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on the last day of school because we know that all the people in that will be impacted by this ban will be in bed. It's about half their bedtime; they can't even watch it. They haven't been able to have a process through the Senate inquiry. We had 15,000 submissions in 24 hours, and we had an inquiry of 3 hours the day after, and nobody, of course, could read anything but a fraction of those submissions. Only less than a percent of them were published on the website before the report. This is an absolute outrage and a stitch-up of grand proportions, and I don't think it's going to work. I don't have time tonight because I want to let other Senators speak. I don't think it is going to work. I know that this stitch-up is in, so I am going to try and make the bill better. I am going to try and fix the issue that Senator Roberts logically pointed out: why are we letting digital ID be a means of identification at all? It's not used at the moment at all, really; it's not in widespread use. So why don't we just rule that out right now? If it's something that comes into use in years to come, we can always change the law. There's a review built into this law in two years' time; we can do it then. If we were serious about responding to the concerns about digital ID, let's just get rid of it, and my amendment would do that.
I've also thought, why is it that we've got this bill that seeks to help parents, and the word "parent" is not mentioned at all in the bill? There's not a single mention of the word "parent" in this bill. Why? Why aren't we helping parents rather than trying to replace them? That's what this bill tries to do. It tries to set up a nanny state where we think here in CRA that we can pass this law and, oh, look how great we are! Pat ourselves on the back for how we've saved the world, when it won't do that, and it won't help at all. Parents use their own agency, their own interaction with their children, to use social media responsibly. So I have an amendment which would allow some children to continue to use social media with parental approval. It's based on the law in Florida that's just gone through. Our inquiry barely looked at that law; it went through after an actual process. It got vetoed by the governor in the first instance, it went back to the Congress in Florida, and they've improved it. That's the way a democracy should work, but we've just completely run roughshod over that through this hasty, truncated process this week.
I have another amendment that would seek to narrow the definition here. There's a ridiculous definition in this bill which captures basically any app that enables interaction between two or more people, which is basically everything you do on the Internet. It's going to cover apps like Strava, you know, for bike riding. It's going to cover apps like Deputy that are used for people who work. Fourteen-year-olds can get a job, but they can't have social media, apparently. Now, I know the Minister's going to say that, oh, we'll exempt them and we'll do all this, but why create this uncertainty when, again, the Florida law has a much more targeted definition which focuses the law on apps that cause social harm? That's what we should be focused on here.
Now, I don't have the time to go through the others in detail; I want to let other Senators have their turn. But I do come back to the point that a whole generation has been activated by this process. There is a silver lining here, perhaps. Right now, a guy called Mr. Anthony Kouf is running a live stream of our broadcast here. He has 38,000 people watching; the official YouTube channel of Parliament has 800. He's got 38,000 young people absolutely pissed off with this Parliament right now watching. They are totally angry, and those people are going to grow up, and they're going to keep voting. I think there's going to be a lot of change coming to our Parliament in the years to come if we keep ignoring those people like we are tonight.
Senator Hansen-Young, you and what a sham this is. This is a piece of legislation that does not do what the government or the leader of the opposition proposes that it does. It doesn't make social media safer; it doesn't make children and young people safer online. It's a sham, but the whole process has been a sham—rushed through, limited inquiry, three hours of inquiry, no ability for the bureaucrats to actually answer questions properly, all under the guise that this was urgent and needed to be done. But it doesn't even take place for another 12 months. I tell you what this is about: this is about the pretense that parents over the summer holidays can tell their kids it's illegal to be on your phone; it's illegal to be on social media. Get off it! The Prime Minister says, the leader of the opposition says, the Parliament says it's illegal. Kids, not my fault; I'll take it away. It doesn't actually make social media safer for young people, and that's the devastating thing about this because we know that there are families who are struggling with this. We know there are young people who are struggling with their body image, their connection with their community, their peers—young people who are finding themselves addicted to these dangerous algorithms. But this bill doesn't do any of that. This bill does none of that. All this bill does is give the government and Peter Dutton the illusion, the fig leaf, to pretend that they've given parents some certainty that they can say, "Look, kids, it's illegal." This is a rubbish bill; it has no substance, and it doesn't even take place for another 12 months. This bill is so weak; it's such a veneer. It's to make old people, oldies, adults feel like they've done something. It's a false sense of security.
It's also obvious that the people who have drafted and fought for the particular elements of this bill actually have no idea how young people engage with the Internet—absolutely no idea. I mean, it's almost embarrassing. I mean, this is Boomers trying to tell young people how the Internet should work. That's what this bill is: Boomers trying to tell teenagers and young people how the Internet should work to make themselves feel better. We've got Australian artists in this country who have only been discovered because young people have found them on YouTube, have engaged with their music, their creativity. This is going to put an axe through Australian creatives. The government hasn't even thought about that; the opposition leader hasn't even thought about that. The consequences of this bill are going to reach far further than this government and this Parliament has been able to uncover. It is being rushed through; it hasn't been considered properly. It's not even going to take place for 12 months. There is no excuse for doing it in this way except for the desperation that the Prime Minister had to match the dare that the leader of the opposition put, which was to get it in place before Christmas. It's pathetic; it's a headline. It doesn't do what they say it will do; it creates a more unsafe culture and platform and environment and will have unintended consequences.
I can't fathom who in either the leader of the opposition's office is advising him and who is advising the government to understand that this was a good idea to rush through. The leader of the opposition called the Prime Minister's bluff, and he blinked. Silly, silly, silly. This is a piece of legislation that says Boomers want to control what young people access online. They don't even know how it works; it's pathetic.
Senator Antic, we are running out of time, which is the most regrettable part of this entire situation. I mean, we all of us here had a lot to say about this bill because it's so complicated. One of the issues we've got is that this required a deep, fulsome look, and we actually got this bill introduced into the House, I think this time last week, Thursday of last week. It was then put through to a committee hearing on the Monday, and then the report was delivered two days ago, and here we are, which is an extraordinary sequence of events for something that is highly complicated. We've just heard Senator Hansen-Young quite rightly say that we don't know what the long-term effect of all of these on various platforms is. We don't know because it keeps evolving. This time last week, we were told Snapchat was in, was out, and YouTube was in in terms of the ban. So, I mean, how far we've come in a week. You know, it's extraordinary.
And I mean, look, we all hear the stories about bullying; we all hear and have a lot of concern about those. We don't want to discount those concerns by any stretch, but we are in the process in this chamber today, tonight, of throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater because we've heard the Human Rights Commission; we've heard commentators and others from across the country tell us about the thing that we're not talking about, which is the value of social media to kids. Commissioner Finlay from the Human Rights Commission wrote an article in the paper this week stating very clearly and very correctly that, in fact, there are lots of instances where children benefit greatly from social media, including but not limited to instances of social isolation, the tyranny of distance, and sometimes even with learning difficulties and so forth. So this just has not been considered enough, and the fact that we're standing here now rushing with 10 minutes to go when many of us couldn't even make proper contributions to a second reading debate is a disgrace.
