MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS ANIKA WELLS: Afternoon, everyone. Thanks for coming. Australia's social media minimum age law is about delaying the pervasive and persuasive pull of social media and giving kids three more years to just be kids. As of early March, 5 million social media accounts have been deactivated or removed. We have seen some progress, but the eSafety compliance update released today lays bare the facts. Australia's world-leading social media laws are not failing, but big tech is failing to obey the laws. The tricks eSafety has uncovered in their compliance update are straight out of the big tech playbook, and Australia will not let the social media giants take Australians for mugs. The Albanese Government says that under-16s should not be able to keep scanning their face until they crack age assurance techniques. Under-16s should not be able to immediately open another account once they have been kicked off their original account. And parents should be able to report underage use without being asked to sign a legal letter.

None of this is impossible. None of this is even difficult for big tech, who are innovative billion-dollar companies. What this update shows is unacceptable. All the platforms who are covered by our social media minimum age laws said that they would respect our laws. And if these companies want to do business in Australia, they must obey Australian laws. As the independent regulator, eSafety is actively investigating potential non-compliance in relation to five platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube. If eSafety finds these companies have systemically failed to uphold their legal obligations, then I expect the Commissioner to throw the book at them.

Australia has started a global movement. More than a dozen countries now are following our lead. I'm sharing Australia’s expertise and experience with countries around the world, including our nearest neighbour, Indonesia, in which 70 million kids have just spent their first weekend without social media. The landmark cases in the US have shown what we all know. Social media companies know the harm that they are causing. They choose not to act until they are forced. The Albanese Government therefore will not stop working to protect Australian kids. We have got parents’ backs. We started with our world-leading social media have minimum age. We will continue with our Digital Duty of Care that puts the onus on big tech companies to protect Australians from online harm.

I would be very pleased to take your questions.

JOURNALIST: Minister, it's like nothing has changed since 10 December when you announced the ban. The first paragraph of your release says the Albanese Government has put social media giants on notice. I mean, you did that on 10 December. You've seen this incident of a girl being bashed and filmed at a school and distributed in Kingsgrove in Sydney. What's the hold-up? Will you commit to the Government this year actually applying to levy fines on any of these companies or all of them in court? Or have you promised something you just can't deliver?

WELLS: What we have delivered is 5 million social media accounts being deactivated or removed in the first 100 days of the law.

JOURNALIST: They just reopened them.

WELLS: And what the compliance update shows you, which we've published to be completely transparent with everybody, is that the major reason that kids are going back on accounts is because social media is prompting them. The majority in some of these cases, which you'll see in the compliance update, the reason that children are still on social media accounts is because their particular platform hasn't even asked them their age. These companies are taking the mickey…

JOURNALIST: [Interrupts] So why don't you take them to court? Or are you dissatisfied with the pace that the eSafety Commissioner is working on this?

WELLS: So this isn't a police officer issuing a speeding fine on the spot using their radar on the side of the road. This is world-leading law that requires the eSafety Commissioner to go to the Federal Court of Australia, and to do that we need to build the evidence base…

JOURNALIST:  How long is that going to take, Minister?

WELLS: What I want parents to know is that we have spent the summer building that evidence base, and all the stories that no doubt you have all heard, the stories that I have heard all summer about how kids are getting around that, we have been collating that evidence so that the eSafety Commissioner can go to the Federal Court and win against big tech.

JOURNALIST: Do you have any advice on when that is? 

JOURNALIST: Just picking up on what Andrew has been saying. Couple of questions around this. You say you want to throw the book at these companies. It doesn't seem to be clear that that threat is having an impact if there are all of these ways that people are getting around the age limit, and social media companies haven't done anything about it. So, are you surprised at how easy it's been for children to circumvent these rules, when the threat of throwing the book at them has always been there? And what if that threat never forces these companies to change their behaviour? How do we enforce this ban?

