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I Have Written to All 12 South Australian Senators About the Digital Duty of Care Bill
The Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026 has now passed the House of Representatives and is before the Senate.
The Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee is examining the Bill and is due to report on 20 November 2026, after which the legislation can return to the Senate for further consideration.
I have now written collectively to all twelve South Australian Senators, across Labor, Liberal and Greens, asking them to vote against the Bill in its current form or, if it proceeds, to insist on substantially stronger safeguards.
For transparency, each Senator can see that the same correspondence has been sent to their fellow South Australian representatives. I also advised them that I intend to publish my correspondence and accurately report any substantive responses I receive.
I have also attached the submission I made on the original September Exposure Draft, while acknowledging that the Government has since addressed some of the concerns raised at that stage.
Why I have written again
My position remains the same in one important respect.
I support serious action against child sexual exploitation, grooming, threats, non-consensual intimate imagery and other objectively serious online harms. Children should be protected, and large technology companies should not be able to avoid responsibility for harmful systems they design.
But the Bill now before the Senate goes considerably further than simply removing illegal material.
It creates a broad regulatory framework involving definitions of harm, platform risk assessments, recommendation algorithms, age assurance, substantial financial penalties, information gathering, data access, artificial intelligence and what the legislation itself calls “sock puppet identities”.
My concern is not that each of those mechanisms necessarily has an improper purpose. It is their cumulative effect, and whether the safeguards are strong enough for the powers and infrastructure being created.
That is why my letter asks Senators to consider clearer protection for lawful expression and religious belief, stronger safeguards for smaller publishers and community organisations, limits on age-assurance and data collection, meaningful review rights when lawful material is removed, and explicit boundaries around government-operated false identities and AI-generated material.
A power should be judged not only by the purpose for which it is created, but by the capability it leaves behind.
These concerns are increasingly being raised by others
Since the Bill passed the House, it has been notable to see concerns being raised from several different directions. These organisations and individuals approach the legislation from different perspectives. What matters here is the overlap in the questions they are raising.
Freedom for Faith, supported by Australian Christian leaders, has called for tighter definitions of serious harm, express protection for freedom of expression including religious expression, transparent notice when content is restricted and an effective right of review. Its concern is that lawful religious teaching could be caught by a framework that strongly incentivises private platforms to avoid regulatory risk.
The Australian Christian Lobby has taken a more qualified position. It supports stronger action against genuine online harms while warning that vague categories such as “gender equality” and residual harm provisions could threaten lawful public debate. ACL has said the Bill needs amendment to better balance protection of vulnerable people with individual freedoms.
liber-net, in its Senate submission on the Bill as passed by the House, argues that significant privacy, age-assurance, biometric-data, information-sharing and free-expression concerns remain despite improvements made since September.
The Institute of Public Affairs has opposed the Bill more broadly and has recently focused particular attention on eSafety’s proposed designation as an “enforcement body” under the Privacy Act, sensitive personal information and information sharing.
The Libertarian Party WA has urged the Senate to reject the Bill, citing the breadth of the duty, lawful-speech risks, substantial penalties and the lack of clear statutory protection for smaller services.
The Free Speech Union of Australia argues that the Bill could create a chilling effect on lawful speech and that its reach extends well beyond the largest social-media platforms.
Free-speech advocate Michael Shellenberger has concentrated heavily on the free-speech and sock-puppet provisions and has helped draw public attention to the unusual government capability created by those provisions.
Coalition figures, including Senator Sarah Henderson, have continued to raise concerns about lawful speech, small-business burdens, sock-puppet powers and the broader regulatory architecture following the Bill’s passage through the House.
One Nation has also taken a strongly oppositional position. In October it said the Bill remained a threat to free speech and democracy even after the Government removed the earlier ministerial power to add new harm categories, and stated that it opposed the legislation in its entirety. One Nation's continuing objections add to the broader political pushback against the Bill’s reach and effect on lawful speech.
What stands out to me is the convergence around several recurring questions: how broadly harm is defined, whether platforms will over-remove lawful material to avoid penalties, whether religious and political expression are adequately protected, how far age assurance and data collection should extend, what oversight applies to covert regulatory tools, and what remedy exists when the system gets it wrong.
Those are legitimate questions for the Senate to answer before creating a regulatory structure that may shape Australia’s online environment for years to come.
If this concerns you, contact your Senators
If these issues concern you, I would encourage you to read the Bill and make your own views known directly to the Senators who represent you. For South Australians, that means writing to all twelve of our Federal Senators, regardless of party, while the legislation is still before the Senate.
You do not need to write a lengthy submission. A respectful email explaining the particular safeguards you believe are needed - whether around lawful expression, religious freedom, privacy, age assurance, smaller publishers, data use or the sock-puppet provisions - ensures your representatives know these questions matter to the people they represent.
Parliamentary scrutiny works best when citizens actually participate in it.
You can find current contact details for Australian Senators through the Parliament of Australia Senate contact list.
I will publish any substantive responses I receive from South Australian Senators and update readers as the Bill progresses.
Whatever view ultimately prevails in the Senate, legislation of this reach deserves careful scrutiny before the powers it creates become part of Australia’s permanent regulatory architecture.
“Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety.”— Proverbs 11:14 (KJV)
Thanks for reading
God Bless
Mark.
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