ANIKA WELLS: Good morning, everyone. Today, we change a generation. Today, we change a culture. Today, we change lives for the better. For many years, the world has allowed the idea that the internet can have different rules from real life, that somehow it can be a free space unregulated by any of the values by which we govern ourselves. The people the Prime Minister has gathered here today are the people who refuse to leave this dilemma in the hands of someone else. You are the people that took this on and demanded children come before trillion-dollar companies. 

So, this is about the parents who have kids who could not be here today. Emma Mason calls them the lost generation. This is for the future, a future Australia is leading. Australia, a continent so far away and now yet so far ahead when it comes to online safety. December 10 will be remembered as a moment that sparked a movement. Not that long ago, auto manufacturers told us that making compulsory seatbelts would break their business model. It couldn’t be done. Now, families choose cars based on who offers the safest features. Big tech could compete, like airlines, like auto manufacturers, to have the best safety record to offer their users, and that future is a little bit closer today because of this world-leading law, Australia’s law.

Private interest is compelled to innovate because of thoughtful regulation. Moments like July 30, when these parents joined us at Parliament House to table the rules for our law, that day was my first press conference as the Minister for Communications, and Mia Bannister, who joins us here today, showed incredible courage to speak to a heaving media pack in the Prime Minister’s courtyard. And something Mia said then still sticks with me now. She said, this law isn’t the result of one voice, but the power of many united in purpose, driven by hope, and committed to protecting our kids. And we see the power of that many today. The power in Paralympic medalist Rowan Crothers, who lives with cerebral palsy and is a gun swimmer at 15 years old was bullied online relentlessly just for not looking like a Paralympian. The power in parents like Ali Halkic whose son Allem was threatened online through social media posts before he took his own life in 2009. In 2010, Allem was formally recognised as a victim of crime. A landmark ruling, the first in Australia, and 15 years later, with Ali here, we achieve another landmark. And it will change a generation.

There is one more line from Mia that I wrote down from that first day that I met you all. Mia said, together, we made change happen, and we will keep going. That feels even more pertinent today than it did that day in winter. Together, we made change happen, and together, we will keep going. 

Thank you.