JUSTIN COULSON, HOST: Hello and welcome to the Happy Families podcast. December 10 last year, Australia did something that no country has ever done before. They took on the tech giants. From December 10 last year, under-16s were banned from social media, or perhaps the better way to say it is, legislation was introduced to keep social media giants away from our under-16s. I was all for it. I made a lot of noise on the podcast about it. I was fortunate enough to be invited to Kirribilli House with the Prime Minister and Communications Minister, Anika Wells. I'm still actually all for it. But nine, ten months on, eSafety's own research says more than eight in ten kids are still using these platforms and over half were never even asked their age. And now the Government wants to go further with a Digital Duty of Care, which is going to cover AI. It's going to cover games, chatbots, search, everything else that kids touch. So today I'm really fortunate to have a conversation with the Minister of Communications, Anika Wells. And I'm going to ask her the obvious question, is this working and what's coming next? And will it be any different? Stay with us. The Minister for Communications, Anika Wells, is next on the Happy Families podcast.

Hello, this is the Happy Families podcast, Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast, where you get real parenting solutions every single day. Now and then on the pod, we get to talk to some high-profile guests. Sometimes they're running tech companies. Other times they're introducing products that can help us to make our families function better. Today, it's the Federal Minister for Communications and Minister for Sport, Anika Wells. Anika Wells is the local member for Lilley in Brisbane's north. She's raising a young family and, on December 10 last year, Minister Wells ushered in Australia's world-leading and sometimes copied social media minimum age law, which as you now know, requires social media companies to restrict access to their platforms for our children under the age of 16. More than 20 countries around the world are following Australia's lead. I mean, that’s- I think it's fantastic. It's incredible and it shows, I think, legitimate leadership on one of the biggest challenges facing parents globally. The next big step for Australia's online safety laws is the introduction of a digital duty of care, which goes beyond social media to ensure that platforms, all platforms, are protecting kids from harm, whether it's gaming or messaging platforms, apps, AI, other digital devices, and so on. Minister Wells, what a privilege to have you on the podcast. Thank you for joining me today.

MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS ANIKA WELLS: Good to be with you.

COULSON: I want to say upfront that I am a supporter of the legislation from last December. I back the law publicly. I still do. But I want to talk to you about the numbers. eSafety's own report in July, the three-month report, found use of age-restricted platforms had fallen from 86 per cent to 81 per cent. It was just a 5 per cent drop in that period. More than half of children said that they were never even asked for an age check. There are three or four other studies that have already been published that indicate pretty miserable results. I don't know how else to say it. They're just not good results. Your own regulator, the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, named five platforms back in March who were not doing what they were supposed to do at a systematic level and said that it would decide on enforcement by the middle of the year. It's now- what is it? Early October. What's happened here? How would you rate this outcome?

WELLS: I think this has always been about cultural change and we know that will take time. I completely agree with you that we would all like to see compliance be a lot better than it is. That's why the eSafety Commissioner has begun investigations, but unfortunately for all of us who are desperate to see our kids less addicted to their screen time and to social media platforms than they currently are, this isn't a case of issuing a speeding fine on the spot and there being an immediate consequence. The eSafety Commissioner has to take some of the world's richest, most resourced and sophisticated companies to the Australian Federal Court and ask the judge to adjudicate against them. So, to do that, we've just given her some more powers through the Parliament in order for her to have more information gathering and get the documents that she needs to take these companies to court and hold them accountable because, like you say, they've been taking the mickey. This isn't a question for parents to be regulating their children according to Australian law. This is for big tech to abide by Australian law and they could be doing an awful lot better than they are.

COULSON: So the fine is $49.5 million. I know that legislation is proposed to double that to $99 million (sic). It's been a while since I've had a look at top-line revenue for Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, and the brand-new AI app from Meta as well, Muse. They've got so many of these products out there, and they are just, as you said, so sophisticated. But last time I looked, they- I think that their profit for a quarter, given that they're spending a lot of money on AI build-outs anyway, was something like $22 billion for a quarter. Do you think $100 million matters to them?

WELLS: Not so much as their social license to operate in Australia and this for us is about a cultural change, and this for big tech is about their social license to operate. And I think they could be doing a lot better. They should be doing a lot better. And that's why we're now bringing in the Digital Duty of Care, which changes the onus from the impetus being someone who is harmed by one of these apps, then trying to seek some kind of recourse for that to the impetus being on these platforms to identify risks that might happen to their users on their platforms and to mitigate against those risks. That's the heart of the digital duty of care.

COULSON: Okay. So I think what happens with parents in 2026 is that there's just technology fatigue, social media fatigue. Kids are relentless. They've got so much energy. The platforms are so compelling. They’re so- I mean, they're just- they're so desirable. I'm a 50-year-old man with a PhD in psychology who teaches people about this stuff and I've actually had to- I'm just not on the platforms. I've got my team that look after some stuff for me and they put it out there for me. But I don't have personal accounts on any of these platforms because they have completely owned me in the past. And I know this stuff. So the kids are struggling. Parents are a little bit over it. We had the big excitement last year, and appropriately so, around the new legislation and it's gone global. But this new Digital Duty of Care, you've given us the guts of it, but can you slow it down and talk about what it really means? If I'm a parent listening to this conversation, I'm looking for answers to help me with the tech dramas of my life, what does this legislation really mean?

