Three Proposed Amendments to Australia's Digital Duty of Care Bill
Australia's child sexual exploitation reports top 100,000. Citing source saying current bill lacks duty to detect.
Based on an article by Joel Scanlan, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Law; Academic Co-Lead, CSAM Deterrence Centre, University of Tasmania, reported in The Conversation - Technology.
On September 10, the Australian Federal Police announced the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation received 100,194 reports of online child sexual exploitation in 2025–26.
That is about 275 a day – a 21% rise over the year before, and up from 36,600 four years ago.
Read as a measure of how much abuse Australian children are suffering, the figure is alarming. But it’s not an accurate measure. It’s primarily the count of reports made by companies who chose to look for harm occurring on their platforms.
Editorial Opinion
In the short term, we see Australia’s bill deliberations converging on whether to include a reporting obligation. We assess that the current bill’s lack of a duty to detect leaves uneven efforts among operators unaddressed. Japanese companies providing features for Australia may face earlier demands to preserve records and establish reporting channels.
In the long term, we see reconciling default encryption with child protection becoming a design principle. We assess that a structure in which voluntary scanning distorts statistics undermines the comparability of transparency reports. A shift to preventive design, such as age assurance and private-by-default settings, will become the industry standard.
The remaining question will be the allocation of responsibility for who should detect and to what extent. Is a system dependent on voluntary detection by operators sustainable? Is an independent mechanism needed to verify the balance between safety and confidentiality?
References
- “Australia’s digital duty of care bill needs these three changes to tackle online child sexual exploitation”, by Joel Scanlan, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Law; Academic Co-Lead, CSAM Deterrence Centre, University of Tasmania — The Conversation - Technology, 2026-09-14T20:10:51.000Z (CC BY-ND)
- Source URL: https://theconversation.com/australias-digital-duty-of-care-bill-needs-these-three-changes-to-tackle-online-child-sexual-exploitation-291779
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- Where was the original article published?
- The original is an article by Joel Scanlan published on September 14, 2026 in The Conversation - Technology. Details can be confirmed in the original via the URL in References.
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- The Editorial Opinion is not a summary of the original article but an independent commentary. It aims to organize short-term and long-term impacts and unresolved issues to provide material for judgment.
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