Parental Rights at Stake: Debate Over Bill is Crucial 

The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 is important for families and parental responsibility, yet we were given only one hour to debate it. It’s another Labor-Liberal stitch-up to control everyone through digital identity and misinformation bills.   

We support the Greens in this, because parents should be the ones to supervise their children, not the government. Age verification and facial recognition have failed globally. We should instead, make device management easier for parents. 

This bill will lead to constant surveillance and push children into unsafe online spaces. We must stop the Uniparty’s globalist agenda and work for our country. We support the referral.

Transcript

Well, isn’t this a wonderful day! The Greens are normally helping the government to truncate debate, to guillotine debate. Now they’re talking about adding more time for debating—and we agree with them this time, because we agree with debate. Debate is the way to truth. We agree with their amendment and we will be supporting their amendment. 

This is a vital bill, an absolutely crucial bill. It has serious consequences, and not just for people under 16 years of age. It has serious consequences for the Australian family and who has responsibility for children in this country. Is it the government, or is it going to remain the parents? Parents have already had their responsibility, their authority, whittled away at state and federal level. We need to enshrine responsibility for children with parents. That’s critical. It’s fundamental. This bill has important social and family consequences, and we’ve been given one hour! 

This is a stitch-up between the Labor-Liberal uniparty, yet again. Digital identity; identity verification bill; misinformation/disinformation bill; working on digital currency; children under 16 banned from the internet—these are all working together to capture everyone in this country; we’ve said it for the last four years. We were the first cab off the rank with regard to the Morrison government’s misinformation/disinformation bill and the same with the digital identity bill. Oh, sorry; they called it the Trusted Digital Identity Bill! It’s a stitch-up. 

We need scrutiny, and we will be supporting the Greens on this. Let me tell you why I’m saying this. Parents must be the ones supervising their children in their own home. It is a parent’s responsibility, a parent’s duty, a parent’s right, and you are affecting those things—parental responsibilities, duties and rights. You’re undermining parents. 

Age verification software and facial recognition must be used in every device, whether it be a phone or a computer. Why do we know that? Because this banning of children under 16 years of age has failed in every country, because the bureaucrats can’t control it. So, as to what you’ve set up with your bills, one of the earliest in this parliament from the Labor Party government was identity verification software. We will need the cameras on all the time. What we should be doing, instead of sidelining parents, is making device management easier. Apple, Microsoft and Android could make parental locks easier and more powerful. 

I want to acknowledge Senator Rennick’s comment a couple of days ago when he said that you can already get apps—some free, some for a price—that enable parents to control the apps that are downloaded onto a child’s phone. They’re already there. We don’t need this bill at all. We notice that opposition leader Peter Dutton has joined in supporting the need for this bill, but there’s no need for it. As I said, no country has made age limits work because bureaucrats cannot see us using the device. That’s what you need and that’s what this bill gives you with your preceding bills. We see Mr Littleproud speaking on Sky News in support of this and a huge backlash—devastating comments against Mr Littleproud. If the bill goes through, parents allowing children to watch cartoons on YouTube will be breaking the law. It will need facial recognition and monitoring of key strokes for content to police this. Hackers and burglars will be in paradise. They will be able to come in and watch your activities in the house through your camera 24 hours a day and find out when you are going to be out of the house. Parents watching a cooking video with their child on their lap will be locked out because the child is under 16. Children will be forced into the dark corners of the web—peer-to-peer messaging—with no protections against illegal material, hate, phishing, sextortion and hacking. 

We have already seen these bills being introduced in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and other countries simultaneously. This goes beyond the uniparty in this country; it goes globally. We have seen in the United Kingdom police raiding journalists and commentators who have been criticising the Starmer government and jailed. That is where this is heading. We have seen the digital ID, misinformation and disinformation bill, identity verification started and introduced by the LNP—the Liberal-Nationals. Stop working as the uniparty for globalists and start working for our country. We will support the referral.