Communications Minister Anika Wells says she is confident the social media ban for under 16s will withstand a constitutional challenge, as two days of hearings get underway in the High Court.
Ms Wells said on Tuesday that “the question of what we accept from tech platforms who offer us an online world is the most compelling policy question of our time”.
“And we are here to defend a fundamental tenet of Australian democracy, which is an Australian’s right, and particularly an Australian child’s right to be free from harm.
“We seek to defend that from sustained ideological attack.”
Communications Minister Anika Wells says the ban protects a child’s right to be free from harm. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
Ms Well’s comments came as social media platform Reddit and a free speech advocacy group make the case that the 11-month-old ban impinges on Australians’ implied freedom of political communication.
Inside the court, justices probed that reasoning, with one questioning how many teens aged between 13 and 15 are politically engaged to the point that they would use social media for political communication.
“I think you do have to grapple with the fact that – at least for me, the experience that I’ve had of children, which is not insignificant, including children who had interests in political issues before they were 16 – my experience is that the vast majority of them, for the vast majority of time, did not have their minds focused on political communication,” Justice Jacqueline Gleeson said.
Perry Herzfeld SC responded by saying he aimed to show “the capacity of social media to allow children who are under 16 to have obviously very significant influences on political debate”.
Reddit’s legal team argues the social media ban impinges on Australians’ implied freedom of political communication. Gaye Gerard / NewsWire
Justice James Edelman then pointed out that “people 200 years ago, or well before … social media had even been dreamed of … who at a very tenderage was dramatically affecting social opinion and expressing political views”.
“Is the submission that these very intelligent, articulate activists without social media would be unable to affect or would not affect political communication?” he asked.
Mr Herzfeld said that the exposure social media gives voices is incomparable.
He said young Australians “will not have … the ability to influence debate if instead they shout their views on a street corner or seek to be interviewed by a mainstream media service”.
“One of the effects of social media is the ability it provides for those who would otherwise not readily be able to influence, debate to have their views made public, and in that way for others to receive their views,” Mr Herzfeld said.
‘I ASK MY MUM A LOT’: TEEN ACTIVIST ON VERIFYING INFORMATION
Among those at Tuesday’s hearing was 16-year-old free speech activist Noah Jones and his mother Renee.
Mr Jones told NewsWire he hoped that “children are recognised as actually important and that we should be able to engage politically”.
“I’m voting in the next election … and if we’re just completely blocked out of debate and not learning and creating our own views and opinion based off others on social media, then we’re kind of just isolated to our school, our parents,” he said.
But Mr Jones admitted he often turns to his mother to verify information he encounters online.
One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts has a history of sharing conspiratorial claims online. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
“Personally, I asked my mum a lot of things or … I do my own research to back it up,” he said.
He added that “false or untrue” information goes with the territory of social media but that the answer is to “teach kids” how to navigate it and “know what’s fake, what’s real, and what’s safe”.
Mr Jones spent much of the day with One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts, who has a history of sharing conspiratorial claims.
He drew severe criticism in July after a video of him praising a prominent conspiracy theorist was unearthed.
CALL FOR ‘CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT’
Reddit argued in a submission that social media platforms are a “common source of news and political information”.
It highlighted its “Ask Me Anything” sessions, which lets users put questions directly to political figures.
The ban aims to keep under 16s off social media. Picture: NewsWire / Dylan Robinson
The company is making the challenge with the Digital Freedom Project – a group led by Mr Ruddick.
Speaking outside the High Court in Canberra ahead of the two-day hearings, he branded Anthony Albanese a “tyrant”.
“People say this is the beginning of the slippery slope – I’m sorry, we’re well past the slippery slope,” he said.
“We need to fight back.”
He the said the only way to stop “re-litigating the free speech matter” is a “constitutional amendment” explicitly guaranteeing free speech.
Reddit only big social media platform involved in challenge
Mr Ruddick later said he is not worried that Reddit was the only tech company to join the lawsuit after he said he had discussions with a number of Silicon Valley companies.
“I can’t speak on their behalf, but they were sympathetic to our case. They don’t like censorship themselves,” he said of the big tech companies.
“They didn’t give us reasons why they didn’t want to get involved.
“I suspect they may have thought that it wasn’t a good look for a foreign company, a bit large, powerful foreign company, to be intervening in Australian politics.
“But I think that was the wrong call, and I think Reddit’s got the right call.”
Social media platform Reddit is part of the High Court challenge to the Albanese government under-16 social media ban.
The world-first policy came about after News Corp Australia’s The Let Them Be Kids campaign warned that Australia was “losing a generation”.
The campaign exposed the psychological, social, physical and emotional harm social media was inflicting on Australian children, with families who lost their children to suicide adding their voices calling for reform.
Reddit’s challenge ‘doesn’t stack up’: South Australian Premier
Fronting media ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas said the free speech claim at the centre of the challenge “doesn’t stack up”.
An early champion of age restrictions, Mr Malinauskas said the argument was “plainly not true”.
“The idea that social media is central to the function of our democracy just doesn’t stack up,” he told ABC’s News Breakfast.
“I mean, we’ve had a democracy in this country with civil, healthy political discourse, freedom of speech, for a very long time before social media ever came along.
“And I think that there’s an argument to make that it makes it worse, not better.”
South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas says the challenge ‘doesn’t stack up’. Picture: Brenton Edwards
He said the motivation of the ban must not be forgotten.
“The reason why we have this law in Australia and the reason why now every month it feels like a new country is announcing they’re going to do the same is because of the interests of children,” Mr Malinauskas said.
“This is about protecting children from a platform that we definitely know through peer review research is doing them harm.”
He said it is “no different to regulating cigarettes or alcohol”.
“What we say is, look at an appropriate age you should get access to it. And in this case, that’s the age of 16,” he said.
Reddit said in a statement it shared the Albanese government’s “goal of protecting young people online” but argued “there are better, more effective ways to achieve it” than the ban.
“As we challenge this law in court, we’ll continue to comply with it and advocate for more effective youth safety measures,” a spokesman said.
