Labor says ‘global reckoning’ coming for big tech as digital duty of care bill announced
Anthony Albanese says the digital duty of care bill will give people control over their social media, and require tech platforms to “protect children from harmful content, including content that promotes eating disorders, misogynistic content, pornography, and content that glorifies crime”.
Albanese is joined by communications minister Anika Wells, as well as a group of advocates who have been pushing for digital safety.
The prime minister says the bill is not about government control, and adds tech giants could face penalties of more than $100m for breaches.
[This legislation] will require social media platforms to provide user empowerment tools that give people over the age of 16 genuine and enduring choice about what they see in their feeds.
We’ll provide e-safety with the power to issue removal notices for nudify apps, all websites, and streamline the child cyberbullying and adult cyber abuse schemes, and will require digital platforms to document the measures taken to address harm to Australian users, and ensure measures remain effective over time.
This is sensible, pragmatic, practical reform. It gives users choice, and it will hold the big tech companies responsible for inaction.
This is not about giving government control. It’s about giving people control.
Wells says:
Tech companies have been running real time, unregulated product testing on Australians, and their platforms and tools have infiltrated our daily lives in ways that we could never have imagined.
This is a global reckoning coming for big tech.
Key events
So how will the algorithm opt-in/opt-out work?
Anika Wells says the government’s position is a middle-ground between an opt-in and opt-out model for algorithms.
Wells says there will be a “pop-up” notification that will ask users if they want platforms to use an algorithm or not.
The government’s statement explaining the draft legislation says:
Users can choose to opt in to having their default feed include personalised content recommended by the algorithm. Alternatively, users can opt out of personally recommended content in their default feed and see the friends and creators they choose to follow.
Wells tells the press conference that this makes it a neutral decision for users
You will have a choice about whether you want the algorithm or whether you want the following feed. That is a neutral choice that Australians will be able to make. It’s empowering.
And the reality is lots of people are going to want to choose the algorithm. Lots of people follow it for entertainment, lots of people follow it because they like supporting small local business in their suburb.
The prime minister adds later that if people want to continue doom scrolling, well that’s their prerogative.
If people want to doom scroll, as you call it, that’s fine, that’s up to them.
Six serious harms banned for kids under Labor’s digital duty of care bill
My colleague, Tom McIlroy asks Anika Wells how the government will stop “mission creep” around these rules and stop political content being drawn into the bill.
The communications minister says there are six serious harms that are outlined under the bill for kids, while for adults there will be a ban on “just illegal content”.
Digital platforms will be required to protect kids from serious harms including:
There are six of those, which is content around the promotion of eating disorders. So like I said, a chatbot giving a teenage girl advice about how to exist on 600 calories a day. Misogynistic content that promotes hostile attitudes towards women, so that might be a particular platform, circulating content that women or girls are equivalent to beasts or animals. Pornography, content that glorifies crime or dangerous stunts, so, you know, there’s people at the moment that still can circulate that footage online.
And then content that causes serious distress, and that includes abuse and cyberbullying, so that is like a chatbot, telling a teenager how to self-harm. So these are all things that the esafety commissioner currently grapples with and has for some time, but we are making those the six serious harms that will be regulated for Australian children.
For Australian adults. It’s just illegal content.
Albanese ‘emphatically’ rules out censoring political statements on social media
Anthony Albanese is asked about concerns that the duty of care bill could amount to political censorship. Critics have claimed Labor is trying to use the legislation to shut down criticism of the government.
The prime minister says he can “emphatically rule that out”.
He says the bill is not about government control, but individual control.
It’s not about censorship. It’s about giving people control themselves over what they see. We can emphatically rule that out. This is about basic safety standards online for online services and about the onus being on big tech to identify risks on their platform and to mitigate against those risks.
Wells is also asked whether she will have the power to designate new forms of harm, she says:
The rule making power exists elsewhere in the Online Safety Act. I used it, you’ll recall, to include YouTube in the social media minimum age laws when I became the communications minister, that would have been disallowable in the Senate. Nobody disallowed it in the Senate.
Labor says ‘global reckoning’ coming for big tech as digital duty of care bill announced
Anthony Albanese says the digital duty of care bill will give people control over their social media, and require tech platforms to “protect children from harmful content, including content that promotes eating disorders, misogynistic content, pornography, and content that glorifies crime”.
Albanese is joined by communications minister Anika Wells, as well as a group of advocates who have been pushing for digital safety.
The prime minister says the bill is not about government control, and adds tech giants could face penalties of more than $100m for breaches.
[This legislation] will require social media platforms to provide user empowerment tools that give people over the age of 16 genuine and enduring choice about what they see in their feeds.
We’ll provide e-safety with the power to issue removal notices for nudify apps, all websites, and streamline the child cyberbullying and adult cyber abuse schemes, and will require digital platforms to document the measures taken to address harm to Australian users, and ensure measures remain effective over time.
