Interview with 2CC Breakfast - Stephen Cenatiempo - 1 December 2025

Melissa McIntosh MP 
Shadow Minister for Communications 
Shadow Minister for Women 
Federal Member for Lindsay 

Monday, 1 December 2025 

Transcript 

2CC Breakfast - Stephen Cenatiempo 

Subject: Social media ban and High Court challenge; Digital ID verification; Offshore data storage; Energy affordability; Triple Zero crisis. 

E&EO … 

Stephen Cenatiempo 

I’ve said it time and again that I think that these social media bans that are going to come in on the 10th of December are flawed for a number of reasons. The intentions are right. Our politicians want to try and protect kids online. I get that. But they don't understand the problem. So they've just come up with a quick fix that sounds right. And that is we'll ban all kids under 16 from accessing social media platforms. But we'll make the social media platforms enforce this because we're not quite sure how it's going to work. Now, the problem here is, though, that despite assertions from the communications minister, Anika Wells that those of us who are over 16 would not have to upload our government IDs, our driver's license or passport or whatever it might be, to verify that we are indeed over 16. Well, it looks like that might happen. Some of the large platforms like Meta, TikTok, Google and Snapchat are actually going to use our IDs. Now, apparently they were supposed to use artificial intelligence to look at the picture of somebody and determine how old they were by facial recognition or something like that, which again, what have you got a 16-year-old that looks like he's 20? Or she, for instance. Now, in and of itself, I don't have a problem with uploading my ID. I don't share the same view that some of the libertarians do that, oh, we shouldn't have to do this. But my concern is security here. If I upload my license to one of these social media platforms, where does the information go? To talk to us about this, we're joined by the Shadow Communications Minister, Melissa McIntosh. Melissa, good morning.  

Melissa McIntosh 

Good morning. 

Stephen Cenatiempo 

Before we get into this substantive issue, we've now got a high court challenge against these laws too, which, look, I don't think is going to go anywhere. Two 15-year-olds suggesting that it's impinging on their political communication. It's just another angle to this that shows that the government has sort of botched this.  

Melissa McIntosh 

Yeah, you're right. I don't think this will be the last court challenge either. There are so many holes in the whole system, and I think loopholes too, including the way that kids will get around it. And I'm hearing this morning there are reports that kids are migrating to other social media platforms – platforms that I've never heard of Yope and Lemonade which is owned by TikTok, so kids are already talking about okay well we can't be on these ones but we're going to go across to other social media platforms.  

Stephen Cenatiempo 

Well, I think last time you and I spoke, we discussed some research that had been done out of one the universities in Victoria that the more dangerous platforms have been excluded from this. Gaming platforms where we know kids are being targeted by groomers and being exposed to pornography, et cetera. The argument is that kids need their digital fix, so they're going to go to the dangerous places because they can't get into the less dangerous places, so to speak.  

Melissa McIntosh 

Yeah, and that's so concerning. And it is about protecting kids. So, if they're in these places, it's going to be so hard to protect them. And I don't think the ban - as I've said to you - the whole intent is to protect children, but I don't think the rollout of the ban, which is what I've been arguing against, is going all that well, and the Minister for Communications really let rip into me last week saying it's because I don't care about Australian children, and that's not right. I deeply care, and I think we all do, and it's our right to question what they're doing, including now the revelation that digital ID might be required. I share the same concerns as you around the storage of data, and I spoke to the platforms and I said, well, where is this data going to be stored, Australian's data? And they said, well, offshore. It's a third-party provider. I said, well, how long do these third-party providers hold data? And they weren't sure. They couldn't answer the question. So, there is so much in this that we still need to keep prosecuting to make sure the intent of it is what happens in the end.  

Stephen Cenatiempo 

But this was always, this was an obvious problem, because if you're going to ban somebody under the age of 16 by being on something, by definition means that anybody over 16 has to prove that they're over 16. And the idea that we were going to do this with non-existing technology, and the platform was going to have to quickly come up with this technology that would be able to read somebody's face to work out how old they were; it was problematic to start with.  