So we cannot—and Senator Canavan's absolutely right—what does this message say to the children of this country when we have spent all day talking about ourselves in this building, by the way, as we do all the time, and we've crammed this critical legislation into making Senators juggle between ministerial answers which are being filibustered? I mean, this is just not the way to conduct a democracy, and I think we're much the poorer for it. So I'm going to cut to the chase because I think we still do have other Senators. I think we do. Look, let's be very clear about this: we don't know if this is going to work, and we don't know if it will have any impact on the problem they're trying to solve here. If you want to see some of the most egregious abuse you'll ever see online, go online to a Call of Duty game and listen to the kids going at each other, talking about people's—it's exempt, quite right; it's exempt. So who's thought of that one, Minister? Who's taken that into account? And who ultimately is going to take responsibility when this goes the way of the Hindenburg, which it will, because it is a disaster waiting to happen?
The Prime Minister and the Minister of Communications have boasted that the passing of this bill will make Australia a world leader in online safety. Well, they're wrong, because if this bill passes, we won't be leading the world in online safety; we'll be leading ourselves and those naive enough to follow us down the road to further digital authoritarianism, as outlined by Senator Roberts today. My fear is that when we finish tonight, we will have put another brick in the wall of a social credit-style system in this country, and let everybody look back on tonight as a night of shame.
Senator, you have the call. Please put the microphone on. Thank you. At the end of the day, like I was saying, the most important thing that we should all be thinking about and talking about in here is to affirm that parental responsibility rests in the hands of parents, not in the federal government. I would have thought that was a very simple statement, but apparently it's not. Apparently, the government has to be our daddy now, and I think it's absolutely ridiculous. The fact that the Labor Party, along with the Liberal Party, have come together to take away parental rights, parental responsibility, in my opinion, is shameful. It's shameful.
The fact that we are now in a position in this country where the government is so big, so unwieldy, so, in my opinion, authoritarian-leaning, that it's making decisions for parents is just wrong. We didn't even get a chance to properly debate this bill; we didn't even get a chance—not even a chance. Look, moms and dads are the best people to raise their children as they see fit. It's their right; it's their responsibility. The government's determination to do the job of parents by this blanket ban of under-16s undermines the primacy of these parents. Like I said before, it's not the state's role to go around telling 16-year-olds and under what they can and can't do. Can you have friends on TikTok? No, the government's going to decide for you. Can you see your family photos on Instagram? The government's going to decide that for you. Can you get the news off Elon Musk's X platform? The government is going to decide that for you. It's wrong; it's wrong. Decisions are for parents. It's an intrusion of the state.
For that reason, obviously, I'm not going to support this bill. I don't agree with it at all, at all. And like Senator Antic mentioned before, it is another brick in the wall of an authoritarian digital tyranny that most people can't even see is being built around them right now. In my opinion, this bill's got nothing to do with kids. Like Senator Canavan said, "Parents" doesn't even appear in the bill at all. It's about building that digital prison; it's about age verification for everybody, for everybody in the country. Now, we all know, whether the Minister will admit it or not, that digital ID is the foundation of a coming social credit-type system combined with digital currency in the future. You are enabling a system right now where the government will be able to control every single facet of your life and what you do online. We are slowly, slowly creeping towards this totalitarian state—very, very slowly creeping towards it—but it is happening; it is happening.
At the end of the day, you know this bill is obviously ill-conceived. We're spending money on this; we're going to spend time on this. It is going to be a failure of a bill. If you really wanted to protect kids, if you wanted to protect them, what you would say is, "Let's put some programs together where we can help parents, where we can teach parents, empower parents to make better decisions for their own children." Because at the end of the day, parental responsibility rests with parents, not with the government. Even though you've all come together, or most of you have come together to rush this bill through, I want the record to show—I want history to show—that Senator Ralph Beet from the United Australia Party was against this bill, and he'll vote against it.
Senator Cobbe, do you wish to speak? Thank you, Deputy President. Thanks, Senator Canavan. I'll keep it quick because I know that you might have some more things that you want to say. If you want an example of how not to legislate something that is important and of moment to our community, have a look at this piece of legislation. Have a look at this piece of legislation that arrived in the Parliament last Thursday, four hours into Senate inquiry on Monday night, and we're expected to pass it with effectively very little debate in this place. Quite frankly, the legislation deserved a proper parliamentary process, and this government shows its disrespect for the Parliament and also for the Australian community by trying to shove it through in the way that it has. As many across the chamber, and I'm surprised to see some of the Coalition, if you like, that's opposing this legislation, have said it really hasn't had the work that it needs to be done. This is an important, a genuinely important issue for our community. I don't diminish for a moment the pain and anguish that people have felt through the impact on their children and their families through online bullying. I don't diminish that for a moment; I feel it. I've been close to families who've seen it, as we most likely all have. But this is not the way to deal with this. This is not the way that a Parliament properly deals with a matter of this moment.
The concept of excluding a huge swath of our community from a form of communication just does not sit well with me. Just does not sit well with me. Now, I respect my colleagues; I respect the arguments that are being made by those who want to do something, and clearly we should be doing something, but this is not the way to do it. This is not the way to do it, and in that circumstance, I cannot vote for this legislation. It should not be rammed through in the way that it is. This Parliament doesn't come into place until 2026, and so the government should do the Parliament and our community the respect of looking at this process properly so we can make sure we can come up with something that will work, will support our families, and support our communities and try and do something to mitigate the problems that are there. But I fear that this is not it.
Senator Canavan, let me ask a simple practical question of the Minister before we wrap this up. I've got a real-world example that's come to me of a child, a 15-year-old child in a basketball team, who communicates over Facebook Messenger with their coach and teammates. Will that person be able to continue to do that even if they have their parental approval once this legislation comes into effect? Minister? I'm advised that messaging and gaming are not intended to be covered by the purpose of the bill.
I have not finished speaking, in fact, Chair. Yeah, let her speak. And in the minutes available, I'll say this: I read this quote from a parent involved in the Safe on Social group, and she said this: "What I've seen in the past 12 months alone has made it impossible for me to remain on the sidelines for every mother sobbing on the phone or emailing me because her child has been humiliated or manipulated. There's another parent in despair because they don't know how to stop the chaos. I can no longer ignore that what we've been doing simply isn't working. Education alone is not enough."
Senator K, to clarify, as I was trying to point out with limited time, you need a Facebook account to use Facebook Messenger. So how will that work, Minister? Look, the advice that I have is that these carve-outs will be able to be effective in relation to messaging products.
Senator K, thank you very much. Just in the final 20 seconds, I know as I say this live stream, I mention up to 45,000 people watching now. They're obviously very disappointed with the process this place has gone through. I think it's not the finest hour for our Senate to guillotine a debate of this nature of this importance to so many Australians. There was no need for this rush—absolutely no need for it. We could have done this next year; we could have still had the start date that's intended. It's a real shame. It's a shame that we've got to this state in the Australian Senate.
The time has expired. Senators, order. Senators, pursuant to the order agreed to earlier today, the time for consideration on the remaining stages of the bill. So we come to sheet SY 115, the name of the government. The question is that the government amendments on sheet SY 115 be agreed to. Those of the question say aye. Against, no. I think the noes have it. I will now deal with the amendment circulated by the Australian Greens. We're on sheet 3201. The question is that the Australian Greens amendments on sheet 3201 be agreed to. Those for the question say aye. Against, no. I think the noes have it.
