversal of previous stance,” Associated Press (AP)
https://apnews.com/article/ec8bf630efca439eb4003fa745615a68