This is sensible, pragmatic, practical reform. It gives users choice, and it will hold the big tech companies responsible for inaction.
This is not about giving government control. It’s about giving people control.
Wells says:
Tech companies have been running real time, unregulated product testing on Australians, and their platforms and tools have infiltrated our daily lives in ways that we could never have imagined.
This is a global reckoning coming for big tech.
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Albanese and Wells to release Labor’s draft digital duty of care legislation
We’re waiting for Anthony Albanese and the communications minister, Anika Wells, to stand up in the prime minister’s courtyard as they release the draft digital duty of care legislation.
So far we know the Coalition aren’t fans, warning the legislation could “censor” people, while the Greens want some adjustments to make the rules stronger.
We’ll bring that press conference to you shortly.
Albanese pans One Nation plan to allow early access to superannuation
Tom McIlroy
Prime minister Anthony Albanese has savaged One Nation’s plans to allow people facing financial hardship to access some of their superannuation savings.
Under the proposal from Pauline Hanson, Australians who pay rent or a mortgage would be given a choice to divert a portion of their superannuation to their take-home pay for up to three years.
The full 12% compulsory super contribution would still be paid by employers, but 3% could be paid directly to the account holder by their super fund.
Albanese told a meeting of Labor’s caucus that the plan was a threat to the compulsory super rules. He said.
Once you lose the principle of universality, the policy starts to disappear.
He referred to One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce, who has struggled to explain the plan, including on ABC TV’s 7.30 program last night. Albanese said:
If you watch [the Joyce interview], it’s clear that the policy has not been thought through.
Neo-Nazi trial begins in the high court
Sarah Basford Canales
A group of neo-Nazis, including their high-profile leader, Tom Sewell, are at the high court in Canberra this morning.
It’s the first day of hearings as the White Australia party, a political party that became the first to be outlawed under the federal government’s hate group laws, tries to overturn the listing in the country’s top court.
The group’s lawyer this morning outlined their arguments; that the legislation breaches the implied freedom of political communication and that handing the decision to the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, breaches the separation of powers.
The group will also argue the commonwealth does not have the power to ban political parties, citing a major cold war-era high court ruling overturning a ban on the Communist party of Australia.
Sewell and many other faces of the White Australia party floated through the lobby during the morning recess without incident.
We’ll bring you more as it comes.
Luca Ittimani
Greens in talks with Labor on carbon credits to fix koala park internal split
The Greens are negotiating with Labor to avoid an internal split over a government plan to let New South Wales take millions of dollars’ worth of carbon credits for its planned koala national park.
The federal party room met in Parliament House this morning. We understand they’re waiting until negotiations with the government are concluded to reach a final decision on whether to block the regulation, which is due for a vote next Monday.
Bob Brown wants the rule blocked but one NSW Greens MP has said the federal MPs should wave it through, as we reported this morning:
It’s not clear what the Greens are demanding in exchange for their support, though the general principle is that they want the regulation to ensure that coal and gas stay in the ground and more trees are protected.
The party also decided to support the government’s amendments to its social media bill today. They are less certain about Labor’s reforms to algorithms, saying they want strong obligations on big tech and strong penalties if those are breached. That includes ensuring that users who do not opt into platforms’ algorithms get a similar level of service, rather than being punted to a substandard version of the apps.
Andrew Messenger
Smart Energy Council says Queensland government’s energy policy deliberately slowing renewables transition
The Smart Energy Council says Queensland’s government is using energy policy uncertainty to deliberately slow the state’s transition to renewables.
Since winning office in October 2024, the state’s Liberal National party government has extended the life of its coal-fired generators, which no longer have clear closure dates, killed renewable projects and the state’s renewables target, and tightened the state’s approval processes for green projects while loosening it for mining.
The council’s chief executive, David McElrea, told the Smart Energy Queensland Conference and Exhibition this morning, in Brisbane, that it was part of a “a self-fulfilling strategy to make renewable energy uninvestable”. McElrea said:
The overall strategy of the LNP government is clear: remove targets, erase closure dates, protect coal, make renewable investment harder and let the project pipeline thin – then point to the shortage you created as proof renewables cannot do the job.
That is a self-fulfilling strategy to make renewable energy uninvestable. It is ideology, not economics or engineering.
The premier, David Crisafulli, said the government’s energy policy was “working” and was delivering “affordable, reliable, and sustainable electricity”. He said:
We have the youngest fleet of coal-fired power stations in the country and we’re investing in those to make sure that we have that base load power. We have an abundance of gas, and we see that as an important transition fuel. So we’re investing in that, and then we’ve got the most number of renewable energy projects in the country coming online.
That’s a balance.
Capital investment in the industry has seen a nation-leding decline in the government’s first year in office, dropping from 3202 and 14 projects in 2024 to just 510 and two projects reaching financial close in 2025.
Labor has one standard in opposition, another in government, Greens say
The Greens have also come out swinging over a report in the ABC today showing analysis from the Centre for Public Integrity that the Labor government granted hundreds of thousands of dollars to safe, marginal or target seats at the last election.
