Cybersafety Legislation

Fatima Payman

I move:

That—

(a) the Senate notes that:

(i) on 8 September 2026, the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sport and the Arts (the department) lodged responses to questions taken on notice as part of the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee's inquiry into the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026,

(ii) one of these responses with the identifier IQ26-000102 (the response) contained questions which sought clarification on whether officials from the department provided misleading evidence at a hearing on 14 August 2026 (the hearing) by claiming that certain links to references in the report of the Age Assurance Technology Trial (the report) were not broken at the time the report was provided to government, but became broken at some later point in time, and

(iii) the response did not directly address the questions and instead referred to a letter between the Secretary of the department and the Chair of the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee, dated 31 August 2026, which notes that 'the representations made by officials were based on information available to them at the time and were honestly and reasonably held' but neither confirms nor denies that officials from the department provided misleading evidence at the hearing; and

(b) there be laid on the table by the Minister representing the Minister for Communications, by no later than 5 pm on Friday, 18 September 2026, a revised version of the response which directly addresses the question of whether officials from the department provided misleading evidence at the hearing by claiming that certain links to references in the report were not broken at the time the report was provided to government, but became broken at some later point in time.

Sue Lines

The question is that general business motion No. 711 standing in the name of Senator Payman be agreed to.