Laws have passed federal parliament, that will ban some social media platforms for people aged under 16. The move has attracted attention across the world. The legislation passed in a hectic final 24 hours of the parliamentary sitting year in which more than 30 bills were approved.
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00:00Despite concerns that this was being rushed through too quickly, the Coalition and the
00:06Government combined to get this bill passed and it was ticked off by the House of Reps
00:10this morning.
00:11Now, it will essentially ban people under the age of 16 from using social media platforms
00:16like TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram.
00:19The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, was out this morning spruiking the bill and he
00:23says it has a message for parents but also for social media companies.
00:27Mums now have a social responsibility to ensure the safety of our kids is a priority for them.
00:36We're making sure that mums and dads can have that different conversation today and in future
00:42days.
00:43We've got your back, is our message to Australian parents.
00:48Now Lorna, this doesn't take effect today, it will in fact take effect in a year's time
00:53so that social media companies will have time to adjust to it.
00:57Now how it works, the onus won't be on kids to stay off or parents to make their kids
01:01stay off, it will be on the social media companies that they must take reasonable steps to show
01:06that they are trying to comply and keep kids off these platforms.
01:10How that will happen is that the East Safety Commissioner will be monitoring them and the
01:15social media companies can face fines of up to $50 million if they are found to not comply.
01:22Now there's still some questions about this, particularly the method of which proof of
01:26age will be found.
01:27The Government says it's carrying out an age assurance trial and it will be guided by that
01:32but we still don't really know the tech of how that proof of age will come in.
01:36So questions are still there.
01:38Now we also have seen today from the Opposition, they have been out talking as well and we
01:42know they combined with the Government to get the bill through Parliament and they've
01:45also had quite a unified front in how they are talking about this today.
01:49We saw the Prime Minister say, look this bill and the implementation of it may not be perfect
01:54but it's the right thing to do and there was similar sentiment from David Coleman who
01:58is the Shadow Communications Minister.
02:01No law will be perfect and nobody is saying that this will solve all harms online or that
02:07in every situation we're going to be able to fix all the bad things that kids see online
02:12but what we can say with confidence is this will make a significant difference.
02:17This is going to mean significantly less kids in that social media environment and that's
02:23got to be a very positive thing.