Australia's duty of care bill sparks US clash
Monitoring orgs · 23.09.2026

The US State Department has nothing to do with this — it's the US Embassy in Canberra that looked at Australia's digital safety bill and delivered a diagnosis: censorship. Australian MPs from the ruling party shrugged in response and kept on drafting the law.

The essence of the dispute: the Albanese government is proposing a "digital duty of care" — an obligation for social media and AI companies to look out for users' wellbeing, not just their engagement. The US embassy claimed the reform could lead to censorship of unwelcome views — a continuation of the pattern in which the Trump administration lectures allies for trying to regulate American tech giants (the EU got the same treatment before, notably from Vice President JD Vance back in December).

Albanese found an elegant way out: he says this isn't about state control, but about giving people back control over what their devices show them. Except it immediately turns out that the law, besides letting users switch off the algorithmic feed, also gives the communications minister the power to set mandatory rules on what kinds of harm platforms must avoid. So user choice is great — but someone still gets to decide what counts as harm.

The government's own regulatory impact assessment, published on September 9, openly warns of possible unintended consequences: low-risk services might overreact and impose stricter moderation than intended. The government promises to mitigate this risk through guidance to platforms.

MP Josh Burns, who testified in June before the Royal Commission into Antisemitism about his own experience of online harassment over his Jewish faith, insists: tech companies never apologize for running an industry that treats Australians as a commodity, with algorithms designed to hold attention in harmful ways purely for profit — which is exactly why young people are deliberately shown misogynistic, aggressive, antisemitic, and homophobic content.

Former Industry Minister Ed Husic defends the approach of intervening in tech markets earlier and more broadly: developers should think through the consequences before launching a product, rather than "poke the bear and see how it reacts." He also stresses that conservatives are wrong to call this a state choice — in reality, users are being given the ability to decide for themselves, which is a good thing.

The Greens, whose votes Labor will likely need to pass the bill in the Senate, are angry not about the regulation itself but about American interference: the party's defense spokesperson, David Shoebridge, called the embassy's statement "an unprecedented act of direct foreign interference in Australian domestic politics," while communications spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young noted it's odd to be lectured about political censorship by someone who bars journalists from doing their job and asking him about his own accountability.

The opposition, represented by shadow communications minister Sarah Henderson, agrees that Australia should act in its own national interest rather than that of the US or any other country — while still acknowledging Americans' right to raise questions. At the same time, she says, the bill itself is dangerously vague: it relies on unclear and subjective definitions of harm, offers weak protection for free speech and journalism, and grants the communications minister sweeping powers to create new categories of harm without proper parliamentary oversight.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/23/u-s-warning-on-duty-of-care-fails-to-deter-australian-ire-at-big-tech-01089141