Google told an Australian Senate inquiry on Monday that the Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026 could require it to check the ages of Australian users and block under-18s from messaging, email and private file storage. The bill has passed the House of Representatives and is before the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee, which is due to report by November 20.
The provision at issue covers online services where there is a reasonably foreseeable risk that children could encounter pornography or fetish material. Where technically feasible and reasonably practicable, those services would have to offer at least two methods of checking a user’s age and prevent anyone not verified as an adult from accessing the material. The bill does not explicitly require blocking under-18s from an entire service, but it does not exempt email or messaging, and a breach carries the same maximum penalty as the broader duty of care, up to A$109 million.
“It could require us to age assure and block access to everyday communication services like messaging, email and private file storage,” Rachel Lord, senior manager of government affairs and public policy at Google’s YouTube, told the committee. Google wants the requirement limited “to those services with a sole or predominant purpose of disseminating pornography, to make that a more targeted and proportionate measure,” she said.
Google is also concerned that the bill removes privacy as a consideration when services assess whether they comply with the duty of care. “We think it’s important that people have an express and recognised right to privacy, particularly when we are talking about potentially intrusive monitoring within private communications or file storage,” Lord said, echoing a written submission Google made to the inquiry on October 30. The Computer and Communications Industry Association, whose members include Google, Meta and Amazon, argued in its submission that a digital duty of care would push platforms “to verify the ages of all users to mitigate litigation risk.” Representatives of Meta, TikTok and Snap also told the committee that broad definitions of harmful content could give regulators wide discretion over what platforms must remove.
The bill would require a broad range of online services to identify and manage foreseeable harms, with mandatory risk assessments and age assurance requirements, and would replace Australia’s existing online safety industry codes and standards with a single regime after a 12-month transition. The Coalition has said it will oppose it, so the government needs crossbench support in the Senate. Communications Minister Anika Wells wants the bill passed by the end of 2026.
Sources: Information Age, Gulf News, Pinsent Masons
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
