PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST: There is just over a month until the social media ban for under-16s goes into effect, and the Government has today announced Reddit and Kick have been added to the list of platforms affected. eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant says even more platforms could be added as their functionality changes.

[Excerpt]

eSAFETY COMMISSIONER JULIE INMAN GRANT: These companies are constantly adding features and functionalities. We're not trying to prevent innovation. Again, the burden goes back onto the platforms themselves to not only self-assess, and if they think they're age-restricted social media platform or we come of the view that they are, we will let them know that we think they're in its scope and what reasonable steps we think they need to take to ensure that young people do not have or hold an account on their platform. 

[End of excerpt]

KARVELAS: Anika Wells is the Minister for Communications and Sport. Welcome. 

MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS AND SPORT, ANIKA WELLS: Good afternoon. How are you? 

KARVELAS: We've only got a month until this social media ban starts and we're still deciding what's in or out. Why is this so last minute?

ANIKA WELLS: It's not last minute. These platforms have had 12 months' notice that they would be very likely an age-restricted social media platform as the Parliament passed in a bipartisan fashion at the end of last year. So, since then, there's been a series of things that have happened. The eSafety Commission has consulted widely. We handed down the rules shortly after I became the Minister. We handed down the regulatory guidance a few weeks back now. The list really is more clarity for parents because parents want to know and we want them to be having those discussions with their young people ahead of 10 December. 

KARVELAS: Julie Inman Grant made the admission that platforms weren't assessed based on the harms they pose to children. Roblox, and Discord, Twitch, they're exempt, but there's documented safety concerns in relation to all of them. How does it make sense? Because we know how young people are. They still interact on all these other platforms. 

WELLS: And it should be clear, all of those platforms are still subject to the Online Safety Act and to things like the Privacy Act that try in other ways across the Australian legal landscape to prevent harm online. As I said in my press conference earlier today, we're not able to cure the Internet. We're not able to solve for all crimes here. This is about restricting the age that you can go on social media because of that very specific way that all the data, all the research that tells us kids need 36 more months, minimum, but 36 more months to build that kind of resilience in the real world, forge actual personal relationships in the real world, before they also get to access those kinds of things in a social media platform. 

KARVELAS: But gaming platforms, kids interact on them the same as they do on Instagram. That's what all the research shows. So you can see that there is a contradiction in the kind of classification of what is considered in and what's considered out. 

WELLS: Many games are subject to the National Classification Scheme as well, but as you would have heard the eSafety Commissioner say this morning, what she studied was, but for the main thrust of the platform, so Roblox, the game Roblox, would people still be there messaging each other? So Roblox, in this instance, has an exemption because it is a gaming platform. The other particular platforms that were the subject of this discussion- like she said, she looked at the functions and features, she applied the law, and I think there's probably arguments that you could go further. These aren't set-and-forget laws. And she also talked, which I think is very interesting, about migratory patterns. So if we were to see young people merge to Bluesky or to another exempt platform like LinkedIn, we'd have a look at that because it's about trying to change the culture around having everyone be online and you being ostracised if you've got the strict parents or you've got the working-class parents who can't afford a smartphone. We want the new culture to be that everybody's offline, and probably you're the rare case if you for some reason still are. 

KARVELAS: Okay. So you accept that you are going to constantly have to change what's in and out because young people will find ways of finding other platforms? 

WELLS: I accept that technology is rapid and fast-evolving, and that's the space and the dynamic space that we work in. And there's a lot of benefit, there's a lot of utility in social media, but we just can't ignore the harms. Seven out of 10 kids have experienced harm online, and this is something that we can do. And so many nations are now falling in behind Australia, we have world-leading laws. You would have seen New Zealand came out recently just in the past week or so to say they're going to follow us - Denmark, a number of countries across the world now are doing the same thing. It should be a source of pride that we're leading the world.

KARVELAS: I want to just move to Optus. The Chief Executive, Stephen Rue, obviously addressed the Senate at the beginning of the week and it was kind of pretty explosive stuff. Said he was deeply sorry, but also resisted calls to resign. Should he resign?

WELLS: I appreciate you were overseas for the thrust of the Optus. 

