As the Albanese government hurtles towards what increasingly looks like one-term status, its flailing desperation and lack of judgement — or, rather, the substitution of its flawed political judgement for sound policy judgement — risk inflicting real damage on the community.
Its thrashing about on online policy grew wilder overnight with Communications Minister Michelle Rowland revealing Labor will impose a “digital duty of care” on social media platforms, along with specifying categories of harm: “Harms to young people; harms to mental wellbeing; the instruction and promotion of harmful practices; and other illegal content, conduct and activity.”
Rowland wants to shift away from “reacting to harms by relying on content regulation alone”, moving towards “systems-based prevention, accompanied by a broadening of our regulatory and social policy perspective of what online harms are experienced by children”.
Needless to say, existing corporate media won’t be subject to a tightly framed, legislated “duty of care”, or specified categories of harm. Imagine News Corp being required to operate with a duty of care concerning harm to young people. Its entire coverage of the climate emergency would have to change from blanket denial. It could no longer demonise Indigenous kids with impunity. Imagine television broadcasters and the major sporting codes being required to operate with a duty of care regarding gambling advertising, especially for children.
Or imagine ARN Media having to operate its Kiis Network with a duty of care — it might have to actually do something about the puerile filth aired by its presenters, which supine broadcasting watchpoodle the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) steadfastly ignores. Rowland talks about social media “teach[ing] our 14-year-old sons new misogynistic epithets”, while her own portfolio regulator does nothing about misogynist drivel being broadcast to 700,000 people a week and who knows how many kids.
But Kyle Sandilands, like the television broadcasters and sporting codes addicted to gambling advertising, is mainstream media, and the prime minister gives him interviews and attends his wedding rather than regulating his blatant breaches of broadcasting standards.
For that matter, the “duty of care” also sits oddly with Rowland’s controversial misinformation bill, which — contrary to the claims of its feral opponents — imposes the same half-baked, light-touch, “co-regulatory” model of content regulation on social media companies as that applying to broadcasters: the industry itself develops a code of practice and gets ACMA to register it. Sandilands routinely demonstrates what a farce such regulation is, so the rabid right frothing at the mouth about the bill shouldn’t be too exercised.
However, that doesn’t apply to Labor’s online identity verification scheme — dressed up as an age verification tool. If the rest of the Albanese government’s online regulation is merely incoherent and driven by the rent-seeking demands of a dying corporate media, its digital ID card — if done properly — represents the biggest assault on privacy and civil liberties since data retention.
And as with data retention, there’s no meaningful political opposition to it. Nor is there any media scrutiny or scepticism. Indeed, a digital ID card is being driven by the corporate media, especially News Corp, which Albanese has singled out, praising the company for campaigning for it.
Either the resulting legislation will establish a trivially easy-to-circumvent scheme like a “Click here if you’re over 18” box — in which case, cue corporate media uproar that it’s not a meaningful scheme — or it will require every internet user in Australia to submit credentials for verification, as confirmed by bureaucrats this week. In other words, being asked “papers, please” every time you log on to social media. It’s a privacy nightmare.
And don’t think for a moment that it won’t also be rolled out for other sites deemed “harmful”. There are threats to kids everywhere, if you look long and hard enough. Recall that the Morrison government’s internet censor, Julie Inman Grant, sought to shut down sex workers’ websites.
Labor knows perfectly well that its digital ID card — let’s be done with it and call it the digital Australia Card — is profoundly problematic. But it also knows that the evidence behind claims of massive harm to teens from social media is wafer-thin. That’s why it sat on the issue and did nothing for the bulk of its term.
But perceived political necessity and the desire to curry favour with the corporate media have won out within a desperate, flailing government. Like Australia’s mainstream media companies, Labor’s oft-expressed concern for the welfare of kids is a thin veneer over self-interest. And we’ll all pay for the lie.
