Six months after Australia became the first country to bar under-16s from social media, the government has concluded that the platforms are not taking the rule seriously enough, and is preparing to make the consequences of ignoring it considerably more expensive.
New legislation announced this week would roughly double the maximum penalty for a systemic breach, raising it from A$49.5m to A$99m, about $68m. It would also hand the eSafety Commissioner sharper investigative teeth, allowing the regulator to demand documents and evidence not only from the platforms themselves but from age-checking companies and app stores as well.
The detail that matters most is what those documents could include. Under the proposed powers, the commissioner would be able to compel internal material such as company board minutes and internal emails, the kind of evidence that turns a regulatory suspicion into a case that holds up. The stated aim, per the government, is to ensure the legal actions being built against non-compliant platforms are as strong as possible.
That framing makes the intent plain. The government is not gathering powers for some hypothetical future enforcement. It is gathering them because it intends to enforce, and wants the evidentiary footing to do so.
