The Labor government’s mis- and disinformation bill died in the Senate this week and rightly so. The bill was a power grab for information control, giving bureaucrats oversight over how social media platforms would find and fix information “reasonably verifiable as false, misleading or deceptive.”

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland claimed the bill would give the government “new powers to create transparency and accountability … while balancing the freedom of expression that is so fundamental to our democracy.”

Thankfully, enough Senators were willing to reject the shocking over-reach of a government that thinks itself so clever that they should control the “balance” of our freedom of expression. So, government withdrew the bill.

Unfortunately, the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill looks like it will be enacted by Parliament, with bipartisan support.

If that happens it will be a result of flawed policy thinking from Labor and the Coalition.

Michelle Rowland told the Parliament: “This bill seeks to set a new normative value in society—that accessing social media is not the defining feature of growing up in Australia.”

In fact, the norm being created is that Government will set the rules around who can access social media.

The new legislation is speeding through Parliament like a hypersonic missile. One day was allowed for people to write submissions to a Senate committee review.

That committee had a three-hour hearing on Monday 25 November – how democratic! Conflicting testimony was offered about the imagined effects of the bill. There was no time for complex questions to be tabled or considered. What’s the rush? If the bill becomes law we will be forced to unpick its consequences over years.

Norms are not established through processes run in indecent haste. I submit seven reasons why the bill should be quashed.

First, community consultation has been woefully inadequate.Few Acts of Parliament touch on the lives of as many Australians as this bill. It is not enough to claim “extensive consultation” has been held just because there was a National Cabinet meeting. We need real consultation with citizens not peak bodies.

Second, the bill creates unintended risks, including a likely outcome where policing social media access for under 16s will force all users to provide personal data to foreign social media platforms.

We also risk denying children access to the knowledge, wider perspectives and connections available through social media.

Third, too much responsibility is being handed to the Communications Minister and officials for “rule making.”Rowland says the bill gives her “rule making powers” acting on the advice of the eSafety Commissioner, an agency with its own ideological agenda on information control.

The rule making powers compensate for an inability to properly design the bill now. Too much still needs thinking through. Parliament will pass into law half-formed legislation and leave it to a minister’s whim to shape outcomes.

Fourth, the bill puts the onus on mostly foreign owned and controlled social media platform providers to control Australians’ access to their services. This is seriously risky. Does the Government really want to hand overseas businesses the power to approve, monitor, and mediate the access of Australian children, indeed of all Australians, to social media?

The fifth reason to kill the bill is that there is a substantial espionage risk arising from big data aggregation. Over 20 million Australians (regardless of their age) use social media in 2024. To prove age compliance under the bill, this means 20 million people may be compelled to provide some level of personal information to foreign social media platforms.

There is immense commercial and intelligence value in this aggregated data. What happens if the data is stolen? What if it is used for purposes other than age verification? Merely insisting the data is used for its intended purpose does not offer any protection.

An estimated 9.73 million Australians (over the age of 18) use TikTok. If this bill compels Australians to provide prove of age data to this Chinese owned company, has the Government considered the espionage risk?

China’s National Intelligence Law of 2017 “compels all PRC firms and entities to support, assist, and cooperate with the PRC intelligence services, creating a legal obligation for those entities to turn over data collected abroad and domestically to the PRC.”

Much of the debate around the Social Media Minimum Age bill has been to see if there is a realistic way to determine a person’s age without requiring too much personal information to be surrendered.

One suggestion I have heard is that biometric face recognition might be the solution – as if a digital record of one’s face isn’t a useful intelligence asset! Suppose that data is stolen: Could it be used to “open” other devices using facial recognition? Can the data be used to create AI avatars?

Trying to assure a person’s age without creating a form of digital ID strikes me as impossible. We will find out in 2025.

The sixth reason the bill should be withdrawn is that there are surely simpler ways to manage the negative effects of social media on minors. Why not strengthen the teaching of critical thinking for children in schools, so young people are better equipped to deal with social media.

Why not empower parents with thoughtful advice on how to manage youthful demands for social media? Why not fund more policing of malign actors in cyber space? We should cage the law breakers, not control the law abiders.

And let’s establish a norm of social media-free days in schools, universities and workplaces – maybe even (I hope you are sitting down) reading books. Revolutionary, no?

I would welcome politicians taking more breaks from their own relentless and mostly lame social media use. More thinking, less tweeting would be good for legislators. Modelling the right behaviours is the best way to “set a new normative value in society”.

The final reason to kill this bill is that it overstates the role Labor so desperately wants, to shape Australian family life, control access to information, proclaim the “truth” and protect children from the apparent “harm” of learning to think for themselves.

Early positive reactions about controlling youth access to social media may turn negative as parents and young people realise what is actually happening is a more government control over access to information. In Australia? Surely not.

The Opposition should rethink its current disposition to support this legislation. They should develop a plan that puts families in the driving seat of managing their children’s access to social media.

Let’s all take a deep breath about this legislative fantasy and think of simpler and more practical strategies to help children be children, parents be parents and limit politicians to their necessary lanes.