I will now deal with the amendment circulated by Senator David Pook. This is sheets 3205, 3206, and 3207. The question is, oh, so different on 3205. Is any other Senator want me to separate the questions? I'll be putting the two questions. The first will be on 3205 and then a second question in relation to 3206 and 3207. I put the question that the Senator David Pook amendments on sheet 3205 be agreed to. Those for the question say aye. Against, no. I think the noes have it. The division required. Ring the bells; it'll have to be for four minutes.
As a result of this legislation, children will be exposed to more harm, not less. I had a call from a constituent. It's not often Senator Hansen-Young tells me I'm right. I had a call from a constituent a moment ago who called their local Liberal Member of Parliament about this bill and was told, "Oh, it's okay; you can just sign up for your children with age assurance software." That will not work with digital ID connected to age assurance software. The social media platform will know what you're doing. Don't be telling people it's nothing; you can defeat it. You can still walk to Grandad, talk to Granddad on Facebook; you won't be able to. Children may be able to use VPNs, virtual private networks, and the new PPN, personal private networks, to appear to be in another country. That really won't work either. The keystroke logging that accompanies the age assurance software will assume someone pretending to be in Canada but interacting with Australian accounts is probably using a VPN.
Minister, why did you say that this won't lead to digital ID, but your amendment says exactly that? Minister, thanks, Chair. I appreciate the many pieces of advice I've had about how I might answer questions, but I'll answer the questions in the way that I think is most appropriate to give Australians the information that I think is necessary in relation to the bill. So thanks for all of the free advice, but I'll just answer the questions. Senator Roberts, I think foundationally misunderstands the amendment that's before him. The amendment specifically seeks to set up the circumstances where a platform may not require a person to provide a government form of identification, including identification within the meaning of section 9 of the digital ID act, as the only means of assuring age. The platforms must provide another opportunity, and it's to deal with the concern you raised and others have raised, Senator, which is that you do not believe that it ought to be compulsory for such material to be provided for the purposes of age assurance. That is precisely what the amendment before you seeks to do.
Senator Canavan, very much, Chair. Well, look, I think from the debate it's very clear that we are not sure yet whether this hasty, blunt attempt will do anything to reduce the social harms to children of social media. But what we do know for sure is that we have successfully disillusioned a whole generation of Australians with Australian politics. A whole generation of Australians has watched this saga, this sordid saga, over the past week play out and be completely, completely disillusioned with their democratic process that they should have an involvement in, that we've completely denied them their voice. I mean, maybe we've scheduled the debate for 10:30 p.m. on the last day of school because we know that all the people in that will be impacted by this ban will be in bed. It's about half their bedtime; they can't even watch it. They haven't been able to have a process through their Senate inquiry. We had 15,000 submissions in 24 hours, and we had an inquiry of 3 hours the day after, and nobody, of course, could read anything but a fraction of those submissions. Only less than a percent of them were published on the website before the report. This is an absolute outrage and a stitch-up of grand proportions, and I don't think it's going to work. I don't have time tonight because I want to let other Senators speak. I don't think it is going to work. I know that this stitch-up is in, so I am going to try and make the bill better. I am going to try and fix the issue that Senator Roberts logically pointed out: why are we letting digital ID be a means of identification at all? It's not used at the moment at all, really; it's not in widespread use. So why don't we just rule that out right now? If it's something that comes into use in years to come, we can always change the law. There's a review built into this law in two years' time; we can do it then. If we were serious about responding to the concerns about digital ID, let's just get rid of it, and my amendment would do that.
I've also thought, why is it that we've got this bill that seeks to help parents, and the word "parent" is not mentioned at all in the bill? There's not a single mention of the word "parent" in this bill. Why? Why aren't we helping parents rather than trying to replace them? That's what this bill tries to do. It tries to set up a nanny state where we think here in CRA that we can pass this law and, oh, look how great we are! Pat ourselves on the back for how we've saved the world, when it won't do that, and it won't help at all. Parents use their own agency, their own interaction with their children, to use social media responsibly. So I have an amendment which would allow some children to continue to use social media with parental approval. It's based on the law in Florida that's just gone through. Our inquiry barely looked at that law; it went through after an actual process. It got vetoed by the governor in the first instance, it went back to the Congress in Florida, and they've improved it. That's the way a democracy should work, but we've just completely run roughshod over that through this hasty, truncated process this week.
I have another amendment that would seek to narrow the definition here. There's a ridiculous definition in this bill which captures basically any app that enables interaction between two or more people, which is basically everything you do on the Internet. It's going to cover apps like Strava, you know, for bike riding. It's going to cover apps like Deputy that are used for people who work. Fourteen-year-olds can get a job, but they can't have social media, apparently. Now, I know the Minister's going to say that, oh, we'll exempt them and we'll do all this, but why create this uncertainty when, again, the Florida law has a much more targeted definition which focuses the law on apps that cause social harm? That's what we should be focused on here.
Now, I don't have the time to go through the others in detail; I want to let other Senators have their turn. But I do come back to the point that a whole generation has been activated by this process. There is a silver lining here, perhaps. Right now, a guy called Mr. Anthony Kouf is running a live stream of our broadcast here. He has 38,000 people watching; the official YouTube channel of Parliament has 800. He's got 38,000 young people absolutely pissed off with this Parliament right now watching. They are totally angry, and those people are going to grow up, and they're going to keep voting. I think there's going to be a lot of change coming to our Parliament in the years to come if we keep ignoring those people like we are tonight.
Senator Hansen-Young, you and what a sham this is. This is a piece of legislation that does not do what the government or the leader of the opposition proposes that it does. It doesn't make social media safer; it doesn't make children and young people safer online. It's a sham, but the whole process has been a sham—rushed through, limited inquiry, three hours of inquiry, no ability for the bureaucrats to actually answer questions properly, all under the guise that this was urgent and needed to be done. But it doesn't even take place for another 12 months. I tell you what this is about: this is about the pretense that parents over the summer holidays can tell their kids it's illegal to be on your phone; it's illegal to be on social media. Get off it! The Prime Minister says, the leader of the opposition says, the Parliament says it's illegal. Kids, not my fault; I'll take it away. It doesn't actually make social media safer for young people, and that's the devastating thing about this because we know that there are families who are struggling with this. We know there are young people who are struggling with their body image, their connection with their community, their peers—young people who are finding themselves addicted to these dangerous algorithms. But this bill doesn't do any of that. This bill does none of that. All this bill does is give the government and Peter Dutton the illusion, the fig leaf, to pretend that they've given parents some certainty that they can say, "Look, kids, it's illegal." This is a rubbish bill; it has no substance, and it doesn't even take place for another 12 months. This bill is so weak; it's such a veneer. It's to make old people, oldies, adults feel like they've done something. It's a false sense of security.