Greens senator Steph Hodgins-May says the analysis shows the fund even handed the prime minister’s inner-Sydney electorate of Grayndler $6m for the Marrickville Golf Club.
If this was a fair process, why weren’t other community organisations even given the chance to apply? Labor had one standard in opposition, when it rightly condemned the Morrison government’s sports rorts. Now it’s in government, it seems to think a different set of rules apply. You can’t condemn pork-barrelling in opposition and then hand out hundreds of millions of dollars behind closed doors when you’re in government.
Spender says digital duty of care bill must still allow criticism of governments
Independent MP Allegra Spender says she wants to ensure any digital duty of care bill doesn’t halt the right of people to criticise the government of the day.
She also says the government should put truth in political advertising bills on the table.
But Spender, speaking to News24, reserves final judgment, saying she still needs to look at the contents of the bill itself.
I think to make sure that people still have confidence, that they can critique the government of the day, as they absolutely should be able to.
There are certainly situations where people are deliberately lying in political advertising and there’s absolutely no recourse, particularly during an election … I hate the scare campaigns, it’s not up for me as a politician to decide, this is where the AEC [Australian electoral commission] or others could have a good role in terms of making sure that people don’t have lies in political advertising, because I think that is misleading and that is problematic.
The government will soon release the draft bill, with the communications minister, Anika Wells, doing a press conference a little later.
Hastie promises to fight One Nation after WA byelection win
Liberal frontbencher and SAS veteran Andrew Hastie has taken aim at One Nation and defended his evidence to the Ben Roberts-Smith trial.
In a newsletter to supporters, the WA MP threatened Pauline Hanson and her party director, James Ashby, with a “very costly exercise in time, money, and political capital” if they try to unseat him.
It comes after a headline in the WA paper over the weekend, which splashed: “I’m Canning for you next”.
Hastie said One Nation have attacked him over his evidence to the Roberts-Smith trial, and accused the party of not believing in the rule of law and not wanting to hold soldiers to a higher standard.
I won’t take any more slander from One Nation. Not after they called me a traitor to my own country.
I [gave evidence] with more than 20 other combat veterans and witnesses from the Special Air Service Regiment. Justice Besanko, in his ruling, found that I was a ‘straightforward witness’. For that, I’ve been called a rat, a traitor, a dog c—, and many other things. People I trusted have walked away from me or failed to defend me.
Hastie says he seeks “no sympathy for the slings and arrows fired my way”.
One Nation are working to unseat me because they don’t believe in the rule of law, nor do they believe in holding Australian soldiers to high standards of battlefield conduct. Now I’m calling time on cowards who have never served a day in the Australian Defence Force attacking my service record, my integrity, and my loyalty to Australia.
Tom McIlroy
Committee chair defends public servants over social media footage
The chair of parliament’s power joint standing committee on intelligence and security, Labor senator Raff Ciccone, has come to the defence of bureaucrats worried about how footage of their appearances before inquiries is used online by politicians.
The push comes after the defence department deputy secretary Celia Perkins told a hearing last week that public servants giving evidence did not consent to footage being shared on social media.
Ciccone told the Senate last night the issue has been sitting uneasily with him for some time and, while he supported free use of footage, he said some politicians are misusing hearings. He criticised social media users unfairly attacking a senior female bureaucrat, including over her salary.
We have seen senators accuse witnesses of not telling the truth, shifting the focus from what was said to what plays very well in a feed that rewards outrage over accuracy.
There’s an old instinct in this country to cut down anyone seen as getting above themselves, and political content now packages that instinct as accountability. It used to carry a social cost.
People who made a habit of it were seen as bullies. Now it carries a reward. An algorithm doesn’t care about whether we’re holding someone to account or tearing them down for clicks. It rewards both, provided they generate outrage. That goes to the heart of what this official was trying to say.
Ciccone said it might be time for politicians to look at how evidence given to committees is used online and whether MPs need their own standards for describing evidence online.
Read more:
Luca Ittimani
Grants went to Labor-held seats because we promised them, Mulino says
The assistant treasurer, Daniel Mulino, has said the overwhelming allocation of a grants program to Labor-held or marginal seats was “sound policy” that reflected the party’s promises.
Mulino told reporters in Canberra the invite-only program had required projects to demonstrate community benefit. He said he didn’t have “specific details” when asked if any of Labor’s promised projects were rejected for lack of public interest basis.
Asked about the grants flowing to seats where Labor won, Mulino said:
The allocation across different electorates reflected the promises made.
He also claimed successive governments had used such programs but could not cite specific examples, instead saying the government auditor general had previously said “these types of grants programs” are “sound policy”.
He expressed no concern at the prospect of Labor doing this again at the next federal election, saying:
I think that if we go to the next election with promises, people will expect us to deliver on those promises and I think that’s a reasonable expectation.