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Today, the Senate held a Committee Hearing on the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024. This expedited inquiry was scheduled with just one day’s notice, as the Liberal and Labor parties want to rush this legislation through. The first witness, Ms. Lucy Thomas OAM, CEO of Project Rockit, delivered six minutes of the most relevant, heartfelt, and inspirational testimony on the issue of censoring social media for those under 16. Her insights demonstrated the benefit of lived experience.

Before taking a position on this bill, take the time to listen to her testimony.

This is the third and final session on the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 — aka U16’s Social Media Ban – an important piece of legislation being waved through by the Liberal and Labor parties with minimal debate. The Department was called to explain the bill, which of course they defended with responses that would not hold up under closer scrutiny.  If only Senators had time to do this.

Several serious revelations emerged during the Department’s testimony, including this little pearl: it’s better for foreign-owned multinational tech platforms to control children’s internet use than for parents to supervise or manage their children’s social media and online interactions. One Nation strongly disagrees.  

I also raised concerns about the YouTube exemption, which is worded in such a way that it could apply to any video streaming site, including pornographic sites. The Department’s response was to point to other regulations and codes that “supposedly” protect children from accessing porn.   What utter nonsense! Any child in this country without a parental lock can access Pornhub by simply clicking the “Are you over 18?” box. Teachers nationwide report that even primary school students are being exposed to and influenced by pornography. If this bill accomplishes anything good, it should be to prevent children from accessing pornography, which it deliberately avoids doing.  

This bill claims to be about many things – keeping children safe is not one of them.

The Inquiry into the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 — aka U16’s Social Media Ban – heard testimony from the Digital Industry Group (DIGI), the industry body for social media companies such as Google, Meta, and X (formerly Twitter). During the session, the witness was given a torrid time by some Senators who were not receiving the answers they wanted. I commend the witness for her patience.

My questions focus on the bill’s wording, which fails to clearly define core concepts. This lack of clarity makes it impossible for social media companies to implement the legislation. Instead, what it will do is grant massive power to the eSafety Commissioner. The bill is so broadly written that the eSafety Commissioner can just about do anything she wants. This is not how legislation should be drafted.

One Nation agrees with DIGI’s testimony and supports the bill being withdrawn and redrafted with proper checks and balances, clear definitions, and then subjected to proper debate.

We all know the real intent of the Digital ID agenda. The United Kingdom, with laws similar to ours, has shown alarming developments. In the last two weeks, British police have visited and advised hundreds of journalists and commentators to stop criticising the Starmer government’s policies. Some have even been arrested and imprisoned merely for expressing their opinions.  

The Digital ID, misinformation laws and facial verification systems are all part of the control mechanism that facilitates government surveillance and tyranny. The mask has come off quickly. Only recently, Minister Gallagher reassured Australians that digital IDs would not be compulsory. Yet, without one, life will become impossible.  

Now, there is a proposal to introduce age verification for social media. This would require every user—not just adults, as initially told to us, but also children—to have a digital ID.  

Age verification has never been successfully implemented anywhere in the world. The only way it can function is through a Digital ID with facial recognition, which would require constant re-scanning of the user’s face, potentially every minute, to confirm identity. This setup would necessitate keeping the computer camera permanently on, exposing children to significant privacy risks, including hacking.  

One Nation firmly believes that the best person to oversee internet use is the one present in the room with the children: their parents. We oppose intrusive government and support the primacy of the family in raising and protecting their children.

Transcript: Question Time

My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Communications, Senator McAllister. During Senate estimates on 5 November, the age assurance verification trial and social media age verification proposals were examined. For those who missed it, let me see if I have this correct. The system the government is considering will require two things: firstly, a digital ID to access social media for all users and, then, to make sure nobody is using a dodgy digital ID, age verification assurance technology, which will scan the user’s face, monitor their key strokes for content and technique and calculate their age. If it finds the person might be underage, it will compare it back to the biometric data in the person’s digital ID and check their identity and date of birth. Is that an accurate, concise explanation of the system being examined? 

Senator McALLISTER: No. I suppose I could sit down, but, no, that is not accurate. We are obviously engaged in an important policy reform process to protect children from some of the harms that they are exposed to on social media. I would be really surprised, Senator Roberts, if you hadn’t heard about this amongst the people that you talk to in your constituency. I think every senator in this place has had a conversation with a parent or perhaps with a teacher who was concerned about the kind of information that children are seeing online and accessing online and the inability of parents to actually engage and protect their children from some of those harms. 

