Senator Ralph Babet will today introduce a bill to repeal the Albanese Government’s rushed, risky and fundamentally unworkable ban on under-16s using social media.
“This law was sold as child protection. In reality, it does the opposite. It is intrusive, it is dangerous, and it opens the door for future mass surveillance of every Australian,” Senator Babet said.
“This is not about safety. This is the first step towards government-controlled speech on the internet, wrapped up in the language of ‘protecting the kids.’ We’ve seen that trick before.
“The 2024 act forces social media companies to verify every user’s age, because you can’t verify if someone is under 16, without verifying the age of all over 16s. As a result of this act, adult Australians will be forced to hand over sensitive personal data. Once you create massive pools of age verification data, in time they will be breached. It’s not a risk, it’s a guarantee,” he said.
Senator Babet warned “the ban will push young people off mainstream platforms and into darker, less regulated corners of the internet. Nothing says ‘child safety’ like forcing kids into the online equivalent of back alleys.
“Even the government’s own trial results exposed the farce. The so-called ‘approved’ technology misidentified teenagers’ age by decades. That’s not safeguarding. That’s guesswork with consequences.”
Human rights bodies, including the Australian Human Rights Commission, have already sounded the alarm, warning the law undermines privacy, freedom of expression, and children’s rights under international conventions.
Senator Babet said that “even the eSafety Commissioner has compared this policy to banning kids from the ocean instead of teaching them how to swim. When the government’s own censorship office is calling you heavy-handed, you know you’ve gone too far.
“This government is showing its authoritarian instincts. If they truly cared about children, they’d trust the people who actually raise them: their parents. The government is not your daddy.
“Parents, not bureaucrats, are responsible for teaching their children how to navigate the online world. Safety comes from education, parental tools, and platform responsibility, not from mass surveillance and mandatory ID checks.
“And here’s the hypocrisy: in Australia, this government will let children undergo gender transition, but apparently those same children can’t be trusted to watch YouTube. It’s absurd.
“The Act fails every test. It fails privacy, proportionality, and common sense.
“My repeal bill is necessary to restore privacy, protect freedom, and return sanity to our digital laws,” he said.
