Canberra’s Digital Duty of Care is not child protection. It is a machine that grows new speech crimes without a new Act. Kill it. Kill the draft. And send the government that wrote it with it.
Nobody asked for this. Nobody voted for a minister with a blank “harm” pad and a $109 million stick. They wrapped it in kids, cameras and “My Feed, My Way.” Read the text. It is censorship with a safety slogan painted on the front.
They Did Not Hide It. They Just Hoped You Would Not Read It.
On 8 September 2026 the Albanese government dumped an exposure draft: the Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026. Consultation: 14 days. Cap: five pages. Submissions: not even promised to be published. No explanatory memorandum. Simplified outlines still marked “to be drafted.”
That is not a parliament treating speech like a serious thing. That is a department sprinting a speech architecture past a country that is busy.
The press conference said “cars, toys and food.” The draft says something else.
Every person “responsible” for an online service — social media, search, hosting, app stores, devices, AI generators — must “ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, a safe online environment.”
Fail, and it is 60,000 penalty units. That is the figure they advertise as up to $109.2 million for a company. Same hammer for ignoring a remedial direction.
“Reasonably practicable” weighs cost, likelihood, harm, privacy. It does not weigh freedom of expression. The words “freedom of expression” do not appear in the draft.
That is the tell.
Six Instrument Powers. That Is The Engine.
Do not argue the slogan. Argue the levers.
The minister can, by instrument:
- Add new “seriously harmful” material or conduct.
- Add new “harmful to children” material or conduct.
- Deem extra design features to have “negative behavioural impacts.”
- Exempt a service or a class.
- Declare that a service is or is not social media for the under-16 feature ban.
- Force specified “user empowerment tools,” without limitation as to how they are specified.
Advice from the eSafety Commissioner first. Advice is not a veto. Instruments are disallowable. That is the entire safeguard.
A Parliament that votes for this is not voting for a list of harms. It is voting for a machine that can grow new harms without a new Act.
That is not liberal democracy. That is rule by catalogue.
Give a regulator removal notices, document compulsion, systems duties and nine-figure penalties and you have built a standing speech office.
Institutions expand. Virtue is irrelevant. Incentive is the policy.
The Political List They Buried Under “The Kids”
Real child-protection categories belong in a statute: child-sexual exploitation, grooming, suicide-instruction, industrial porn aimed at minors, non-consensual intimate images including the synthetic “nudify” slop.
Nobody serious argues otherwise.
Then the government’s list breaks.
“Seriously harmful” swallows material that “encourages, promotes, incites or provides instruction for the commission of a criminal offence” — any offence, not only serious crime.
Then a residual: the minister may add “any other material or conduct” she is satisfied “may cause serious harm.”
“Harmful to children” is worse.
Pornography. Eating-disorder instruction. Then: material that “encourages or promotes hostile attitudes towards women or gender equality.”
Then a residual so wide it makes the rest of the list decorative. Then whatever the minister adds.
That clause is not “incitement to violence against women.” That already exists in the criminal law.
As written, it is a viewpoint filter.
A different government will point the same gun at religious teaching on sex, at radical gender theory, at whoever lost the last culture war. A serious legislature does not enact a weapon and trust its own side to hold it forever.
Harm that “could inflict serious harm to a child.” Harm that can be caused “whether or not engaged in or experienced by a user of an online service.”
Vague harm is a political solvent. A citizen and a company must be able to know the rule before the fine. This draft fails that test on purpose.
Protect the child. Do not use the child as a wrapper for adult politics.
The Enforcement Model Is The Point
The Commonwealth will never have to ban a viewpoint if Facebook, Google, TikTok, OpenAI and every forum host will suppress it to stay on the safe side of a nine-figure risk.
That is not a side-effect. That is the model.
State sets an elastic standard. Private firms, terrified of a “systems” finding, apply a tighter one. Parliament keeps its hands clean.
The speech still disappears.
Comparisons with seatbelts are a lie. A seatbelt standard does not require Toyota to guess next year’s definition of a crash.
This duty requires platforms to guess next year’s definition of a bad idea.
“My Feed, My Way” is a press release. In the draft, user controls are whatever tools the minister specifies by instrument.
Feed choice is a statutory right written in the Act, or it is not a right.
The misinformation bill died because too many people noticed that “false and harmful” is a political weapon.
This is the successor technology: drop “false,” keep “harm,” move from takedown to systems liability, and dare anyone who objects to look as if they want teenagers on porn and suicide forums.
