Zoe McKenzie MP
Shadow Cabinet Secretary
Shadow Assistant Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations
Federal Member for Flinders
TRANSCRIPT
ABC AFTERNOON BRIEFING WITH PATRICIA KARVELAS
Tuesday, 8 September 2026
Topics: Digital Duty of Care legislation.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Now the Coalition is yet to come to a unified position on the digital duty of care laws, with Opposition Leader Angus Taylor urging caution, while Nationals leader Matt Canavan calls it censorship. I spoke to Liberal MP Zoe McKenzie, who spoke about what she saw as the harms of social media in her maiden speech.
Zoe McKenzie, welcome to the program.
ZOE MCKENZIE: Thank you for having me on, PK.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Today, the government’s unveiled big new laws, digital duty of care. You have long been campaigning against the algorithm. In fact, your maiden speech into the parliament mentioned the algorithm and the toxic impact on children. Is this where you wanted it to land?
ZOE MCKENZIE: So, the one thing I’m keen to stress is that indeed the Coalition has been leading in this reform from the beginning. Yes, there was my maiden speech, but equally in the parliament before that, both Andrew Wallace and Lucy Wicks were very front footed talking about what was happening online and the dangers that were happening to children. So it is something we have now carried through three parliaments. When I just joined the Parliament, shortly thereafter, the Senate, again by leadership of the Coalition, had put out a really important report about the dangers of foerign interference through social media. And then Andrew and I were talking to Peter Dutton and eventually Peter said, well, he would stand up and ban social media for under-16s in his first 100 days in office.
The Prime Minister, who’d been dodging and weaving, then finally acted, created the Joint Standing Committee on Social Media, which Andrew and I were part of. And in that report, in the Coalition comments, which are extensive, we recommended a carefully crafted duty of care. So I’m glad that the government has come along to do it, but may I say it’s not my natural job to trust them anymore because the social media ban hasn’t worked in the way it was hoped or intended. So their trust factor on the digital duty of care, may I say, is low, although I respect that they’re trying, and I think we need to try, because young people and their parents are desperate for us to do a better job to make social media safer online.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: OK, so execution is one thing, but intent is another. Many of your colleagues are not such big fans. Matt Canavan has made it quite clear he sees it as censorship. You disagree that it’s censorship?
ZOE MCKENZIE: But I also disagree with that characterisation. Matt is one of the most attuned people to the dangers of online content and algorithmic harm. He’s got young kids himself, he’s focused on what they see online. His wife is a teacher and she talks about the disruption she sees social media doing in and around the classroom and the way kids behave these days. So Matt is actually really smart on this. What he’s pointing out is that we do not want the digital duty of care to be a backdoor for the crazy stuff we saw from this government in relation to misinformation and disinformation.
Equally, what I’ve read today in terms of the duty of care, when you look at what harm might be, it’s fair to say one person’s harassment or misogynistic comment is another person’s fair comment or fair observation or feelings of hurt and an expression of hurt. The idea that the eSafety Commissioner or worse still that the Communications Minister becomes the cop on the block for what people can say online, that is very dangerous indeed. And so when Matt talks about that, that’s what he means. He’s talking about putting too much power in the hands of one person for some very grey concepts about harm. So it’s important to design the digital duty of care carefully, as we rightfully pointed out, in that Joint Standing Committee…
PATRICIA KARVELAS: But the idea of being able to opt out of the algorithm, you think that the Coalition should support that?