It's also obvious that the people who have drafted and fought for the particular elements of this bill actually have no idea how young people engage with the Internet—absolutely no idea. I mean, it's almost embarrassing. I mean, this is Boomers trying to tell young people how the Internet should work. That's what this bill is: Boomers trying to tell teenagers and young people how the Internet should work to make themselves feel better. We've got Australian artists in this country who have only been discovered because young people have found them on YouTube, have engaged with their music, their creativity. This is going to put an axe through Australian creatives. The government hasn't even thought about that; the opposition leader hasn't even thought about that. The consequences of this bill are going to reach far further than this government and this Parliament has been able to uncover. It is being rushed through; it hasn't been considered properly. It's not even going to take place for 12 months. There is no excuse for doing it in this way except for the desperation that the Prime Minister had to match the dare that the leader of the opposition put, which was to get it in place before Christmas. It's pathetic; it's a headline. It doesn't do what they say it will do; it creates a more unsafe culture and platform and environment and will have unintended consequences.
I can't fathom who in either the leader of the opposition's office is advising him and who is advising the government to understand that this was a good idea to rush through. The leader of the opposition called the Prime Minister's bluff, and he blinked. Silly, silly, silly. This is a piece of legislation that says Boomers want to control what young people access online. They don't even know how it works; it's pathetic.
Senator Antic, we are running out of time, which is the most regrettable part of this entire situation. I mean, we all of us here had a lot to say about this bill because it's so complicated. One of the issues we've got is that this required a deep, fulsome look, and we actually got this bill introduced into the House, I think this time last week, Thursday of last week. It was then put through to a committee hearing on the Monday, and then the report was delivered two days ago, and here we are, which is an extraordinary sequence of events for something that is highly complicated. We've just heard Senator Hansen-Young quite rightly say that we don't know what the long-term effect of all of these on various platforms is. We don't know because it keeps evolving. This time last week, we were told Snapchat was in, was out, and YouTube was in in terms of the ban. So, I mean, how far we've come in a week. You know, it's extraordinary.
And I mean, look, we all hear the stories about bullying; we all hear and have a lot of concern about those. We don't want to discount those concerns by any stretch, but we are in the process in this chamber today, tonight, of throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater because we've heard the Human Rights Commission; we've heard commentators and others from across the country tell us about the thing that we're not talking about, which is the value of social media to kids. Commissioner Finlay from the Human Rights Commission wrote an article in the paper this week stating very clearly and very correctly that, in fact, there are lots of instances where children benefit greatly from social media, including but not limited to instances of social isolation, the tyranny of distance, and sometimes even with learning difficulties and so forth. So this just has not been considered enough, and the fact that we're standing here now rushing with 10 minutes to go when many of us couldn't even make proper contributions to a second reading debate is a disgrace.
So we cannot—and Senator Canavan's absolutely right—what does this message say to the children of this country when we have spent all day talking about ourselves in this building, by the way, as we do all the time, and we've crammed this critical legislation into making Senators juggle between ministerial answers which are being filibustered? I mean, this is just not the way to conduct a democracy, and I think we're much the poorer for it. So I'm going to cut to the chase because I think we still do have other Senators. I think we do. Look, let's be very clear about this: we don't know if this is going to work, and we don't know if it will have any impact on the problem they're trying to solve here. If you want to see some of the most egregious abuse you'll ever see online, go online to a Call of Duty game and listen to the kids going at each other, talking about people's—it's exempt, quite right; it's exempt. So who's thought of that one, Minister? Who's taken that into account? And who ultimately is going to take responsibility when this goes the way of the Hindenburg, which it will, because it is a disaster waiting to happen?
The Prime Minister and the Minister of Communications have boasted that the passing of this bill will make Australia a world leader in online safety. Well, they're wrong, because if this bill passes, we won't be leading the world in online safety; we'll be leading ourselves and those naive enough to follow us down the road to further digital authoritarianism, as outlined by Senator Roberts today. My fear is that when we finish tonight, we will have put another brick in the wall of a social credit-style system in this country, and let everybody look back on tonight as a night of shame.
Senator, you have the call. Please put the microphone on. Thank you. At the end of the day, like I was saying, the most important thing that we should all be thinking about and talking about in here is to affirm that parental responsibility rests in the hands of parents, not in the federal government. I would have thought that was a very simple statement, but apparently it's not. Apparently, the government has to be our daddy now, and I think it's absolutely ridiculous. The fact that the Labor Party, along with the Liberal Party, have come together to take away parental rights, parental responsibility, in my opinion, is shameful. It's shameful.
The fact that we are now in a position in this country where the government is so big, so unwieldy, so, in my opinion, authoritarian-leaning, that it's making decisions for parents is just wrong. We didn't even get a chance to properly debate this bill; we didn't even get a chance—not even a chance. Look, moms and dads are the best people to raise their children as they see fit. It's their right; it's their responsibility. The government's determination to do the job of parents by this blanket ban of under-16s undermines the primacy of these parents. Like I said before, it's not the state's role to go around telling 16-year-olds and under what they can and can't do. Can you have friends on TikTok? No, the government's going to decide for you. Can you see your family photos on Instagram? The government's going to decide that for you. Can you get the news off Elon Musk's X platform? The government is going to decide that for you. It's wrong; it's wrong. Decisions are for parents. It's an intrusion of the state.
For that reason, obviously, I'm not going to support this bill. I don't agree with it at all, at all. And like Senator Antic mentioned before, it is another brick in the wall of an authoritarian digital tyranny that most people can't even see is being built around them right now. In my opinion, this bill's got nothing to do with kids. Like Senator Canavan said, "Parents" doesn't even appear in the bill at all. It's about building that digital prison; it's about age verification for everybody, for everybody in the country. Now, we all know, whether the Minister will admit it or not, that digital ID is the foundation of a coming social credit-type system combined with digital currency in the future. You are enabling a system right now where the government will be able to control every single facet of your life and what you do online. We are slowly, slowly creeping towards this totalitarian state—very, very slowly creeping towards it—but it is happening; it is happening.
At the end of the day, you know this bill is obviously ill-conceived. We're spending money on this; we're going to spend time on this. It is going to be a failure of a bill. If you really wanted to protect kids, if you wanted to protect them, what you would say is, "Let's put some programs together where we can help parents, where we can teach parents, empower parents to make better decisions for their own children." Because at the end of the day, parental responsibility rests with parents, not with the government. Even though you've all come together, or most of you have come together to rush this bill through, I want the record to show—I want history to show—that Senator Ralph Beet from the United Australia Party was against this bill, and he'll vote against it.
Senator Cobbe, do you wish to speak? Thank you, Deputy President. Thanks, Senator Canavan. I'll keep it quick because I know that you might have some more things that you want to say. If you want an example of how not to legislate something that is important and of moment to our community, have a look at this piece of legislation. Have a look at this piece of legislation that arrived in the Parliament last Thursday, four hours into Senate inquiry on Monday night, and we're expected to pass it with effectively very little debate in this place. Quite frankly, the legislation deserved a proper parliamentary process, and this government shows its disrespect for the Parliament and also for the Australian community by trying to shove it through in the way that it has. As many across the chamber, and I'm surprised to see some of the Coalition, if you like, that's opposing this legislation, have said it really hasn't had the work that it needs to be done. This is an important, a genuinely important issue for our community. I don't diminish for a moment the pain and anguish that people have felt through the impact on their children and their families through online bullying. I don't diminish that for a moment; I feel it. I've been close to families who've seen it, as we most likely all have. But this is not the way to deal with this. This is not the way that a Parliament properly deals with a matter of this moment.