We want Australian parents to actually know that we’ve got their backs. That is the underlying motivation for embarking on the reform. It’s, of course, about protecting kids. We still want them to be connected. We don’t want to punish children. We don’t want to isolate them. But we do want them to operate in an environment that is safe, and that’s the reason that we have committed to bringing forward legislation for a minimum age limit for social media this fortnight. We have worked with a pretty wide range of stakeholders, and we’re very grateful for the support that we’ve received in doing this work. Obviously, the National Cabinet has taken a very strong interest in this, and first ministers in that forum have agreed that the Commonwealth will legislate a minimum age of 16. 

I think one of the implications of your question and the way that you framed it was a concern around privacy, and that’s a legitimate question to ask. We will not put at risk the personal information of Australians, and the regulations will include robust privacy protections for personal information with significant penalties for platforms that breach— (Time expired) 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, first supplementary? 

I predicted during the digital ID debate that one person could sign a younger person into social media, and the only solution is keeping the device camera on permanently, which is an outrageous breach of trust and privacy. While you’re peeping into the camera feed of all social media users, hackers will have an easy hack to spy on families in their bedrooms, to learn daily routines and to work out when the home can be safely burgled. Minister, in the name of supposedly keeping children safe, are you building a surveillance apparatus for perverts and thieves? 

Senator McALLISTER: No. 

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, second supplementary? 

The government’s solution still requires a camera to be permanently on. There will be continuous surveillance of the computer user in their own home by the government. If a parent has a child on their knee watching a children’s video or a cooking video on social media, will the system lock them out because the child is under 16? Minister, in your brave new world of internet regulation, do parents have any rights over their children’s lives or is the Albanese government cancelling parents? 

Senator McALLISTER: Almost nothing in the set of propositions put forward by Senator Roberts in his question to me were accurate, true or based on anything that has been said publicly by the minister or anyone in the government, and I want to make that very, very clear. Our focus is, in fact, on protecting children from an environment that has not been designed to secure their safety, and the reason that we know that is we hear that all the time from the parents that speak to us. 

Our interest, in fact, is in creating an environment that is supportive of parents who are trying to engage in a constructive way to deal with the information that their children are exposed to. Our interest is in supporting those parents who say, ‘We wish to do better in terms of the harms our kids are experiencing, but we don’t have the tools.’ That is the focus of our legislative— (Time expired) 

Transcript: Take Note of Answers to Question Time

I move: 

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Emergency Management and Minister for Cities (Senator McAllister) to a question without notice I asked today relating to age verification on social media: 

We all know the real intent of the digital ID agenda. The United Kingdom has almost the same laws that we have here, and in the last two weeks the British police have visited and advised hundreds of journalists and commentators that they should stop criticising the Starmer government’s policies. Some were arrested and imprisoned for nothing more than an opinion. The digital ID, misinformation laws and facial verification laws are all part of the control mechanism that facilitates government surveillance and tyranny. The mask has come off quickly. Only recently, Minister Gallagher reassured Australians that the digital ID was not compulsory, yet, without it, life will be impossible. 

The digital ID started life under the Morrison Liberal government. As recently as April, the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, championed the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024, and the Liberals support social media age verification. Age verification means the government forcing the digital ID on everyone, paired with frequent facial scans from the camera on your device. That means the camera on your internet enabled device will be on permanently. One Nation opposes a world where children become hackers and subversives before they’re old enough to drive, just so they can keep in contact with their friends and relatives on social media. Children will be forced into the dark corners of the web like peer-to-peer messaging, where no protections exist against illegal material, hate, phishing, hacking and sextortion. Adults will no longer express their opinions for fear of that 4 am United Kingdom-style raid from the thought police. Australians should have the option of a regulated private verification service if they see fit, because mandating digital ID is an unacceptable infringement of personal sovereignty. The government running the scheme and having all your data in real time is absolutely terrifying. 

Senator Hanson and I tried to move a Senate inquiry into the referendum to enshrine freedom of speech in our Constitution—it was opposed. One Nation will repeal the digital ID and related bills. We will protect free speech, protect the rights of parents and defend the human rights of all Australians. 

