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When Anthony Albanese and Anika Wells stepped into the cool Canberra air this week to unveil their latest assault on Silicon Valley, they came with fighting words.
“There is a global reckoning coming for big tech,” Wells said. “And it started here in Australia.”
Flanked by the grieving parents of teenagers lost to suicide from online harm, the prime minister and his communication minister made an impassioned plea: Australians needed more control over what they see online, and only Labor was prepared to give them that power.
Labor had already legislated a social media ban for people under 16, in November 2024, triggering copycat laws across the globe. Now, Albanese said, it was time to go further.
But amid that clarion call was a sense of the fight ahead.
Answering the first question of the press conference, Albanese was unequivocal: “It’s not about censorship. It’s about giving people control themselves over what they see.”
The new plan is by far the most ambitious attempt yet to rewrite the domestic rulebook for the internet. Platforms long governed from sprawling Californian tech campuses would have to assess the risks of their own products and hand the findings to Australia’s eSafety commissioner. Every citizen would get an off-switch for the algorithms that hypnotise them for hours each day. And breaches would cost $109 million per offence.
The content in Labor’s crosshairs includes child abuse, terrorism and violence. Children would have additional protections through the listing of five key harms: pornography, the promotion of eating disorders, misogyny, the glorification of crime, and cyberbullying.
Ask the government, and MPs will tell you the plan has the backing of the masses, and, after a brief consultation, is ready to become law by the end of the year. Ask almost anyone else in Parliament House, and you’ll find at best a critic. At worst, a sworn enemy.
On Thursday morning, a joint meeting of the Coalition party room met to formalise what already appeared to be a unanimous position: The government’s draft legislation was a “Trojan Horse”, and MPs were furious that Wells was using grieving parents as a “human shield” to push through what they were describing as Labor’s anti-free speech agenda.
Speaking after the meeting, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor railed against the government, arguing Labor and Wells were untrustworthy, the prime minister was a liar, and that the bill handed “a blank cheque to the government, to this minister, on political censorship”.
The basis of the Coalition’s argument against the bill is a subsection that allows the relevant minister, currently Wells, to list a new type of material as harm with the stroke of a pen.
The government insists a listing could be disallowed by the Senate. Any attacks on freedom of political communication would be likely to face an immediate High Court challenge.
Still, the opposition rejects the power, which in briefing papers distributed to MPs was labelled “extraordinary” and a threat to the freedom of the press.
In private, Liberal MPs have shared their fears over the power’s application under a future government led by One Nation.
“There is a legitimate objective in requiring platforms to address child sexual exploitation, terrorism, violent material, pornography, and other serious harms,” briefing documents seen by this masthead read.
“The contentious issue is whether a broadly framed duty, combined with substantial penalties and expandable definitions of harm, creates incentives for platforms to remove lawful material defensively.”
The Coalition also fears the bill might capture news content, that the algorithm kill switch is not actually written into the legislation, and that additional enforcement powers are handed to the eSafety commissioner, whom they label unelected and ineffective.
One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce told this masthead the government were “liars” and that Labor was “warring through censorship of the public square”. He said his voters would overwhelmingly believe the government was seeking to censor their online behaviour, and that they would remember this action at the ballot box.
In a press conference two hours after Albanese and Wells spoke, Greens communications spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young said she would “go through all the details and kick the tyres” on the legislation, but she said it was her party’s responsibility to “put in place a law that genuinely protects people online”.
With the Coalition ruling itself out of supporting the bill, the Greens’ negotiating position is bolstered given the minor party holds the balance of power in the Senate. Conversations between Labor and the Greens are under way and it is expected the bill will be tabled in October. If a deal can be struck, it could become law in the final sitting fortnight in November.
The minor party will seek to have much of the regulated aspects of the proposal written into legislation. This could include a broadening of the definition of harm, and specific descriptions of “negative behavioural impact”, including addictive features such as infinite scroll and autoplay.
The Greens will also seek a massive expansion of the penalty program, attempting to raise fines – currently marked at $109.2 million – to 10 per cent of a platform’s global revenue.
Much like the under-16s social media ban, which took effect last December, the government is seeking to frame its new laws as world-leading. But, its claim that the algorithm kill switch is a novel idea is only a half-truth.
The plan to force platforms to notify users of their ability to “opt out” is a fresh concept, but the underlying right to assert control over a feed is not. European social media users have had that option since 2023.
Three years on and the US tech giants are still fighting those laws.
As the new Australian bill makes its way through parliament, it will face harsh attacks from the very companies it seeks to rein in.
Immediately after the draft’s publication, Meta – owner of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads – declined to comment on the record. On background, it argued there was no single algorithm that can be turned off, and that a broad switch would strip out critical ranking and safety functions.
It will also face the ire of the Trump administration, which has grown tighter bonds with the technology sector since the president’s reelection.
White House spokesman Kush Desai told this masthead this week that Donald Trump had warned trading partners against digital services taxes, fines and “other forms of extortion” aimed at the American technology sector.
The US president’s close relationship with tech leaders is no secret. Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg and X owner Elon Musk sat in seats of prominence at Trump’s second inauguration, alongside Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Australian exports already carry a 12.5 per cent tariff imposed in July, but threats of further “retaliatory” measures are not out of the realm of questioning.
Asked directly about this threat on Tuesday, Albanese said: “We’re a sovereign nation, we decide our policies based upon the Australian national interest. I, as prime minister, will do that regardless of what the issue is. But my relationship with the US president is indeed very good.”
The unveiling of Labor’s digital duty of care laws comes as Albanese prepares to travel to the United States, where he will stop in California to meet with Apple executives at the request of former CEO Tim Cook. Albanese’s delegation will then travel to New York for the United Nations General Assembly, where the prime minister said he looked forward to seeing Trump.
Central to the implementation of both the digital duty of care and the under-16 ban is the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant. The dual Australian and United States citizen was repeatedly compelled to appear before a Republican-led congressional committee for her oversight of the recent ban.
Earlier this year, she said she was unsure if she can safely return to her home country after Republican congressman Jim Jordan accused her of implementing a “global censorship regime” and harassing American companies.
Inman Grant was unable to be contacted as she is currently on leave. Her office declined to comment.
Inman Grant’s second five-year term ends next year and, citing exhaustion, the commissioner will stand down on January 17. It is unclear who will step into the new role that has changed significantly in scope and visibility since she first took on the job.
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