WELLS: You heard me say so many times in the run-up to 10 December that we know that kids will look for ways to get around this. 

JOURNALIST: This is happening en masse though.

WELLS: That's absolutely what we expect because the onus here is not on Australian kids and it's not on Australian parents to enforce this law on behalf of billion-dollar social media companies. What we are seeing, this evidence of the absolute bare minimum from social media companies, is straight out of the big tech playbook. We've seen this the world over. They obfuscate. They try and throw doubt on any regulation. They want you all to report today that the laws are failing. That helps them in their quest to reduce regulation to minimise it the world over. So I'm not surprised by any of this. We expected this. We warned you all, even here with the eSafety Commissioner in the run-up to 10 December, that we would expect this to happen. But by the same token, when we made seatbelt laws compulsory, in the first 100 days after seatbelts becoming compulsory, there would have been wide flouting of that law but with less ability to monitor and to build evidence. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't have made seatbelts compulsory. It doesn't mean that wasn't an important law that enforces cultural change.

JOURNALIST: Minister, in the report, it says children aged under 16 continue to report harm to eSafety. There's not been a discernible drop in overall numbers. It also says we've not observed a notable change in the number of cyberbullying and image-based abuse complaints in this period.

JOURNALIST: I mean, what's your response to that? Because that's quite concerning. And also, what is the actual metric for success here? Because it surely can't just be the number of accounts that have been taken down.

WELLS: Absolutely not. And that's why the first test is that we are here to deliver a cultural change, and that cultural change is going to take time. We've always said that. There's also a chilling effect here. And whilst we should note 5 million accounts have been deactivated and removed and some people are back on the platforms after getting kicked off, some people never got kicked off, we should note all these things. That's why I provided you with this evidence. We should also note that there are plenty of kids who did not set up their very first social media account this summer because it's against the law. And there was about 33 per cent, which you can see in some of these examples in the compliance, where kids of their own accord deactivated their account. There are people out there wanting to do the right thing as well.

As you heard the Prime Minister say in the run-up to and perhaps on 10 December itself, this was also about having a really important national discussion about one of the forefront policy questions of our time, our use of big tech and how we engage with social media, how it affects our democracy. The conversations that we had in the run-up to 10 December, the conversations we're having now are really important. And you would have seen lots of parents went off social media in solidarity with their under-16s.  We’re continuing to have these discussions – I'll continue to front up in the Blue Room and talk to you all about how it's going – is actually us all working through one of the biggest policy questions of our time.

JOURNALIST: For how much longer will you be gathering evidence? When will you take these companies to court?

WELLS: Yeah, so that's a question for the eSafety Commissioner. That is her power under the laws. 

JOURNALIST:  What’s her advice to you?

WELLS: I meet constantly with the eSafety Commissioner, and I think what we decided was providing you with the compliance update today was a really helpful way for you to see transparently where we are up to. All summer we have had people saying to us, did you know that kids are getting around the law? Were you aware that kids are flouting the law? Yes, we were, and we've been building the evidence on how that is happening so that when the eSafety Commissioner goes to court, the evidence will stand up, those fines will be issued, and that will send a signal to big tech, not just here in Australia, but across the world.

JOURNALIST: From the survey the eSafety Commissioner has done here of 900 parents, it said that before the ban, about half the parents and their kids had a social media account. Afterward, about a third. So it's gone from half the kids to a third of the kids. It's talking about facial estimation technology being a popular gateway for age assurance by the platforms, but that technology is known to have issues. Is there any consideration of the laws to make the age estimation tools more prescriptive? Are you saying to those companies, you have to use XYZ technology or this form of technology? And something the platforms have said is they would like this to be done at the app store level or at the phone level, the device level. Is there any consideration of that kind of change?