WELLS: As a parent, we don't expect you to police what your kids are doing 24 hours a day. It's impossible. And neither you nor your children, like you say, Justin, cannot fight the addictive nature of social media. That's why your government is taking up this fight for parents. We want you to be able to say this is the law and you can point to the law to try and address these daily fights that people are having in their home. And that's why the social media minimum age when it first came in wasn't actually an idea that came out of Government. It was an idea that came out of a group of parents who'd lost their children because of the harm they'd experienced on social media. And they were backed by 120,000 Australians who signed a petition asking for more help. The Digital Duty of Care is the next step in that journey, which is, I would say, this is an industry that has arisen, has been pretty unregulated. President Macron calls it the wild, wild west. This is about introducing some basic safety standards to an industry that hasn't had any. But we do expect basic safety standards when it comes to cars or food or toys. So, if you walk down the aisle of Big W, Kmart, name your preferred store, and you've got stuffed toys or electronic toys on your left, and then you've got iPads and phones on your right, it is reasonable for you as a parent to expect all of those devices that are being sold to your children have basic safety standards. And that's what the Digital Duty of Care does.

COULSON: Okay. So, the draft covers all online platforms, including the social media platforms, the AI chatbots, including Claude from Anthropic, ChatGPT. What I'd like to know is, does it include the places that the kids actually are, like Roblox and Discord and group chats? Or an AI companion that gets developed and launched next month? Like, who decides what's in the scope and how fast can that list change? Because the December 10 legislation only included a small number of major tech platforms.

WELLS: That's right. There was 10. This is much broader. And by design, it is broader to capture online services because like you say, it changes week to week, let alone month to month with what might be new and kids might want to jump on. So, it does capture social media. It does capture online games. It does capture AI chatbots. And it will mean that all of those platforms must protect under-18s from harmful content. And we've set out five of those specifically in the exposure draft, or six technically. The six are content that promotes or encourages eating disorders, content that promotes misogynistic content, hostile ideas about women and gender equality, pornography, content that glorifies crime or dangerous stunts, and content that causes serious distress, including abuse and bullying. So under-18s will also be protected from those things, but also the design features that I'm sure has been a constant discussion topic here. Things like the endless scroll, the toxic popularity meters that keep kids up late losing sleep. We want these platforms to embed safety by design. Some of them have had 15 years to do it of their own accord. They haven't. So now we're going to legislate that they must.

COULSON: Yeah, yeah. So I think any reasonable parent worried about their children would say, bring it on, like the sooner the better, as most parents did when it came to the social media legislation as well. Can you explain as well the algorithm opt-out and why it's an opt-out rather than opt-in?

WELLS: It's neither opt-in nor opt-out. It's about choosing your primary default feed. So, when you log in, they will have to give you a prompt and they will say, Justin, what would you prefer your primary default feed to be? Do you want the algorithm or do you want your following feed? You will make that choice. And you can make that choice as often as you like. Some of these laws exist elsewhere at the moment and some of these platforms offer this choice, but it might reset overnight. So, even if you opt out of the algorithm, the next time you come back in, you've reset yourself to the algorithm. So we're requiring platforms to give you a choice about what your default is, and then it's up to you to decide if you want to toggle back and forth or not.

COULSON: So today, I'm really fortunate to have a conversation with the Minister of Communications, Anika Wells. I do want to ask you one more really important question. In March of this year, the Labor Government at a federal level brought in age verification for pornography. This is the other massive challenge that parents are struggling with, especially parents- well, not just of young men, young men are the most affected, but the carryover into the lives of girls is enormous as well. So clicking a button that says I'm 18 or older is no longer enough. It used to work and now obviously kids can't get in just by clicking that button. Obviously, I was a massive supporter of this legislation, but from what I can make out, here's what actually happened. Aylo, which owns Pornhub, they own RedTube, they own YouPorn, they didn't verify anyone. They just switched off explicit content for Australia and put up a banner saying that it wasn't accepting any new registrations here and put some fairly safe content on their site for Australians. And initially I thought, that's fantastic. It's not here. And then VPN downloads went through the roof. So, sensor tower data showed that VPN downloads went from the 40th most downloaded to the seventh most downloaded on the free iPhone charts in a matter of days. And there were a whole bunch of others as well. There was, I don't know, NordVPN and ProtonVPN all jumped into the top 10 or the top 20. So the biggest, most regulated, most reachable player left the market and the kids who want pornography have learned to either A, use a VPN or B, go to sites that nobody's ever heard of and nobody's policing. And so my question is, how is this a better outcome for a 13-year-old boy than what we had before?