KARVELAS: I followed it closely because I have absolutely no life. And I can tell you, I mean, you know, they didn't tell you, as you know, there was a delay in that process. Given all of the facts on the table, do you have confidence in him?

WELLS: Well, these are the points I would make. It took Optus more than a year to replace the previous CEO when she had to resign over the previous Optus outage. How does that help anyone assure themselves of the 000 system? How does that help anybody deliver the actual reforms that Optus customers want in their telcos? So, it's not a question for me to decide whether or not he should stay or go.

KARVELAS: Do you have confidence in him or not? 

WELLS: As the steward of the telco system my question is, if he's not going to do it, who's going to do it? Because we all have a role to play here, but of all of us Optus has the biggest role to play. Because in this instance, Optus has completely - I think the CEO said on 10 occasions - failed to comply with the law in this outage.

KARVELAS: They certainly have, there's no dispute about that and it's on them. But the way that they've operated and, yeah, as you say, a year earlier, I mean, this is like a pattern of behaviour, isn't it?

WELLS: That's right. And I think that's why they will face more punitive measures from ACMA when the ACMA investigation comes back, and why I've said they should face significant consequences. Because when this happened in 2023 the previous minister commissioned the Bean Review, - independent, holistic, designed to look at the whole 000 system. Those recommendations came back. Those recommendations have now, for the most part, been implemented with the acceptance of things like the last one which asks for a review of the whole thing two years after. 

I brought all the telcos to Canberra. I asked them to deliver the remaining recommendations early which they agreed to do. But it's still on all of us to rebuild trust in the system, and I guess it's a question for Optus. And we will hear from them shortly. You would have heard on Monday, the Kerry Schott review is due any week now, and I think that will give us a lot more to go on.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: I just want to talk about gambling, because we've been waiting for gambling reform. You were friends with Peta Murphy, we've talked about that before. Nothing's really advanced here. When are we getting a response on the Murphy report?

WELLS: That work continues, but I reject the premise that nothing has advanced. We've just crossed more than 50,000 people who have signed up to BetStop. And the data back from ACMA on the results of BetStop are really heartening for people who are worried about wagering harm and want to see progress.

KARVELAS: Yeah, but BetStop started under the Morrison Government.

WELLS: We launched it in 2023, and it's just crossed 50,000 recipients. And four out of five those recipients say they've experienced significant improvement to their experience of life - improvements to mental health, improvements to their relationships with others as a result of participating in that scheme. It's one example of how addressing wagering harm runs across lots of different places. Absolutely, I have my part to play with that. Absolutely, I continue to do that work.

KARVELAS: Will you give us a timeframe?

WELLS: I can't.

KARVELAS: Why is that? Is there a lack of enthusiasm from the Prime Minister?

WELLS: It's absolutely not. What it is, it's just that the work continues. And in the same way, I couldn't give you a timeline about how we'd land a deal in aged care until the day that I turned up on your desk and said, I'm here to talk to you about the deal that I've landed in aged care. I will just keep plugging away until I get it done.

KARVELAS: Okay. So, do you see it as the same as the aged care situation? Is that like you ended up doing a deal with the Coalition, it was bipartisan, is that what you're working on here?

WELLS: No, I just meant that everybody wanted me to give it time and everyone wanted a progress update.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: No, I know, but the way that you approached that.

WELLS: No, this is a different kettle of fish, it has a different intersection of issues. I'm just saying, I appreciate people want to see progress in this space. That's why I'm giving people hope that the 50,000 across BetStop users is progress.

KARVELAS: But it did start under the Morrison Government, you said it started under you. 

WELLS: I said, we launched it.

KARVELAS: You launched it, but it was already ...

WELLS: Well, it could have been abandoned. We launched it.

KARVELAS: You know it's not what the whole Murphy review was about. You know that. Like, there was so many recommendations.

WELLS: … I make the point that wagering harm is an intersectional issue that takes a lot of different people doing a lot of different things to address. We are doing things. There are lots of different measures. I won't list them, because I know when we list them people get agitated about us listing them, so I won't do that. But I'll just make the point that addressing wagering harm is important. The Albanese Government has done the most significant work in a decade in this space. I appreciate your listeners want to see progress on it, so do I, and I'll keep doing that work.

KARVELAS: Minister, thank you.

WELLS: Pleasure.