ZOE MCKENZIE: Absolutely. So I think first of all, algorithmic transparency. So we know what we’re in for. And by the way, X, Twitter, has had algorithmic transparency now, I think, for well over a year. So we know it’s possible. You can understand what it is that an algorithm chooses to preference and push. You would have watched Chanel Contos. In fact, you probably went to her press club address. I wasn’t able to, but I have watched it. And she points out that even if you tell the platforms, I’m not interested in this drivel, you still get the drivel. You know, I sit there and block things that I find just painfully annoying and I still… I don’t know, I’m being flooded by New Zealand content. I’m not interested in the New Zealand election thank you Facebook. But you constantly get stuff you don’t want and you know what you also don’t get? You don’t get the stuff you do want. So you know I follow things in my community but each day they’re not there, they’ve disappeared, but they’re still posting. But no no no, Facebook has decided it knows better as to what I should be interested in. No, I just want old Facebook which is chronological feed. And if I want to be entertained, give me the algorithmic version back. And that’s fine. At least then you have choice between what you want to follow, your own self-determination, your own curiosity and what Facebook thinks is going to keep you there forever.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: So your main beef is the ministerial power to determine…
ZOE MCKENZIE: That’s my concern. My concern is that this is a backdoor to misinformation and disinformation, which was, frankly, a disastrous bill and one that the government ultimately had the good sense to abandon. And I think some of the terminology, and I haven’t drilled down into the exposure draft yet, but I will, some of the terminology is very vague and therefore dangerous.
And, frankly, no eSafety Commissioner no matter how good or how well resourced they are, can be the 24/7 cop on the block to whack-a-mole attack anything that is perceived to be the wrong kind of content. The structure must be stable and competent for what we’re trying to do.
And as we said in the Coalition comments to the Joint Standing Committee, that means you’ve actually got to have a system where transparency is key and where the platforms have got to put forward what they’re doing and how they’re doing it so you can decide for yourself.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: So in terms of the way forward. Do you want the Coalition to be the way that the government is able to negotiate this legislation through the Parliament?
ZOE MCKENZIE: Definitely. Given our leadership in this space, as I said, over three parliaments now, and may I say the extraordinary good work that Sarah Henderson has been doing, she did good work on gambling advertising, and I know she’ll be in the trenches on this one as well, to make sure that frankly our leadership is carried through this time into good policy. We erred, and I admit I think I erred, in trusting the government to do something competent, and frankly we were so desperate to help parents who had begged us through that joint standing committee witness taking, had begged us for action.
And admittedly four million or so accounts have been cancelled. But then action seemed to stop. And as I understand it, at least 70% of under-16-year-olds who had accounts before still have them now. So let’s get that legislation right.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: So they’re trying to beef up that legislation now.
ZOE MCKENZIE: Yeah, but only by doubling the penalties. And hold on, we just saw last week, Meta got a US$17 billion penalty for not doing enough to protect kids. May I say, Meta then came forward and said there are all sorts of helpful things they could do to protect kids. They could put up notifications and say, you know, you’ve been on the platform for too long, they’re talking about shutting it down at night. I’m not sure if that’s often because somebody’s night is somebody’s day somewhere else and you could just use a VPN to pretend it’s lunchtime somewhere but nevertheless, Meta has said we can do things to make it safer.
And remember, having told us during the Joint Standing Committee that it couldn’t, it then introduced Instagram Teens overnight, a safer platform. So we know they can do more.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: One of your issues is the broadness of some of these topics. OK, misogynistic content. You’ve been concerned about that. This is what you talked about, how quickly young boys get Andrew Tate information. So how do you define that in a more specific way that you would be satisfied with? Because you want it banned too.
ZOE MCKENZIE: Yeah, indeed, of course. Well, what I don’t want, and again, this is one of the recommendations that the Coalition made in the Joint Standing Committee, is that we need to have particular attention to what boys see in their feeds and their wellbeing. So, I don’t have a ready-made solution. If I did, I would have already slipped it under the door of Anika Wells. But I do know that is one that we must have front and foremost.
I think it’s very… how do I put it? Sometimes it’s good sport to throw misogynistic content out there. You’d get it on your feed, I get it on my feed all the time. In fact, I’ve been having a pretty good volleying competition with some fun people on Facebook and Instagram today. But it’s important that we keep the tone civil on our feeds and to understand the particular effect that it’s having in driving young men who, as Chanel rightly pointed out last week, try very hard to say, I’m not interested in some of this junk. I don’t want it. But they keep getting it, right? Because the platform thinks they know better as to what will keep a boy’s attention.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: So would you say today is a good day for the reforms you’ve been fighting for?
ZOE MCKENZIE: I’d say today’s the day when the government did something we suggested they do two years ago. Yeah.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Zoe, thanks for coming in.
ZOE MCKENZIE: Thanks, PK.
ENDS.
