Here are some of the things that were proposed as amendments to this Bill, that the Labor and LNP uniparty voted down.
The Minister must, by legislative instrument, formulate guidelines for the taking of reasonable steps to prevent age-restricted users having accounts with age-restricted social media platforms
In other words, before the Bill actually comes into effect, there need to be some guidelines about what the fuck it actually means. But apparently Labor and most of the LNP (Canavan—who moved this amendment—and Antic aside) don’t think guidelines matter.
the Minister must be satisfied that the legislative rules would not have the effect, or be likely to have the effect, of substantially lessening competition in the market for that kind of electronic service
Labor and the LNP are specifically aware that small guys…like us here on Lemmy…might be hit harder, and decided to vote not to make sure the rules prevent that from happening.
[Remove:] If an entity…uses or discloses the information otherwise than…with the consent of the individual…the use or disclosure of the information is taken to be an interference with the privacy of the individual
Ok I’ve summarised this one immensely because the way it’s laid out is very technical. I’m referring to amendment 3215 by Canavan if anyone wants to verify it.
But basically, Canavan (and Pocock, who moved a similar amendment) wanted to say “if you collect this data, you must only use it for verifying people’s age. Even if you get consent to use it for other reasons, you’re not allowed to.” This would have absolutely enshrined the protection against things like “oh but we put a tick box to get consent to use it for other purposes and they clicked it.”
Labor and the LNP didn’t want this.
an individual is not an age-restricted user if…a parent or guardian of the individual consents to the individual not being an age-restricted user
Yup. Parents are not legally allowed to declare that their children can use apps. Because Labor and the LNP voted this amendment down. Now, if a parent helps their child do it anyway, the parent and child can’t get in trouble, but the platform can, because platforms cannot knowingly allow children to use the app, even with explicit parental consent and supervision.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 4 weeks ago
To be extremely clear: the Government announced that this was an enormous priority that had to be rushed through. They introduced it last Thursday, closed submissions on Friday, and held the inquiry on Monday. Then it was passed by the House on Wednesday and the Senate had a grand total of 1 hour to debate amendments to it on Thursday.
All this incredible haste and lack of due process for a Bill that will not take effect for at least a year. It’s optics, pure and simple.
Well done to the Greens, independents, and LNP Senators Canavan and Antic for having some fucking integrity. Regardless of whether the Bill itself may have ended up being agreed to, the process by which it was passed is inexcusable.