Minister shuns safety watchdog’s call for age checks on porn sites

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has put her trust in the pornography industry and industry codes to shield children from harm, and hinted she would not pursue an outright ban on gambling advertising.

As Rowland used a keynote speech to warn big tech that Labor was not scared to regulate it, new documents obtained under freedom of information show Rowland rejected the eSafety Commissioner’s advice to launch a pilot program to make people prove they are old enough to watch pornography.

Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland at the National Press Club on Wednesday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“I am concerned that conducting a trial of age assurance technologies may unnecessarily distract industry from developing and delivering new and strengthened codes [of conduct],” Rowland wrote in a letter to eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant in August.

Opposition communications spokesman David Coleman said it was a “disgrace” Rowland described age verification as a distraction, saying the minister was at odds with Australia’s internet watchdog. The government says it may enact a pilot age-verification program after a years-long industry process.

The government has instead opted to let the adult entertainment industry maintain standards defined in new codes that Rowland claims would boost children’s safety but which some children’s advocates claim would be lengthy and ineffectual.

“The efficacy of the systems that currently exist for age verification are immature and also carry significant risks in terms of privacy and their ability to be implemented,” Rowland said in her speech on Wednesday.

Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant.Credit: Martin Ollman

“There will be no decent-minded Australian who wants children to access age inappropriate material, including pornography.”

Rowland raised the alarm in her speech about the large proportion of children she said were “stumbling across” porn as they browsed the internet without the intention of finding explicit content.

She used a National Press Club speech to outline Labor’s agenda on making AI safe, stamping out misinformation and hate speech, and making online dating safe – unwieldy global problems that she acknowledged would require the combined work of international regulators.

“We are not going to be a government who says big tech is too big,” she said.

She also signalled a willingness to move on gambling reforms.

The gambling sector is pushing back against the prospect of an outright tobacco-style ban on gambling advertising, which is backed by the Greens, crossbenchers and anti-gambling advocates and opposed by sports bodies, TV firms and gambling companies that would lose out.

Rowland said an outright ban was “often proposed”, but went on to say “the reality is” the relationship between the gambling sector and sports competitions, which rely heavily on gambling revenue, “has very much changed”.

“We know that the impact of gambling is built right across the community,” she said. “I would point out that the last substantive time this was amended under the Turnbull government, it actually resulted in an increase in gambling advertising. So we need to ensure we get the policy settings right.”

“But I can assure you that we are at all times guided by the principles of harm minimisation.”

This masthead revealed in October government officials had been consulting industry stakeholders about limiting the frequency of advertisements on TV and radio rather than banning them.

Separately, Rowland maintained she had broken no rules as she faced questions from reporters about her receipt of donations and other hospitality from gambling companies, revealed by both this masthead and the Australian Financial Review.

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