The concept of excluding a huge swath of our community from a form of communication just does not sit well with me. Just does not sit well with me. Now, I respect my colleagues; I respect the arguments that are being made by those who want to do something, and clearly we should be doing something, but this is not the way to do it. This is not the way to do it, and in that circumstance, I cannot vote for this legislation. It should not be rammed through in the way that it is. This Parliament doesn't come into place until 2026, and so the government should do the Parliament and our community the respect of looking at this process properly so we can make sure we can come up with something that will work, will support our families, and support our communities and try and do something to mitigate the problems that are there. But I fear that this is not it.
Senator Canavan, let me ask a simple practical question of the Minister before we wrap this up. I've got a real-world example that's come to me of a child, a 15-year-old child in a basketball team, who communicates over Facebook Messenger with their coach and teammates. Will that person be able to continue to do that even if they have their parental approval once this legislation comes into effect? Minister? I'm advised that messaging and gaming are not intended to be covered by the purpose of the bill.
I have not finished speaking, in fact, Chair. Yeah, let her speak. And in the minutes available, I'll say this: I read this quote from a parent involved in the Safe on Social group, and she said this: "What I've seen in the past 12 months alone has made it impossible for me to remain on the sidelines for every mother sobbing on the phone or emailing me because her child has been humiliated or manipulated. There's another parent in despair because they don't know how to stop the chaos. I can no longer ignore that what we've been doing simply isn't working. Education alone is not enough."
Senator K, to clarify, as I was trying to point out with limited time, you need a Facebook account to use Facebook Messenger. So how will that work, Minister? Look, the advice that I have is that these carve-outs will be able to be effective in relation to messaging products.
Senator K, thank you very much. Just in the final 20 seconds, I know as I say this live stream, I mention up to 45,000 people watching now. They're obviously very disappointed with the process this place has gone through. I think it's not the finest hour for our Senate to guillotine a debate of this nature of this importance to so many Australians. There was no need for this rush—absolutely no need for it. We could have done this next year; we could have still had the start date that's intended. It's a real shame. It's a shame that we've got to this state in the Australian Senate.
The time has expired. Senators, order. Senators, pursuant to the order agreed to earlier today, the time for consideration on the remaining stages of the bill. So we come to sheet SY 115, the name of the government. The question is that the government amendments on sheet SY 115 be agreed to. Those of the question say aye. Against, no. I think the noes have it. I will now deal with the amendment circulated by the Australian Greens. We're on sheet 3201. The question is that the Australian Greens amendments on sheet 3201 be agreed to. Those for the question say aye. Against, no. I think the noes have it.
I will now deal with the amendment circulated by Senator David Pook. This is sheets 3205, 3206, and 3207. The question is, oh, so different on 3205. Is any other Senator want me to separate the questions? I'll be putting the two questions. The first will be on 3205 and then a second question in relation to 3206 and 3207. I put the question that the Senator David Pook amendments on sheet 3205 be agreed to. Those for the question say aye. Against, no. I think the noes have it. The division required. Ring the bells; it'll have to be for four minutes.
As a result of this legislation, children will be exposed to more harm, not less. I had a call from a constituent. It's not often Senator Hansen-Young tells me I'm right. I had a call from a constituent a moment ago who called their local Liberal Member of Parliament about this bill and was told, "Oh, it's okay; you can just sign up for your children with age assurance software." That will not work with digital ID connected to age assurance software. The social media platform will know what you're doing. Don't be telling people it's nothing; you can defeat it. You can still walk to Grandad, talk to Granddad on Facebook; you won't be able to. Children may be able to use VPNs, virtual private networks, and the new PPN, personal private networks, to appear to be in another country. That really won't work either. The keystroke logging that accompanies the age assurance software will assume someone pretending to be in Canada but interacting with Australian accounts is probably using a VPN.
Minister, why did you say that this won't lead to digital ID, but your amendment says exactly that? Minister, thanks, Chair. I appreciate the many pieces of advice I've had about how I might answer questions, but I'll answer the questions in the way that I think is most appropriate to give Australians the information that I think is necessary in relation to the bill. So thanks for all of the free advice, but I'll just answer the questions. Senator Roberts, I think foundationally misunderstands the amendment that's before him. The amendment specifically seeks to set up the circumstances where a platform may not require a person to provide a government form of identification, including identification within the meaning of section 9 of the digital ID act, as the only means of assuring age. The platforms must provide another opportunity, and it's to deal with the concern you raised and others have raised, Senator, which is that you do not believe that it ought to be compulsory for such material to be provided for the purposes of age assurance. That is precisely what the amendment before you seeks to do.
Senator Canavan, very much, Chair. Well, look, I think from the debate it's very clear that we are not sure yet whether this hasty, blunt attempt will do anything to reduce the social harms to children of social media. But what we do know for sure is that we have successfully disillusioned a whole generation of Australians with Australian politics. A whole generation of Australians has watched this saga, this sordid saga, over the past week play out and be completely, completely disillusioned with their democratic process that they should have an involvement in, that we've completely denied them their voice. I mean, maybe we've scheduled the debate for 10:30 p.m. on the last day of school because we know that all the people in that will be impacted by this ban will be in bed. It's about half their bedtime; they can't even watch it. They haven't been able to have a process through their Senate inquiry. We had 15,000 submissions in 24 hours, and we had an inquiry of 3 hours the day after, and nobody, of course, could read anything but a fraction of those submissions. Only less than a percent of them were published on the website before the report. This is an absolute outrage and a stitch-up of grand proportions, and I don't think it's going to work. I don't have time tonight because I want to let other Senators speak. I don't think it is going to work. I know that this stitch-up is in, so I am going to try and make the bill better. I am going to try and fix the issue that Senator Roberts logically pointed out: why are we letting digital ID be a means of identification at all? It's not used at the moment at all, really; it's not in widespread use. So why don't we just rule that out right now? If it's something that comes into use in years to come, we can always change the law. There's a review built into this law in two years' time; we can do it then. If we were serious about responding to the concerns about digital ID, let's just get rid of it, and my amendment would do that.
I've also thought, why is it that we've got this bill that seeks to help parents, and the word "parent" is not mentioned at all in the bill? There's not a single mention of the word "parent" in this bill. Why? Why aren't we helping parents rather than trying to replace them? That's what this bill tries to do. It tries to set up a nanny state where we think here in CRA that we can pass this law and, oh, look how great we are! Pat ourselves on the back for how we've saved the world, when it won't do that, and it won't help at all. Parents use their own agency, their own interaction with their children, to use social media responsibly. So I have an amendment which would allow some children to continue to use social media with parental approval. It's based on the law in Florida that's just gone through. Our inquiry barely looked at that law; it went through after an actual process. It got vetoed by the governor in the first instance, it went back to the Congress in Florida, and they've improved it. That's the way a democracy should work, but we've just completely run roughshod over that through this hasty, truncated process this week.