WELLS: I think you'll remember when we did the Age Assurance Trial and when we all looked at the Age Assurance Trial, it showed us that there are a waterfall method of techniques that social media companies can choose to use. What we have here in the compliance update is that rather than giving an under-16 one chance at scanning their face, they’re giving them limitless chances to scan their face, or to go get their older brother to scan it for them on their seventh failed attempt. That is taking the mickey and not upholding either the purpose of the law or the actual law, which all five of these platforms who are now under investigation did say publicly before 10 December that they would respect domestic law. And we expect them to respect domestic law, and if they do not respect domestic law to the satisfaction of the eSafety Commissioner, they will cop a $50 million fine. 

JOURNALIST: A former Facebook Australia worker has said the fines of up to $50 million essentially lack teeth and were insufficient to encourage compliance. He said it takes Meta about two hours to make $50 million in revenue. So do these laws lack teeth, and are they enough when they eventually get to court? Are the fines enough?

WELLS: Yeah, we’ve sort of debated those questions in the run-up to 10 December. Some people would’ve liked to see a $50 million fine per breach, for example. The $50 million comes from the comparable penalty in the Federal Court for other offences of a similar nature, like with the Office of the Information Commissioner, privacy, that kind of thing. So that’s where the actual figure comes from. You would have seen last week that in New Mexico and in California, these particular platforms were fined hundreds of millions of dollars for offences where they have failed to provide any duty of care to their customer. I guess we could go there if we needed to, but at the moment we don’t need to go there because they said that they would respect Australian law. We now have evidence that they are not respecting Australian law, and the eSafety Commissioner is investigating and will move to an enforcement footing once she has the evidence base. 

JOURNALIST: Minister, do you think that it was clear enough in what you set out, that it was a one-and-done maybe with the face check, and is that what the companies that aren’t being issued this compliance check, is that what they are doing? How are they different than the ones that you’ve highlighted out today, specifically when it comes to that facial recognition technology and these companies doing it over and over again, as you say?

WELLS: There’s a lot of information in the compliance update about how each of these platforms are and are not complying with the law. We weren't prescriptive ahead of 10 December about what ways they would use to assure themselves of age verification. You may remember in the run-up to these laws coming in, everyone was asking whether it was even possible for these things to occur. It is clearly evident it is perfectly possible for these things to happen. Social media platforms are choosing to do the absolute bare minimum because they want these laws to fail. They want as many customers on their platform as possible. That maximises their profit. This is the world-leading law. We're the first in the world to do it. Of course they don't want these laws to work because they want that to be a chilling effect on the dozen countries have come out since 10 December to follow Australia's debt.

JOURNALIST: Minister, you mentioned Indonesia taking on the ban in your opening address. They have also included Roblox in their ban. Are you going to be watching that? Do you still have ambitions to include gaming platforms in the ban? Those rules that you brought out on Friday, the update, they've tightened it now to social media platforms, to particular features. Does that now rule out the possibility that there could be a gaming platform included in this ban?

WELLS: So I promised you all I would sit down with Roblox. The global founder of Roblox came to Australia and met with me a few weeks ago. He provided an update that they have since ratcheted up their protections for under-18s. For example, they have now blocked under-18s from being able to communicate with any over-18 on their platform. I said that does not match anecdotally the stories that I hear from students when I go around classrooms, and that does not match the experience that parents tell me about when they worry about their kids on Roblox. Roblox remains on notice. Indonesia has a different set of laws that allow them to move to a ban in a different way than what we do. Gaming remains exempt but, absolutely, Roblox remains on notice if they can't clean up their act, and if the harms that the eSafety Commissioner detected on their platform remain there, then we will act.

JOURNALIST: A month after the ban came into effect in January and you released the figures showing the number of accounts that had been removed, you said there it was making a real meaningful difference. Were you premature, I guess, in declaring this ban to be a success? And secondly, can I also get an update on how the government's case against the High Court challenge to the social media ban is progressing too?

WELLS: To the second part of your question, I can't really speak about that because we are before the High Court. To the first part of your question, it is inarguable that 5 million accounts being deactivated or removed is a remarkable figure ...

