One week until the social media ban for under 16s and the Minister sends out confusing messages to the Australian public

Melissa McIntosh MP

Shadow Minister for Communications

Shadow Minister for Women

Federal Member for Lindsay

3 December 2025

One week until the social media ban for under 16s and the Minister sends out confusing messages to the Australian public

With just seven days to go until the social media changes commence, the Minister for Communications has pivoted her language to try and play down expectations of success with terms like “not perfect,” asking for “time and patience,” in her press club speech today.

The Minister was at pains to declare Australians won’t need to provide their government issued ID to platforms to prove their age – but this is not true. While it isn’t the first option, most platforms are using Government ID as a step should their age assurance check of a photo or face scan fail.

Shadow Minister for Communications, Melissa McIntosh MP says, “We want Australian children to be protected however, the Government continues to fail at providing clear answers on implementation.”

“The Prime Minister and the Communications Minister continue to peddle their line that you don’t need to hand over your government ID to these platforms. I hope they stand by their promise to the Australian people on this, as that is not what the platforms are saying.”

“Their use of word trickery to avoid being straight with Australians is astounding. If a person, regardless of their age, fails their age verification photo or face scan check, the next and in some cases only option is to provide your Government ID or be excluded from accessing the platform.

“The Government’s own Age Assurance Technology Trial Report had significant error rates – either over or underestimating a user’s age.

“For females and non-Caucasian users, the age estimation results were all over the place. There was even a 12 year old whose age was estimated to be 85.

"Yoti, which is one of the more mature age assurance providers and who Meta will use, had results showing error rates of 34% for 14-year-olds and 73% for 15-year-olds, where the results incorrectly had them as older than 16.

“People who are 19, might look 15 and unless they provide their Government ID to prove their age. The platforms will block them, because none of them want to take the risk of a $50 million fine.

“In addition, these third party age assurance providers will be storing the personal data of Australian citizens in offshore data centres. Today, the Minister couldn’t confirm how long data would be stored for. The best she could say was that data must be destroyed as quickly as possible. What does as quickly as possible even mean?”

“Last night at Senate Estimates, the eSafety Commission said if a kid was using their parents YouTube account it would be OK, then they said if YouTube identified a pattern the account might be shutdown.

“This is all over the place. The Government doesn’t even know its own laws. The law prevents kids from having an account, they aren’t prohibited from using another person’s account and the platforms have no obligation to monitor accounts and make any assumptions on the age of that person.

“What we have here is a clear case of the Government failing at implementation, with decisions being made on the run. It’s a mess, when it is meant to be about protecting Australian children.”