I have another amendment that would seek to narrow the definition here. There's a ridiculous definition in this bill which captures basically any app that enables interaction between two or more people, which is basically everything you do on the Internet. It's going to cover apps like Strava, you know, for bike riding. It's going to cover apps like Deputy that are used for people who work. Fourteen-year-olds can get a job, but they can't have social media, apparently. Now, I know the Minister's going to say that, oh, we'll exempt them and we'll do all this, but why create this uncertainty when, again, the Florida law has a much more targeted definition which focuses the law on apps that cause social harm? That's what we should be focused on here.
Now, I don't have the time to go through the others in detail; I want to let other Senators have their turn. But I do come back to the point that a whole generation has been activated by this process. There is a silver lining here, perhaps. Right now, a guy called Mr. Anthony Kouf is running a live stream of our broadcast here. He has 38,000 people watching; the official YouTube channel of Parliament has 800. He's got 38,000 young people absolutely pissed off with this Parliament right now watching. They are totally angry, and those people are going to grow up, and they're going to keep voting. I think there's going to be a lot of change coming to our Parliament in the years to come if we keep ignoring those people like we are tonight.
Senator Hansen-Young, you and what a sham this is. This is a piece of legislation that does not do what the government or the leader of the opposition proposes that it does. It doesn't make social media safer; it doesn't make children and young people safer online. It's a sham, but the whole process has been a sham—rushed through, limited inquiry, three hours of inquiry, no ability for the bureaucrats to actually answer questions properly, all under the guise that this was urgent and needed to be done. But it doesn't even take place for another 12 months. I tell you what this is about: this is about the pretense that parents over the summer holidays can tell their kids it's illegal to be on your phone; it's illegal to be on social media. Get off it! The Prime Minister says, the leader of the opposition says, the Parliament says it's illegal. Kids, not my fault; I'll take it away. It doesn't actually make social media safer for young people, and that's the devastating thing about this because we know that there are families who are struggling with this. We know there are young people who are struggling with their body image, their connection with their community, their peers—young people who are finding themselves addicted to these dangerous algorithms. But this bill doesn't do any of that. This bill does none of that. All this bill does is give the government and Peter Dutton the illusion, the fig leaf, to pretend that they've given parents some certainty that they can say, "Look, kids, it's illegal." This is a rubbish bill; it has no substance, and it doesn't even take place for another 12 months. This bill is so weak; it's such a veneer. It's to make old people, oldies, adults feel like they've done something. It's a false sense of security.
It's also obvious that the people who have drafted and fought for the particular elements of this bill actually have no idea how young people engage with the Internet—absolutely no idea. I mean, it's almost embarrassing. I mean, this is Boomers trying to tell young people how the Internet should work. That's what this bill is: Boomers trying to tell teenagers and young people how the Internet should work to make themselves feel better. We've got Australian artists in this country who have only been discovered because young people have found them on YouTube, have engaged with their music, their creativity. This is going to put an axe through Australian creatives. The government hasn't even thought about that; the opposition leader hasn't even thought about that. The consequences of this bill are going to reach far further than this government and this Parliament has been able to uncover. It is being rushed through; it hasn't been considered properly. It's not even going to take place for 12 months. There is no excuse for doing it in this way except for the desperation that the Prime Minister had to match the dare that the leader of the opposition put, which was to get it in place before Christmas. It's pathetic; it's a headline. It doesn't do what they say it will do; it creates a more unsafe culture and platform and environment and will have unintended consequences.
I can't fathom who in either the leader of the opposition's office is advising him and who is advising the government to understand that this was a good idea to rush through. The leader of the opposition called the Prime Minister's bluff, and he blinked. Silly, silly, silly. This is a piece of legislation that says Boomers want to control what young people access online. They don't even know how it works; it's pathetic.
Senator Antic, we are running out of time, which is the most regrettable part of this entire situation. I mean, we all of us here had a lot to say about this bill because it's so complicated. One of the issues we've got is that this required a deep, fulsome look, and we actually got this bill introduced into the House, I think this time last week, Thursday of last week. It was then put through to a committee hearing on the Monday, and then the report was delivered two days ago, and here we are, which is an extraordinary sequence of events for something that is highly complicated. We've just heard Senator Hansen-Young quite rightly say that we don't know what the long-term effect of all of these on various platforms is. We don't know because it keeps evolving. This time last week, we were told Snapchat was in, was out, and YouTube was in in terms of the ban. So, I mean, how far we've come in a week. You know, it's extraordinary.
And I mean, look, we all hear the stories about bullying; we all hear and have a lot of concern about those. We don't want to discount those concerns by any stretch, but we are in the process in this chamber today, tonight, of throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater because we've heard the Human Rights Commission; we've heard commentators and others from across the country tell us about the thing that we're not talking about, which is the value of social media to kids. Commissioner Finlay from the Human Rights Commission wrote an article in the paper this week stating very clearly and very correctly that, in fact, there are lots of instances where children benefit greatly from social media, including but not limited to instances of social isolation, the tyranny of distance, and sometimes even with learning difficulties and so forth. So this just has not been considered enough, and the fact that we're standing here now rushing with 10 minutes to go when many of us couldn't even make proper contributions to a second reading debate is a disgrace.
So we cannot—and Senator Canavan's absolutely right—what does this message say to the children of this country when we have spent all day talking about ourselves in this building, by the way, as we do all the time, and we've crammed this critical legislation into making Senators juggle between ministerial answers which are being filibustered? I mean, this is just not the way to conduct a democracy, and I think we're much the poorer for it. So I'm going to cut to the chase because I think we still do have other Senators. I think we do. Look, let's be very clear about this: we don't know if this is going to work, and we don't know if it will have any impact on the problem they're trying to solve here. If you want to see some of the most egregious abuse you'll ever see online, go online to a Call of Duty game and listen to the kids going at each other, talking about people's—it's exempt, quite right; it's exempt. So who's thought of that one, Minister? Who's taken that into account? And who ultimately is going to take responsibility when this goes the way of the Hindenburg, which it will, because it is a disaster waiting to happen?
The Prime Minister and the Minister of Communications have boasted that the passing of this bill will make Australia a world leader in online safety. Well, they're wrong, because if this bill passes, we won't be leading the world in online safety; we'll be leading ourselves and those naive enough to follow us down the road to further digital authoritarianism, as outlined by Senator Roberts today. My fear is that when we finish tonight, we will have put another brick in the wall of a social credit-style system in this country, and let everybody look back on tonight as a night of shame.
Senator, you have the call. Please put the microphone on. Thank you. At the end of the day, like I was saying, the most important thing that we should all be thinking about and talking about in here is to affirm that parental responsibility rests in the hands of parents, not in the federal government. I would have thought that was a very simple statement, but apparently it's not. Apparently, the government has to be our daddy now, and I think it's absolutely ridiculous. The fact that the Labor Party, along with the Liberal Party, have come together to take away parental rights, parental responsibility, in my opinion, is shameful. It's shameful.
The fact that we are now in a position in this country where the government is so big, so unwieldy, so, in my opinion, authoritarian-leaning, that it's making decisions for parents is just wrong. We didn't even get a chance to properly debate this bill; we didn't even get a chance—not even a chance. Look, moms and dads are the best people to raise their children as they see fit. It's their right; it's their responsibility. The government's determination to do the job of parents by this blanket ban of under-16s undermines the primacy of these parents. Like I said before, it's not the state's role to go around telling 16-year-olds and under what they can and can't do. Can you have friends on TikTok? No, the government's going to decide for you. Can you see your family photos on Instagram? The government's going to decide that for you. Can you get the news off Elon Musk's X platform? The government is going to decide that for you. It's wrong; it's wrong. Decisions are for parents. It's an intrusion of the state.
