Incredibly, we have only until today (Friday) to put in submissions on this major, world first, social media ban for under 16s. Feel the panic. It's as if our PM is running out of time to ram through complex legislation before the Donald Trump inauguration? Perhaps he's hoping Elon is distracted.

The Good News is The Australian Misinformation Bill appears to be dead. Congratulations! The Bad News is the Internet ID bill (posing as a ban on Under 16s using social media) has support from both major parties, even though it is wildly ambitious, vague, dangerous, and the first in the world. The government can't answer questions on how this will be managed. Instead, the people who have screwed everything up, say "Trust us" we will work out the details later. (Thanks @Craig Kelly)

The laws, supposedly, will pass next week, but then there will be a 12 month "consultation" to work out what will be banned. Since when do we pass the laws and consult later?

Everyone knows this is just an excuse to make adults upload passports, drivers licenses, facial recognition or use some new form of government ID token in order to use X or any of the social media platforms.

The money line, from Reuters:

Australia plans to trial an age-verification system that may include biometrics or government identification to enforce a social media age cut-off, some of the toughest controls imposed by any country to date. [This is with UK consortium Age Check Certification Scheme, so presumably coming to the UK too. ]
The proposals are the highest age limit set by any country, and would have no exemption for parental consent and no exemption for pre-existing accounts.
Other countries don't require ID, they treat parents like they are smart enough to figure this out:
France last year proposed a ban on social media for those under 15 but users were able to avoid the ban with parental consent. The United States has for decades required technology companies to seek parental consent to access the data of children under 13.
As Theo says on X:

Funny I found out through SOCIAL MEDIA that I had less than 24 hours to make a submission.

The government would like to parent your children for you. The government say they are helping parents, but parents can already ban social media or smart phones, or get apps to help limit or monitor their children's behaviour. This legislation treats Australian parents like they are children themselves. It will remove parent's choices.

What about kids in the Australian outback who live far from friends? Too bad if they feel suicidal because their account and online friends are about to be nixed by the government. If only farmers were smart enough to manage their own kids, eh?