Fencing the ocean: Australia’s social media safety bill

For all that, even Inman Grant has reservations about some of the government's assumptions, notably on the alleged link between social media and mental harm. The evidence for such a claim, she told BBC Radio 5 Live, "is not settled at all". Indeed, certain vulnerable groups – she mentions LGBTQ+ and First Nations cohorts in particular – "feel more themselves online than they do in the real world". Why not, she suggests, teach children to use online platforms more safely? Children, she analogises, should be taught how to swim, rather than being banned from swimming itself. Instruct the young to swim; don't ringfence the sea.

Rather appositely, Lucas Lane, at 15 something of an entrepreneur selling boys nail polish via the online business Glossy Boys, told the BBC that the proposed ban "destroys… my friendships and the ability to make people feel seen".

Already holed without even getting out of port, this bill will serve another, insidious purpose. While easily dismissed as having a stunted moral conscience, Elon Musk, who owns X Corp, is hard to fault in having certain suspicions about these draft rules. "Seems like a backdoor way to control access to the internet by all Australians," he wrote to a post from Albanese. One, unfortunately, among several.