For that reason, obviously, I'm not going to support this bill. I don't agree with it at all, at all. And like Senator Antic mentioned before, it is another brick in the wall of an authoritarian digital tyranny that most people can't even see is being built around them right now. In my opinion, this bill's got nothing to do with kids. Like Senator Canavan said, "Parents" doesn't even appear in the bill at all. It's about building that digital prison; it's about age verification for everybody, for everybody in the country. Now, we all know, whether the Minister will admit it or not, that digital ID is the foundation of a coming social credit-type system combined with digital currency in the future. You are enabling a system right now where the government will be able to control every single facet of your life and what you do online. We are slowly, slowly creeping towards this totalitarian state—very, very slowly creeping towards it—but it is happening; it is happening.
At the end of the day, you know this bill is obviously ill-conceived. We're spending money on this; we're going to spend time on this. It is going to be a failure of a bill. If you really wanted to protect kids, if you wanted to protect them, what you would say is, "Let's put some programs together where we can help parents, where we can teach parents, empower parents to make better decisions for their own children." Because at the end of the day, parental responsibility rests with parents, not with the government. Even though you've all come together, or most of you have come together to rush this bill through, I want the record to show—I want history to show—that Senator Ralph Beet from the United Australia Party was against this bill, and he'll vote against it.
Senator Cobbe, do you wish to speak? Thank you, Deputy President. Thanks, Senator Canavan. I'll keep it quick because I know that you might have some more things that you want to say. If you want an example of how not to legislate something that is important and of moment to our community, have a look at this piece of legislation. Have a look at this piece of legislation that arrived in the Parliament last Thursday, four hours into Senate inquiry on Monday night, and we're expected to pass it with effectively very little debate in this place. Quite frankly, the legislation deserved a proper parliamentary process, and this government shows its disrespect for the Parliament and also for the Australian community by trying to shove it through in the way that it has. As many across the chamber, and I'm surprised to see some of the Coalition, if you like, that's opposing this legislation, have said it really hasn't had the work that it needs to be done. This is an important, a genuinely important issue for our community. I don't diminish for a moment the pain and anguish that people have felt through the impact on their children and their families through online bullying. I don't diminish that for a moment; I feel it. I've been close to families who've seen it, as we most likely all have. But this is not the way to deal with this. This is not the way that a Parliament properly deals with a matter of this moment.
The concept of excluding a huge swath of our community from a form of communication just does not sit well with me. Just does not sit well with me. Now, I respect my colleagues; I respect the arguments that are being made by those who want to do something, and clearly we should be doing something, but this is not the way to do it. This is not the way to do it, and in that circumstance, I cannot vote for this legislation. It should not be rammed through in the way that it is. This Parliament doesn't come into place until 2026, and so the government should do the Parliament and our community the respect of looking at this process properly so we can make sure we can come up with something that will work, will support our families, and support our communities and try and do something to mitigate the problems that are there. But I fear that this is not it.
Senator Canavan, let me ask a simple practical question of the Minister before we wrap this up. I've got a real-world example that's come to me of a child, a 15-year-old child in a basketball team, who communicates over Facebook Messenger with their coach and teammates. Will that person be able to continue to do that even if they have their parental approval once this legislation comes into effect? Minister? I'm advised that messaging and gaming are not intended to be covered by the purpose of the bill.
I have not finished speaking, in fact, Chair. Yeah, let her speak. And in the minutes available, I'll say this: I read this quote from a parent involved in the Safe on Social group, and she said this: "What I've seen in the past 12 months alone has made it impossible for me to remain on the sidelines for every mother sobbing on the phone or emailing me because her child has been humiliated or manipulated. There's another parent in despair because they don't know how to stop the chaos. I can no longer ignore that what we've been doing simply isn't working. Education alone is not enough."
Senator K, to clarify, as I was trying to point out with limited time, you need a Facebook account to use Facebook Messenger. So how will that work, Minister? Look, the advice that I have is that these carve-outs will be able to be effective in relation to messaging products.
Senator K, thank you very much. Just in the final 20 seconds, I know as I say this live stream, I mention up to 45,000 people watching now. They're obviously very disappointed with the process this place has gone through. I think it's not the finest hour for our Senate to guillotine a debate of this nature of this importance to so many Australians. There was no need for this rush—absolutely no need for it. We could have done this next year; we could have still had the start date that's intended. It's a real shame. It's a shame that we've got to this state in the Australian Senate.
The time has expired. Senators, order. Senators, pursuant to the order agreed to earlier today, the time for consideration on the remaining stages of the bill. So we come to sheet SY 115, the name of the government. The question is that the government amendments on sheet SY 115 be agreed to. Those of the question say aye. Against, no. I think the noes have it. I will now deal with the amendment circulated by the Australian Greens. We're on sheet 3201. The question is that the Australian Greens amendments on sheet 3201 be agreed to. Those for the question say aye. Against, no. I think the noes have it.
I will now deal with the amendment circulated by Senator David Pook. This is sheets 3205, 3206, and 3207. The question is, oh, so different on 3205. Is any other Senator want me to separate the questions? I'll be putting the two questions. The first will be on 3205 and then a second question in relation to 3206 and 3207. I put the question that the Senator David Pook amendments on sheet 3205 be agreed to. Those for the question say aye. Against, no. I think the noes have it. The division required. Ring the bells; it'll have to be for four minutes.
As a result of this legislation, children will be exposed to more harm, not less. I had a call from a constituent. It's not often Senator Hansen-Young tells me I'm right. I had a call from a constituent a moment ago who called their local Liberal Member of Parliament about this bill and was told, "Oh, it's okay; you can just sign up for your children with age assurance software." That will not work with digital ID connected to age assurance software. The social media platform will know what you're doing. Don't be telling people it's nothing; you can defeat it. You can still walk to Grandad, talk to Granddad on Facebook; you won't be able to. Children may be able to use VPNs, virtual private networks, and the new PPN, personal private networks, to appear to be in another country. That really won't work either. The keystroke logging that accompanies the age assurance software will assume someone pretending to be in Canada but interacting with Australian accounts is probably using a VPN.
Minister, why did you say that this won't lead to digital ID, but your amendment says exactly that? Minister, thanks, Chair. I appreciate the many pieces of advice I've had about how I might answer questions, but I'll answer the questions in the way that I think is most appropriate to give Australians the information that I think is necessary in relation to the bill. So thanks for all of the free advice, but I'll just answer the questions. Senator Roberts, I think foundationally misunderstands the amendment that's before him. The amendment specifically seeks to set up the circumstances where a platform may not require a person to provide a government form of identification, including identification within the meaning of section 9 of the digital ID act, as the only means of assuring age. The platforms must provide another opportunity, and it's to deal with the concern you raised and others have raised, Senator, which is that you do not believe that it ought to be compulsory for such material to be provided for the purposes of age assurance. That is precisely what the amendment before you seeks to do.
