Sky News with Trudy McIntosh - 16 January 2026

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

16 January 2026

Transcript

Sky News with Trudy McIntosh

Topics: Social media ban; Grok AI; Proposed hate speech laws

E&EO …

Trudy McIntosh

Let’s get a reaction now from the Shadow Communications Minister Melissa McIntosh. Mel, great to see you. We sit here one month on, you heard what the Prime Minister had to say there, do you give the government credit? It appears to have been an early success.

Melissa McIntosh

Thanks, Trudy. I don’t want to go straight into the negative. The Coalition has supported the ban as well. Really, from the start it was Peter Dutton’s concept in the beginning and the pressure that I’ve put on was around ensuring success, because the Prime Minister said success constituted a national conversation. That wasn’t good enough. The numbers, 4.7 million, are encouraging, but I think what is missing here is the detail. Meta said they’ve got 500,000, so 500,000 doesn’t come anywhere near 4.7 million. So, we’d like to know where that 4.7 million is, and also what the make-up of these accounts are. Are these all kids’ accounts, or are they dormant accounts that have been part of a clean-up by social media platforms? And also ensuring that kids aren’t migrating across to other platforms. How many new accounts have been part of this as well? So, I think it’s encouraging, but the detail is super important.

Trudy McIntosh

Yeah, we all want to see that level of detail. The eSafety Commissioner was pressed on that, why they can’t provide a breakdown platform by platform. She said essentially this is akin to law enforcement, that they don’t give away their hand because in doing so, providing that level of detail, that might prevent them from taking legal action down the track.

Melissa McIntosh

Well, I think the detail is going to be really important. As I said, we want to ensure that if kids are going off these platforms, they aren’t migrating across to other platforms. So, I think that’s important. And also 4.7 million, to know if Meta, which constitutes a large proportion of social media, if they’re saying 500,000, well that’s over four million accounts that are unaccounted for effectively, so I think as we head towards senate estimates there’ll be some questions asked to provide some more detail, I can assure you that. But we do want kids to be protected. One of the questions I also had was around mental health support. We’re hearing that kids that are going off the platforms are struggling. Many of them are. So, ensuring that the government’s providing additional mental health support for those kids is important. But we also all know that there’s been kids on the Prime Minister’s own platform, giving him a bit of sticks, saying that they actually aren’t off social media at all.

Trudy McIntosh

Yeah, it was never going to capture every single child, but let’s see if we can get some more details of exactly how successful it’s been. I wanted to ask you about this issue of Elon Musk’s X Grok, this AI chatbot that’s been used by some people to create nude images of others without their permission. In the UK, they’ve taken a step to ban that. So far, this hasn’t happened in Australia. The eSafety Commissioner today saying that they’re looking into this. Would you like to see the Australian government follow suit?

Melissa McIntosh

It’s absolutely unacceptable that nude images could be created of an individual, and whether it’s a child, a woman, anyone without their consent, everything should be thrown at this particular issue. The government in September last year said that they were doing the work to ban nudify apps, and we want to ensure that this happens quickly. We’re still waiting for this, and we’re still waiting for the digital duty of care.

Trudy McIntosh

You'd support a ban if that were to happen?

Melissa McIntosh

Well, we need some more information. It can’t be allowed to happen. It shouldn’t even be something that’s up for debate. The pure fact of what happens to women and children if they’re exposed in this way, it’s abhorrent. It’s horrible sort of stuff and it shouldn’t be allowed to happen at all. So, I’d like to move quicker on this. They promised it in September. Let’s see what they come up with.

Trudy McIntosh

And Mel, we’ll see you here in Parliament when it returns on Monday. There’s been this public debate about whether hate speech laws put forward by the government meet the mark. Anthony Albanese this morning was saying it’s like grasping at smoke to get an idea of what the Coalition actually wants. There’s some members who say the laws are too weak. Others in the Coalition say they’re too strong when it comes to free speech aspects. What sort of amendments would you need to see in order to pass the bill?

Melissa McIntosh

I’m going to say, ‘come on!’ to the Prime Minister. He’s given us merely days to go through complex, lengthy legislation that you’ve got to remember the intent of this is to protect Australians, and what happened in Bondi with people killed in our worst terrorist attack, that’s what this is about, preventing that from ever happening again. And we have a right I think as an opposition to question that legislation.

Trudy McIntosh

I suppose what are those changes?

Melissa McIntosh

Well, this is where we’ll be getting to that. We’ve got the team working on it as part of the committee process. The committee’s process is only just finished; we haven’t received the report yet. We’ll have a meeting this afternoon as a party as well to go into more detail. And once we go through our own processes, which we have had to say have had to be super fast-tracked because the government hasn’t given us any time, then we’ll let people know what those amendments will be.

Trudy McIntosh

As the Prime Minister’s pointed out though, you guys wanted Parliament to be back before Christmas, so would've been even more rushed if it had come back then, wouldn’t it?

Melissa McIntosh

Well, maybe there would've been more time for collaboration and to work together, because ultimately that’s what we want. I think Australians want us to work in collaboration to get a good outcome, because this is what it’s about, protecting Australians, stopping antisemitism in this country and preventing a terrorist attack of this kind ever happening again.

Trudy McIntosh

Shadow Communications Minister Melissa McIntosh, thanks for your time today and we’ll see you back here in Canberra next week.

Melissa McIntosh

Thanks.