JOURNALIST: What if they’ve all been reopened again?

WELLS: They have not all been reopened again, and we're being really transparent with how many have been reopened and how many are being newly activated the minute they get kicked off, because that isn't the law failing. That isn't Australian parents or Australian kids not complying. That is big tech taking the piss, to be honest.

JOURNALIST: There's been no change to the harm that the kids have been reporting. I mean, if we've seen there's absolutely no discernible change in the amount of harm that's been reported, then how can we say that the accounts taken down is helping these kids?

WELLS: We are providing transparently the update from the eSafety Commissioner. We would have liked to see a drop in those figures, absolutely. And the fact that we're not seeing a drop in those figures is why I'm here telling you we are moving from investigation to enforcement because big tech needs to do better, and we need to see those figures go down. That is not the only element that eSafety has in its arsenal to try and address harms online for children, and we will continue to work with eSafety. 

JOURNALIST: Minister, you said that if these social media companies want to do business in Australia, they must obey Australian laws. Clearly the threat of a $50 million fine and going through court isn't enough to deter them. It's not ensuring compliance. Are you open to considering threatening them with a ban from operating in Australia, for example, if this isn't going to work?

WELLS: I am focused on moving from the investigation into the enforcement phase of this social media law. It is a world first, and the world is watching. 

JOURNALIST: Just on that, there are other countries that are moving to restrict underage access to social media. You say you're giving them the Australian experience. Are you concerned that with all of these teething issues and problems that we're actually sending the message that it is too hard, and that maybe if our law had been implemented in a different way, it would have a better chance of spreading around the world?

WELLS: I've had a lot of bilateral meetings with my counterparts. The Canadian Minister and I met this morning about our world-leading social media law, the Digital Duty of Care, peering under the hood of what that looks like. Not a single person has yet said, ‘Are you worried this isn't working?’ When people discover that there's about 1.3 million Australians aged between 13 and 16, and 5 million accounts have been deactivated and removed as part of these laws, people see that as reason to act. And that's why you've seen a dozen countries come online and follow Australia since 10 December.

JOURNALIST: How many of the 5 million is things like someone having a broader Google account and then the YouTube part just being removed as access, as opposed to having a signed-up social media individual account? Do you know?

WELLS: The eSafety tracks each of those different cohorts by platform and may be able to provide you some of the breakdown of those figures, but also some of it we aren't able to because it forms part of the investigation that's going to the Federal Court.

JOURNALIST: Is it the case that 5 million isn't necessarily 5 million signed up to social media accounts? There's been some reporting that some of it is in this Google situation.

WELLS: Yeah, there was a remarkable story a couple of weeks ago where a heroic anonymous source from big tech told one of your rivals that they are providing dodgy figures to the government, and therefore you shouldn't trust the government's figures. I thought that was an incredible admission. We have no evidence of that. We have looked into it. But if big tech are providing dodgy figures to the government in order to throw shade on these laws in order for them to fail, then this just shows the kind of shady characters that we're dealing with and how tricky this is to deliver. Nonetheless, I'm completely steadfast that this is some of the most important work I will do, and we must continue to deliver.

JOURNALIST: Minister, can I just quickly ask you on a separate matter about ACMA's coverage determination today? What's your message to, I think it's about 1.5 million Australians on the Telstra network, that fall outside what would be deemed as coverage? I guess, what's your message to them? How should they see their coverage now? Is it just bonus coverage? Like, what do they receive?

WELLS: This is a win for consumers. This is a win for telco customers. It's disappointing that I had to issue a direction in order for this to manifest for them but, ultimately, it's delivering more consistent coverage, and that's a good thing for customers out there, the 1.5 million you're talking about.

JOURNALIST: Minister, has IPEA given you any reason to believe that you'll have to pay back some of your travel entitlements?

WELLS: No. Like you, Andrew, I await the IPEA report.