Senator Canavan, very much, Chair. Well, look, I think from the debate it's very clear that we are not sure yet whether this hasty, blunt attempt will do anything to reduce the social harms to children of social media. But what we do know for sure is that we have successfully disillusioned a whole generation of Australians with Australian politics. A whole generation of Australians has watched this saga, this sordid saga, over the past week play out and be completely, completely disillusioned with their democratic process that they should have an involvement in, that we've completely denied them their voice. I mean, maybe we've scheduled the debate for 10:30 p.m. on the last day of school because we know that all the people in that will be impacted by this ban will be in bed. It's about half their bedtime; they can't even watch it. They haven't been able to have a process through their Senate inquiry. We had 15,000 submissions in 24 hours, and we had an inquiry of 3 hours the day after, and nobody, of course, could read anything but a fraction of those submissions. Only less than a percent of them were published on the website before the report. This is an absolute outrage and a stitch-up of grand proportions, and I don't think it's going to work. I don't have time tonight because I want to let other Senators speak. I don't think it is going to work. I know that this stitch-up is in, so I am going to try and make the bill better. I am going to try and fix the issue that Senator Roberts logically pointed out: why are we letting digital ID be a means of identification at all? It's not used at the moment at all, really; it's not in widespread use. So why don't we just rule that out right now? If it's something that comes into use in years to come, we can always change the law. There's a review built into this law in two years' time; we can do it then. If we were serious about responding to the concerns about digital ID, let's just get rid of it, and my amendment would do that.
I've also thought, why is it that we've got this bill that seeks to help parents, and the word "parent" is not mentioned at all in the bill? There's not a single mention of the word "parent" in this bill. Why? Why aren't we helping parents rather than trying to replace them? That's what this bill tries to do. It tries to set up a nanny state where we think here in CRA that we can pass this law and, oh, look how great we are! Pat ourselves on the back for how we've saved the world, when it won't do that, and it won't help at all. Parents use their own agency, their own interaction with their children, to use social media responsibly. So I have an amendment which would allow some children to continue to use social media with parental approval. It's based on the law in Florida that's just gone through. Our inquiry barely looked at that law; it went through after an actual process. It got vetoed by the governor in the first instance, it went back to the Congress in Florida, and they've improved it. That's the way a democracy should work, but we've just completely run roughshod over that through this hasty, truncated process this week.
I have another amendment that would seek to narrow the definition here. There's a ridiculous definition in this bill which captures basically any app that enables interaction between two or more people, which is basically everything you do on the Internet. It's going to cover apps like Strava, you know, for bike riding. It's going to cover apps like Deputy that are used for people who work. Fourteen-year-olds can get a job, but they can't have social media, apparently. Now, I know the Minister's going to say that, oh, we'll exempt them and we'll do all this, but why create this uncertainty when, again, the Florida law has a much more targeted definition which focuses the law on apps that cause social harm? That's what we should be focused on here.
Now, I don't have the time to go through the others in detail; I want to let other Senators have their turn. But I do come back to the point that a whole generation has been activated by this process. There is a silver lining here, perhaps. Right now, a guy called Mr. Anthony Kouf is running a live stream of our broadcast here. He has 38,000 people watching; the official YouTube channel of Parliament has 800. He's got 38,000 young people absolutely pissed off with this Parliament right now watching. They are totally angry, and those people are going to grow up, and they're going to keep voting. I think there's going to be a lot of change coming to our Parliament in the years to come if we keep ignoring those people like we are tonight.
Senator Hansen-Young, you and what a sham this is. This is a piece of legislation that does not do what the government or the leader of the opposition proposes that it does. It doesn't make social media safer; it doesn't make children and young people safer online. It's a sham, but the whole process has been a sham—rushed through, limited inquiry, three hours of inquiry, no ability for the bureaucrats to actually answer questions properly, all under the guise that this was urgent and needed to be done. But it doesn't even take place for another 12 months. I tell you what this is about: this is about the pretense that parents over the summer holidays can tell their kids it's illegal to be on your phone; it's illegal to be on social media. Get off it! The Prime Minister says, the leader of the opposition says, the Parliament says it's illegal. Kids, not my fault; I'll take it away. It doesn't actually make social media safer for young people, and that's the devastating thing about this because we know that there are families who are struggling with this. We know there are young people who are struggling with their body image, their connection with their community, their peers—young people who are finding themselves addicted to these dangerous algorithms. But this bill doesn't do any of that. This bill does none of that. All this bill does is give the government and Peter Dutton the illusion, the fig leaf, to pretend that they've given parents some certainty that they can say, "Look, kids, it's illegal." This is a rubbish bill; it has no substance, and it doesn't even take place for another 12 months. This bill is so weak; it's such a veneer. It's to make old people, oldies, adults feel like they've done something. It's a false sense of security.
It's also obvious that the people who have drafted and fought for the particular elements of this bill actually have no idea how young people engage with the Internet—absolutely no idea. I mean, it's almost embarrassing. I mean, this is Boomers trying to tell young people how the Internet should work. That's what this bill is: Boomers trying to tell teenagers and young people how the Internet should work to make themselves feel better. We've got Australian artists in this country who have only been discovered because young people have found them on YouTube, have engaged with their music, their creativity. This is going to put an axe through Australian creatives. The government hasn't even thought about that; the opposition leader hasn't even thought about that. The consequences of this bill are going to reach far further than this government and this Parliament has been able to uncover. It is being rushed through; it hasn't been considered properly. It's not even going to take place for 12 months. There is no excuse for doing it in this way except for the desperation that the Prime Minister had to match the dare that the leader of the opposition put, which was to get it in place before Christmas. It's pathetic; it's a headline. It doesn't do what they say it will do; it creates a more unsafe culture and platform and environment and will have unintended consequences.
I can't fathom who in either the leader of the opposition's office is advising him and who is advising the government to understand that this was a good idea to rush through. The leader of the opposition called the Prime Minister's bluff, and he blinked. Silly, silly, silly. This is a piece of legislation that says Boomers want to control what young people access online. They don't even know how it works; it's pathetic.
Senator Antic, we are running out of time, which is the most regrettable part of this entire situation. I mean, we all of us here had a lot to say about this bill because it's so complicated. One of the issues we've got is that this required a deep, fulsome look, and we actually got this bill introduced into the House, I think this time last week, Thursday of last week. It was then put through to a committee hearing on the Monday, and then the report was delivered two days ago, and here we are, which is an extraordinary sequence of events for something that is highly complicated. We've just heard Senator Hansen-Young quite rightly say that we don't know what the long-term effect of all of these on various platforms is. We don't know because it keeps evolving. This time last week, we were told Snapchat was in, was out, and YouTube was in in terms of the ban. So, I mean, how far we've come in a week. You know, it's extraordinary.
And I mean, look, we all hear the stories about bullying; we all hear and have a lot of concern about those. We don't want to discount those concerns by any stretch, but we are in the process in this chamber today, tonight, of throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater because we've heard the Human Rights Commission; we've heard commentators and others from across the country tell us about the thing that we're not talking about, which is the value of social media to kids. Commissioner Finlay from the Human Rights Commission wrote an article in the paper this week stating very clearly and very correctly that, in fact