Competent politics. Contemptuous legislating.
A systems duty over ranking, discovery and model outputs aimed at undefined psychosocial harm makes the public square of 2026 the regulated object.
Anonymity dies with it.
Some identity checks are justified for Class 1 material. Applied to “hostile ideas” they become a reason to end practical anonymity in ordinary political speech.
A nurse, a teacher, a soldier will not criticise a government program under their legal name.
That is not a bug. That is the surveillance that travels with the duty.
This is censorship. Call it what it is.
Soft-totalitarian administration of the public mind, outsourced to terrified companies, blessed by a minister, enforced by a commissioner, sold as kindness.
It has to go.
The government that wrote it has to go with it.
There Is A Replacement. It Is Already Drafted.
Alecomm’s Digital Harm Prevention Policy 2026 and the companion Online Safety Amendment (Digital Harm Prevention) Bill 2026 do the thing the press conference pretends to do — and refuse the thing the draft actually does.
The line, printed at the top of the policy:
Keep the duty to stop crime and predation. Kill the power to police ideas.
The government’s exposure draft is to be withdrawn.
Not “improved into existence.”
Withdrawn.
Four objects. That is the whole architecture.
1. Illegal Material — Harsh And Narrow
Reasonable steps against Class 1, child-sexual exploitation, pro-terror, non-consensual intimate images including synthetic images, and instruction in serious Commonwealth offences.
Hash-matching for known CSAM. Rapid action on a particularised notice. No wilful blindness to a marketplace for crime.
No duty to pre-empt a lawful opinion.
No duty to scan private adult communications. No duty to identity-verify an adult as a condition of political speech.
2. Children — A Closed List, Written In Classification Language
X18+ and RC sexual material. Suicide and serious self-harm instruction. Eating-disorder instruction. Direct encouragement of an indictable offence by a child.
Memoir, news, research and lived experience that does not instruct a method stays out.
The list cannot be added to by instrument, code, standard, notice or ministerial “satisfaction.”
3. Adults — A Real Switch
On a large social media service, defined as 1 million or more Australian accounts, a durable statutory right to switch off engagement ranking.
Chronological or follow-only.
Not a minister-designed “tool.” A right in the Act.
4. The Speech Lock
No viewpoint categories. No ministerial expansion of speech restrictions.
A notice that cannot name a statutory category is void.
Restricted categories live in the Act or they do not live.
That is the document on alecomm.io.
Policy. Bill. Explanatory memo.
Read them. They are shorter than the government’s press strategy and more honest than the government’s draft.
Kill / Keep
Kill
- The general duty to “ensure a safe online environment.”
- Ministerial add-ons.
- “Hostile attitudes towards women or gender equality” as a harm category.
- Open residuals for “mental wellbeing” and “psychosocial harm.”
- $109 million for failing a paper risk-assessment against a moving target.
- Using child safety as a wrapper for adult political speech.
Keep — And Tighten
- Reasonable steps against material that is already a crime.
- Existing offences for incitement, threats, stalking, image-based abuse and child-sexual offences — enforced, not relabelled.
- Tight child rules on porn, suicide instruction and eating-disorder instruction.
- Serious penalties for systemic failure on illegal content, court-supervised, with a defence of reasonable systems aimed at defined categories.
- A real ranking opt-out.
- Fast clocks and real review for nudify tools and non-consensual intimate imagery.
That table is the entire argument. Everything else is theatre.
What You Do
Do not send a five-page letter into a black hole and call it democracy.
Demand the 8 September draft is withdrawn.
Demand every restricted category lives in an Act a parliament can be hanged for.
Demand a durable adult right to kill the engagement ranking — in the statute, not in a media release.
Demand the eSafety office is shrunk back to illegal material and a closed child list, with merits review a court can use.
And stop treating the people who wrote this as a competent government having a bad week.
They designed a speech law, dressed it as a toy-safety standard, capped debate at five pages, and pointed at children so you would look away.
That is not a mandate. That is a tell.
The crap has to go.
The draft has to go.
The government that needs a minister’s residual clause to feel safe around adult argument has to go with it.
Protect children from predators and instruction pipelines.
Do not let Canberra police ideas.
Download The Instruments. Use Them.
Policy · Bill · Explanatory Memo — alecomm.io
Digital Harm Prevention Policy 2026 — DHP-P 2026/01.
Companion Bill and EM-DHP 2026/01.
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