When it comes to the wellbeing of our young people, I don’t want Australia to wait around on the rest of the world – I want Australia to lead the world.

In what was an incredibly busy and productive week, I was proud to deliver on our commitment to support parents and protect young people by setting a minimum age of 16 years for social media.

It’s all about making sure children have a childhood and parents have peace of mind.

What we have done is more than set a new minimum age – we are setting a new community standard.

There will be a different discussion today between parents and their children as a direct result of this action.

And we have sent a message to all those mums and dads who are worried about the impact that social media is having on their children’s wellbeing: we are on your side, we’ve got your back.

We are backing parents and kids, and putting the onus on social media companies to make sure this works.

Strong penalties of nearly $50m apply to social media companies that don’t make sufficient effort.

I’ve seen people saying that law won’t fix everything and it won’t work in every situation.

Of course, it’s difficult to pass a law relating to technology that works 100 per cent perfectly, 100 per cent of the time.

But we can’t make perfection a barrier to action.

We need to take action because social media can be a weapon for bullies, a platform for peer pressure and a tool for online predators.

And because it is young Australians who are most engaged with this technology it is the young who are most at risk.

I want to recognise that some of the strongest advocates for action in this area are parents grieving the loss of a child.

We owe it to those families – we owe it to every family – to do everything we can to help.

We acted to drive a change in attitude, culture and behaviour. That’s the opportunity before us. Let’s seize it, and give kids back their childhood and parents their peace of mind.

This opinion piece was first published in The Sunday Telegraph on Sunday, 1 December 2024.