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Keeping with the under 16s social media ban, Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has slammed the government’s process of “ramming through” its controversial legislation, during a three-hour Senate inquiry into the proposal.
The federal government gave the public just one day to make a submission on its social media age ban, and reportedly received more than 15,000 submissions.
The snap Senate committee hearing has just concluded, with witnesses including privacy commissioner Carly Kind, representatives for tech lobby group DIGI and youth mental health experts answering questions.
Senator Sarah Hanson-Young at Parliament House earlier this month.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Hanson-Young questioned the communications department’s deputy secretary James Chisolm about why the government had not released its review of the Online Safety Act, which will address a lot of the same issues as the social media age ban.
“This is why this is such a joke,” Hanson-Young said.
“A piece of legislation is being rammed through that relates directly to the issues that were raised in this review. You’ve just said a whole lot of recommendations. It’s been kept secret from the public, secret from the Senate, and you’re asking us to ram through a piece of legislation without any evidence.”
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Earlier, the discussion centred around what platforms will or won’t be covered by a ban. YouTube, for example, has called for an exemption, and at one point there were questions whether Snapchat would be excluded.
Jennifer Duxbury, director of policy for lobby group DIGI, told the hearing the bill “doesn’t make it clear who is in or out of scope”.
“To us, that is a really serious flaw in the bill, but it is absolutely unclear who is in or out, and we don’t know what criteria will be used to determine these exemptions,” she said.
“The explanatory memorandum suggests that some services will be out of scope, but that will occur until a future date, and that date is unknown.”