This motion is necessitated by the Minister representing the Minister for Communications failing to comply with order for the production of documents No. 711, which was agreed on 15 September 2026. This OPD was following up on an answer to a question taken on notice as part of the environment and communication committee’s inquiry into the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026. I think the concern that Senator Payman brought to the Senate this morning is that, when there is misleading evidence given to our committee, we expect that evidence to be corrected. We saw that, of course, with Australia Post misleading our committee in relation to its secret report for Post Office closures. When in budget estimates we were asking about Australia Post plans, we were actively misled by the managing director and CEO of Australia Post, Mr Graham. In a subsequent hearing during the Australia Post references inquiry into the retail network, we again were misled, and that has now been corrected by Mr Graham when he talked about the fact that, essentially, the board in May did not agree to any sort of trial. which was contradicted by his general counsel.
On this committee we are sick to death of not being given transparent answers, and that’s the subject of this motion this morning. I think it would have been really appropriate for the secretary, when the secretary wrote to the committee to make it very clear that they were concerned about the fact that the committee was misled in relation to these broken links to the age assurance technology trial report, to simply say, ‘Yes, we accept that we did not provide the correct evidence, and we apologise.’
But I have to say this is small fry. When you look at how this government has misled Australians, the biggest offender is, of course, the Prime Minister. This Prime Minister continues to lie to the Australian people over and over again.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Sterle): Resume your seat. Minister?
Senator McAllister: The standing orders prohibit reflections on a person in the other place as Senator Henderson has just done.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Yes, that’s a good point. Thank you, Minister. Senator Henderson, I will get you to reword or withdraw to assist the Senate.
Senator HENDERSON: It’s not a reflection on the Prime Minister, but I will say that Australians are—
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: No, Senator Henderson. The point has been raised. You did use the word that many times in this chamber—many times I’ve been sitting in this chair and a couple of times I’ve even been pulled up. So I’ll get you to withdraw that word and choose your words.
Senator HENDERSON: I will withdraw the word beginning with ‘L’ so there’s no confusion and I will say that Australians are sick of not being told the truth by this Prime Minister. In relation to the social media ban, which has been an utter failure under the leadership of Minister Anika Wells, the Prime Minister continues to tell all Australians that more than five million—maybe up to six million—under-16 social media accounts have been closed, discontinued, deactivated or all the other words that they’ve been using. In fact, that is a complete and utter untruth. We know that, of those accounts, approximately half—we’re talking about millions—relate to Google’s Gmail accounts, which have got nothing to do with the social media ban. When it comes to truth before this committee—and we’re about to go into estimates again—I demand that this government and the minister, starting with the Prime Minister, start to tell the truth about the under-16 social media ban.
And while we’re at it, on the hopelessly and deeply flawed proposed digital duty of care exposure draft, I am shocked and we are shocked that the government and the minister are proposing to remove the mandatory codes and standards which require digital platforms to detect and remove unlawful material and age restricted material—material like child sexual exploitation, terrorism, violence and other unlawful materials. There are 17 codes and standards that have been worked on over a number of years to provide very clear, prescriptive obligations on digital platforms and other online service providers. Now, in an absolute shock—which of course would dramatically reduce the safety of Australians online if ever this were to be passed—these codes and standards have been removed from the exposure draft. That shows that not only is this government not capable of telling the truth; this minister is not capable of doing her job.
Question agreed to.