The government is trying to rush through the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill at all costs. It seems they’ve seen this week what happens to their side of politics when voters are presented with the facts and are allowed to make their own decisions.

Despite the government’s claims, it’s not out of the ordinary to talk about Bills at Senate Estimates. I’ll be at the hearing on Monday with my questions.

(And Heston Russell hasn’t received an apology from the ABC for their misinformation).

Watching the sad events currently underway in the United Kingdom, one might be forgiven for thinking we’ve descended into the dystopian world long foretold by classic literature. One Nation agrees with Milton – free circulation of ideas is essential to moral and intellectual growth. To attempt to preclude falsehoods underestimates the power of truth.

Originally intended to prevent incitement to violence, hate speech laws have now devolved to the point where criticising the government has become a criminal offense, leading to the imprisonment of citizens in the UK. At the same time, the UK Government is failing to ensure the safety of its own streets. The UK clearly has 2-tiered policing.


As we face the next manufactured social or medical crises, there is no doubt that Australia’s law enforcement will commit the same abuses of civil rights that we are currently witnessing in the UK. Only by voting wisely will prevent Australia from following the UK’s path – turning into a communist state.

To conclude, let me be clear: there is no justification for violence from either side of a protest. Equally, the actions of a few should not result in the stripping away of rights from the many.

Transcript

Watching the sad events currently unfolding and underway in the United Kingdom, one can be forgiven for thinking we’d descended into the dystopian world so long predicted in the classic literature. George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is just one warning, which ironically appears to have been become an instruction manual for the political left. An interview with George Orwell recently surfaced in which Orwell thought there was a possibility Nineteen Eighty-Four could happen in the UK. He was right, again.

Orwell’s description of what looks like the UK under Labour’s Keir Starmer reads as follows:

In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement—

that’s porn and transgenderism by the way—

There will be no loyalty except loyalty to the Party. But always there will be the intoxication of power. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who’s helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever. The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is … don’t let it happen.

One Nation are doing everything we can to prevent this nightmare overtaking Australia. Sadly, the globalist Liberals, Labor, Greens, Nationals and teals intend to push ahead into hell.

Another futuristic story, written in 1961 and titled Harrison Bergeron, from American science fiction writer Kurt Vonnegut, predicted a future where human behaviour was controlled—physical movement and appearance and thought. High-IQ citizens were punished with earpieces that played loud sounds every 30 seconds to prevent them from thinking so they did not outshine low-IQ people. The strong were literally weighted down with ball bearings to reduce their strength to that of the worst weakling. The attractive were forced to wear ugly masks so nobody was made to feel uncomfortable gazing upon someone more attractive than themselves. A quote to explain his predication, which is often incorrectly attributed to Dostoevsky, simply reads, ‘Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles.’

Vonnegut’s view was mirrored in an interview with a former resident of the Soviet Union that was described to me. It consisted of the fellow drawing three stick figures on a piece of paper, two at the same height and one taller, then saying, ‘In the Soviet Union everyone is equal,’ before taking his pencil and drawing a line across the top of the two smaller figures thereby severing the head of the third. ‘Such is life in the Soviet Union,’ he said. Keir Starmer’s communism is the victory of those who have lost their humanity, morality and faith or, as Orwell describes them, ‘those who thrill in the delight of the kill’. Perhaps UK citizens would agree it’s time to add a footnote to the famous quote from Descartes, ‘I think therefore I am—arrested.’

It’s just like the young man in Belfast who was recently arrested for observing a protest, only to have District Judge Rafferty and the Belfast Magistrates Court decide that someone’s presence, including as a curious observer, involves them in such disorder as to justify the refusal of bail. And off to jail he went. That young man had never been in trouble with the police before and had even left when the event became violent. There’s no provision in common or statute law that reads, ‘Injustice is allowed if it exists to make an example of one to intimidate others into disobedience,’ yet here we are.

Similar behaviour was observed in Australia during COVID. The conversation around events in the UK has so far missed an important element. The United Kingdom has been here before. Former Queensland premier Campbell Newman reminded the internet last week of the Areopagitica, which carries the full title: A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England. This was a pamphlet published in 1644 to protest a parliamentary order of the previous year requiring government approval and licensing of all published works and pamphlets. This measure was introduced after Milton’s treatise in favour of divorce upset the king, Charles I. History appears to be repeating—the uniparty’s misinformation disinformation censorship bill.