Melissa McIntosh  

Yeah, and the platforms recently told me that they do have concerns because of the technology is still emerging. And I think the trials have a 30-something percent failure rate when it came to identification. And they've also told me they do not want to risk $50 million fines. So, they're not going to let people slip through. They will ask for a digital ID.  

Stephen Cenatiempo 

This reminds me of when I was 15. I mean, I looked older than I did. And I remember you could get a discounted ticket at a movie. And I went to buy a ticket and they said, well, show us your ID and prove that you're under 15, and I’m like look well I'm under 15 so I don't have ID, I mean this is the exact same thing it's not like we've encountered a new problem here, this has been a problem forever and a day.  

Melissa McIntosh 

Yeah, and I think it's just come to light when it comes to the storage of data offshore. This is this all comes back to our affordable energy as well. We can’t hold data in this country until we have energy that can power something like 50,000 homes in one data centre. That's a lot of energy on the local grid. So, until we get there data is going to be stored offshore. I'm reading more and more around these big companies that do want to put data centres here in Australia, but it's just not feasible.  

Stephen Cenatiempo   

What are your colleagues in the coalition saying, though? Because you seem to be a bit of a lone voice here, because the opposition was gung-ho to support these laws when they went through Parliament. You're almost playing rearguard action here.  

Melissa McIntosh 

It sort of stirred a bit when I was saying no to net zero by 2050 because my community didn't want it. And I've been warning about this; I've been warning about Triple Zero. I feel like the shadow minister for warnings right now! And it's a delicate balance, to tell you the truth, because we did support it. It was Peter Dutton's policy to begin with, and it's a difficult one to... I don't want to be accused of backflipping on a policy, but I do have a right to question the direction it's going in. And if I come across new information and it doesn't look like things are going right, well, you know, it's my right to say it's not going right. Do better, government!  

Stephen Cenatiempo   

Absolutely. Now, you touched on the Triple Zero thing. We should talk about that because that is a festering sore that just keeps coming back. And we're now hearing that the government kind of knew there was a problem coming but did nothing about it.  

Melissa McIntosh 

That's right, and they've sat on it. It gets complex, it probably will make your listeners want to go back to bed if I talk too much about the technical elements, but it's become clear that there was a recommendation that this custodian that's meant to oversee the whole Triple Zero network should be placed in emergency services, and the Minister for Communications decided no, she would put it in her own department. And now we've found that person's been in her department since March. So, what were they doing during the Triple Zero, the Optus outage, and other outages as well? And what has the Minister been doing? There's a huge amount of holes, and I still really think that we need a public investigation, not by the department, not by the regulator, to find out what's going on in the Triple Zero network. The infrastructure, the contracts that these big telcos hold, government contracts and the network itself.  

Stephen Cenatiempo   

Do we have to admit here that this is always going to be a problem in this new digital age, because we don't have fixed lines anymore? Because, as I said to you, I think a while back when we spoke, that this can happen to any carrier. We're pointing the finger at Optus at the moment, but the outages that they've experienced could happen to Telstra or Vodafone or anyone else.  

Melissa McIntosh 

Yeah, and it can happen with the handsets. That's where we've discovered thousands of people could be walking around with handsets now and not realise... that they seem to be working, they're on the 4G network, but as soon as they call Triple Zero it tries to revert back to the 3G. So they might not realise that their handset is out of date. This is thousands of people. So URI, it's an emerging issue, but we need to get it fixed. And that’s why there needs to be some urgency around it. Again, satellites, low orbit satellites might be a solution. They're foreign owned satellites. We don't even have Australian owned satellites that can pick this up yet, so that's another issue, foreign satellites in our sky, that's possibly the next option. But the government needs to focus on this, ensure that there's investment into the infrastructure, ensure that the telcos are doing the right thing, and in the very least, make it transparent when there are outages, so Australians can see how big this issue really is.  

Stephen Cenatiempo 

Indeed. Melissa, I appreciate your time this morning. Thanks for joining us.  

Melissa McIntosh 

Thank you.  

[ENDS]