Digital Safety

Social media has transformed how we connect. It has also done measurable harm to the mental health and wellbeing of young people, and the rules have not kept up. 

Through an open community survey and in conversations right across Bradfield, many of you have told me how worried you are about the risks children face online. Device addiction, body image harm, access to age-inappropriate content, online bullying and abuse are hard for parents to spot and harder to stop. 

Behind all of them sits the same design choice: platforms built to hold attention for as long as possible, whatever it takes. 

Here is what that looks like in practice. It takes just 23 minutes for a social media account mimicking a 16 to 18 year old boy to be fed misogynistic content — regardless of the account's viewing preferences. The content arrives whether the young person wants it or not. That isn't a moderation failure. It's the product working as designed. 

Fixing our feeds 

I've called on the government to fix our feeds by regulating divisive social media algorithms, and by requiring platforms to offer an opt-in option for those algorithms. That would give Australians the choice to turn them on or off. 

The distinction matters. An opt-out puts the burden on users to discover a setting buried in a menu and switch it off. An opt-in means the algorithm stays off until someone actively chooses it. Anyone who has watched a teenager's feed knows which of those is real protection. 

A digital duty of care 

A digital duty of care would place a legal obligation on platforms to prevent foreseeable harm before it happens, rather than apologise after the damage is done. It's the approach the United Kingdom and the European Union have already taken, and the Government has committed to it. 

A duty of care is only as strong as what it actually requires platforms to do. That's why I'm consulting Bradfield before the legislation is drafted, so your experience shapes the detail I push for, the amendments I support, and the questions I ask in Parliament. 

Online safety codes and age verification 

The eSafety Commissioner's Internet Search Engine Services Online Safety Code introduced age verification for certain content and filtering of harmful material, as part of broader online safety reforms including restrictions on social media use for children under 16. 

When the Senate held an inquiry into that code, I asked Bradfield what they thought before I wrote my submission. The community raised the questions the inquiry itself was grappling with: whether these measures actually work, and what they cost us in privacy. Age verification systems collect sensitive information about everyone in order to protect some. Getting that trade-off right matters, and it deserves more scrutiny than it has had. 

Scams, AI and accountability 

Generative AI has made scams cheaper, faster and far more convincing. I made a submission to the Scams Prevention Framework codes and rules exposure draft, and spoke in the House about why the rules need to catch up. 

Below you'll find the work I've been doing to improve digital safety — in Parliament, in the media, and here in Bradfield.