Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Friday condemned senators who blocked changes to a world-first social media ban for children, saying tech giants would use the delay to destroy incriminating documents that could be used as evidence against them. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Associated Press.
The government this week introduced to Parliament amendments aimed at increasing powers of the eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, Australia's online safety watchdog, to enforce the ban on Australian children younger than 16 from holding accounts on platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube that has been in place since December.
The amendments would have given Inman Grant power to demand documents as well as information from platforms about their efforts to exclude young children. She can currently only demand information.
But the conservative opposition Liberal Party and minor Australian Greens party referred the draft legislation Thursday to an eight-week Senate inquiry. The center-left Labor Party government does not hold a majority in the Senate.
"It is outrageous the delay because what the eSafety Commissioner has said very clearly is that that will allow the platforms to go and just delete a whole lot of material," Albanese told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
"Whereas if it was passed yesterday, that would have been the date from which these demands could be made by the commissioner. So then fines can be issued," he added.
The amendments would also give the commissioner power to demand information from third parties, including age assurance technology providers, to test claims made by platforms about how children continued to circumvent the ban.
The bill would double the maximum fine to 99 million Australian dollars ($68 million) for platforms that fail to take steps to remove children.