The coalition has pledged to ban people under 16 from social media in their first 100 days in office. The Albanese government supports the idea but has questions about implementation.
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00:00The coalition says this technology does already exist and is ready to be used as well.
00:07It's been discussing this idea for months now, really, but just in the past few days
00:11has finally committed to actually implementing it once in office and doing so quite quickly.
00:15It's promising to do so in its first 100 days after taking government.
00:20But that's prompted questions about the how around all of this and whether that technology
00:25does in fact exist and is ready to be used.
00:28There are a few ideas bubbling away.
00:30This is being looked at in other parts of the world as well.
00:33Some are digital tokens, unique digital tokens that essentially provide proof of age.
00:39There's talk about facial recognition technology as well, requiring users to upload video selfies
00:44of themselves and having software analyze their age based on their appearance too.
00:49There are some experts saying this is still fairly nascent technology and might not be
00:53ready for a massive sort of nationwide rollout like what is being proposed.
00:58But the coalition disputes that and says where there's a will, there's a way.
01:02If they go ahead and legislate this and require social media companies to put this kind of
01:07barriers in place, they'll find a way to do it.
01:09Now, the Labor government is very supportive of this idea.
01:13The prime minister says he's very attracted to the idea of restricting social media to
01:18people under 16 years of age.
01:20But they do have questions around the implementation.
01:23They're pointing to a trial of this kind of age verification technology that's already
01:28underway.
01:29There is work being done within government.
01:31That's more around access to online pornography, but it's sort of being pivoted towards this
01:35social media issue as well.
01:38Here's the finance minister, Katie Gallagher, saying that the government does like the principle
01:42behind this.
01:43It just has questions about how it can be done.
01:47It's not simple.
01:48I wish it was.
01:49But we're very actively engaged in it and we hear all of the concerns of parents.
01:56Many of us.
01:57Well, most of us are parents ourselves.
01:59You know, we're dealing with it in our households as well.
02:02So there is clearly will across both sides of the parliament on this issue.
02:06It is now just that question of practicalities.