In Areopagitica, Milton defends the free circulation of ideas as essential to moral and intellectual development. Furthermore, he asserts, to attempt to preclude falsehood is to underestimate the power of truth, a lesson for our eSafety Commissioner, who clearly believes the reverse is true. While the immediate objective of the Areopagitica repeal of licensing was not obtained for another 50 years, the tract has earned a permanent place in the literature of human rights.

Repeal took 50 years because, as it turned out, each new government kept that power in order to protect themselves from criticism. Power freely given is never freely surrendered. Here we are 380 years later and Australia is making exactly the same mistake, but One Nation isn’t. The rest of the parties in this place are. Keir Starmer famously took the knee during Black Lives Matter riots and now puts English lives matter
demonstrators on their knees. The start of the trouble was the murder of three young girls at the hands of a suspected Islamic terrorist. If you want to look for the cause of the frustration being demonstrated among everyday Brits, look no further than a failure to keep the public safe. It is basic. Fear used as a weapon of control during COVID has bitten the hand that created it. There is an opportunity cost to arresting citizens for thought crimes like: praying in public; watching—but not participating in—a protest; making posts on social media critical of the government— posts which do not incite violence or incite the breaking of a law; posting up first-hand stories of vaccine harm; and of course, criticising the religion that can’t be criticised using nothing but their own words.

That opportunity cost is the policing of real crime. Over the last 10 years, according to the UK’s statistics office: assault with grievous bodily harm is up 100 per cent—doubled; assault with an injury is up 80 per cent—almost doubled; rape of an adult female up 370 per cent—almost five times; rape of a minor is up 100 per cent. In fact, the conviction rate of rapists in the UK is currently five per cent and not all of those even go to jail. Only last week a migrant was given a suspended sentence for raping a 13-year-old British girl. The court accepted his defence that he did not know that an adult raping a child was against the law in the UK. Imagine being that child’s parents. Imagine being that child. Is it any wonder the Brits are demonstrating this two-tiered justice system? The commentariat, who are denying the right of people to protest peacefully, including many of the usual suspects in here in Australia, are commenting on a world their wealth and their elitist lifestyles insulate them from.

A Merseyside chief constable made a comment last week, apparently unaware this is the exact upside-down policing, the exact two-tier policing, the public are protesting about. They said, ‘What I would say to those people who think they have gotten away with being involved in disorder, we are coming for you. We have hours of social media and closed circuit TV footage. I have officers working around the clock to identify you. We know who you are and we know where you live and where you work.’

Why is this relevant to Australia? Because our law enforcement have been equipped with the powers to do exactly the same thing. The Identity Verification Services Act together with the Digital ID Act, which Labor minister Katy Gallagher passed through the parliament this year, allows law enforcement to obtain the image of any person anywhere any time from traffic cameras, security cameras, closed circuit TV and main roads, even in supermarkets.

All this with a spurious ‘suspected of a crime’ justification. It then allows law enforcement to go through the video, one frame at a time, to extract a photo of each attendee and run them through the national identity database, which currently contains data on 17 million Australians. Our police will indeed know your name; address; where you work, live and visit, and, once fully implemented, the system will be able to locate you from traffic cameras, payment scanners in shops and public transport touchpads in real time.

Welcome to your digital prison. One Nation warned you directly, loudly and often. During the next manufactured social and medical crisis, there’s no doubt our law enforcement will commit the same abuse of civil rights as we see happening in the UK right now. One Nation believes human rights should not be made subservient to the greed and hubris of those who would stamp on the face of their fellow citizens in the acquisition of wealth and power or, perversely, in the name of social justice. Measures to facilitate this censorship and destruction of human rights are winding our society back to the time of Milton, 380 years ago. The irony is this is the same Left who accused One Nation of wanting to wind the clock back!

As a closing remark, let me make it clear there’s no excuse for violence on either side of a protest. Equally, the actions of a few do not justify the removal of rights from the many. The actions of the few do not justify the removal of rights from the many. Human rights are universal, part of being human, inherent in each and all of us from birth.