WELLS: Well, what happened in March was the industry codes coming into force. And like you say, some companies chose to leave the Australian market rather than abide by Australian law. And like you say, the outcome that we want is for no children to be accessing illegal or seriously harmful content online and for adults to be able to access what is legal but not to be offered things that are illegal. And there's a big wide internet out there, like you say, lots of ways to subvert it. We are measuring this in a number of different ways. There's obviously the compliance statistics that you've talked about and that I freely admit we would all like to see higher than they are, but that isn't on parents and kids failing to abide by law. That is big tech choosing to take the risk and not abide by Australian law. Those industry codes, again, a remnant of an industry that has not been subject to much regulation over the past decade. We are making those codes part of the Digital Duty of Care. We are enshrining those requirements in the law. And some of those ways you're talking about kids using VPNs, that is one data point that platforms can use to identify how old someone is. There are a myriad of data points that you can use that you voluntarily give up when you use- when you go online that gives away how old you are. That's the age of the people that you interact with online. That's if you're looking up caravans or grey nomad excursions around the country or if you're talking about the under-14s netball final on Saturday. There are a lot more data points than just VPN usage, but you are right in that platforms are taking the mickey in allowing these things to happen. And that's why we want to bring in the Digital Duty of Care where the onus, the responsibility shifts from being on the shoulders of victims here to being on the shoulders of big tech who want to make money off Australian customers. And I know cultural change takes time. I'm of an age where seatbelts were always compulsory growing up, but people tell me that there was a moment when seatbelts became compulsory and not everybody on day one agreed with that. And I also am told that the car industry said that that would send them bust, wasn't possible to design seatbelts, would affect the economics of car manufacturing, all that jazz. Now we have car companies who compete to be the safest car on the market. And whilst I know that parents might feel like this isn't working as fast as they want, this hasn't panned out the way that we would have liked. This is about cultural change and cultural change takes time, and I always said that the first three years of this was going to be the hardest as we had young people who have been on social media for years being asked to go back off it for a year or two years until they turn 16, whereas there's another whole generation of kids out there who will now not be on social media platforms until they turn 16 because they were younger than these laws coming in. And there are green shoots that, like you say, you feel better for being off social media. We're tracking this through a long-term study at the eSafety Commission and we know through other polls like YouGov that 30 per cent of young Australians are spending more time playing sport now, 27 per cent are reporting better sleep now, online bullying's down 9 per cent, and exposure to inappropriate and violent content has fallen by 18 per cent. So, there's lots of different ways that this is affecting us. We're trying to track as many of them as possible. I want parents to have hope that we will use every weapon in our arsenal to address some of the most complex policy dilemmas of our time online and we will hold big tech to account. And unfortunately, it wasn't just a case of writing a fine on day one. But even today, because of the laws that we passed in the Parliament, the eSafety Commissioner has issued notices to those platforms that accountability is coming.

COULSON: Well, go get them. I want to ask you so many more questions, but time is going to get away from us.

WELLS: I'm happy to come back.

COULSON: Maybe we need to. Can I- our time is done, but I really want to ask you just one more question about the online pornography challenge, because it's such a big one. With all of the Digital Duty of Care content that we've discussed today, one of the things that concerns me most is that while the big tech platforms, whether they're pornography or social media platforms or AI chatbots, there's the stuff that happens publicly but then there's the stuff that happens behind the scenes in the group chats or the thing where an older cousin or somebody shows a kid something that's just really, really explicit or inappropriate and changes their life. And I wonder if the government has any capacity to do anything to help when we're talking about the exposure that never actually goes- that's not happening on the websites but rather it's happening in the background in the chats, the post and boast in the in the messaging, the video that was taken privately and sent privately but doesn't actually end up on TikTok or on Instagram or on Discord. Is there anything in the legislation, in the Digital Duty of Care act that can support families whose kids have kind of gone, alright, we'll just keep it private, we can still have lots of fun. We can take photos and video of the fight that we've organised down at the local park and we just won't put it online. Is there anything that we can do around that?

WELLS: The digital duty of care legislation explicitly prohibits the harmful content like pornography or glorifying crime or dangerous stunts, the post and boast, as we call it up here. Any platform, any online service must protect under-18s from that harmful content. They will have to do a risk assessment. They will have to convince the eSafety Commissioner that they have identified this risk and that they have taken reasonable steps to mitigate against any under-18 user from seeing that kind of content on their platform. And if the eSafety Commissioner is not satisfied, then we go through the accountability process and they can get fined. And the Digital Duty of Care fines, like you say, aren't going to bankrupt Meta, but they are comparable with other consumer protection laws that we have in Australia. And if you breach both the digital duty of care and the social minimum media age by, for example, allowing a 15-year-old to be on Instagram seeing pornography, that would be a breach of both of those laws which would mean double the fines.

COULSON: Bring it on. Bring it on. It's a really thankless task that you've got. You're up against some –

WELLS: [Interrupts] An important one.

COULSON: Yeah, some powerhouses globally. But I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us today, Minister Wells, about the legislation and how it affects our families. Thanks for your time.

WELLS: I appreciate everything you do to help parents through one of these really complex challenges that we're all navigating.

COULSON: Thank you so much. That's the Communications Minister, Anika Wells, on the Happy Families podcast. We will link to the legislation. We'll link to some articles and some other info to help you to understand everything about what we've discussed in the show notes. If you'd like more info to make your family happier, visit happyfamilies.com.au.