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Labor’s Digital Duty of Care Bill threatens free speech, empowers covert online surveillance, and imposes potentially burdensome regulations on Australian businesses.

The week before last, Labor introduced the Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026 and, despite some minor amendments to the Exposure Draft, the Bill still poses an alarming threat to free speech in Australia.

Secret Accounts and Government Surveillance

First, the Bill allows for the Office of the eSafety Commissioner to create “sock puppet” accounts/identities, which presumably could be used to covertly “monitor” content on social media platforms, interact with other accounts, and generate material using AI.

Rather than merely observing social media, that office could run secret tests and conduct investigations.

Second, the concept of “serious harm” is still problematic and vague, and could be used as a cover-all term to force social media platforms to proactively restrict content that the government decides is “harmful”.

Any material or conduct that the Office of the eSafety Commissioner decides “may cause serious harm to children” must be restricted, and that could mean pretty much anything.

Moreover, the definition of “online service” in this Bill is so broad that it could capture over a million Australian businesses, triggering onerous obligations to abide by the Digital Duty of Care, including the requirement to produce annual online safety risk assessment reports in the same way billion-dollar platforms like X and Meta would have to. This is unfair and confusing, and has nothing to do with protecting children online. It is yet another utterly pointless and cumbersome imposition on small businesses.

Vague Definitions Threaten Free Speech

Just before the Bill was introduced, I sat down with US journalist and free speech advocate Michael Shellenberger in Parliament House to discuss the Exposure Draft. He considered it to be one of the most alarming pieces of proposed legislation concerning free speech he had ever seen.

You can watch that interview here:

Michael had much to say about the Bill, the state of free speech in the US and Australia respectively, and a range of issues, including the collapsing climate change narrative. It’s a refreshing discussion that you won’t want to miss.

Ultimately, this new version does not alleviate the concerns raised by the Exposure Draft. It is critical that we defeat this Bill.

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Republished with thanks to Senator Alex Antic. Image courtesy of Adobe.