Senate passes social media ban for under 16s among 32 bills — as it happened

With that, the Senate stands adjourned for the rest of the year. There are cheers and even hugs as colleagues farewell one another.

Of course, it may not simply be the last sitting of the year, it might be the last of the term if there’s an election any time before late March.

On that front, we’ll have to wait and see. But in the meantime, we’ve wrapped an enormous day in the parliament, with 32 bills passed through the Senate.

It didn’t look likely early in the day, when the government’s first try at bringing on all those votes was knocked back.

But in the end, it got almost everything done, after doing an assortment of deals with the crossbench and the Coalition to pass everything from migration changes to the Future Made in Australia to Reserve Bank reforms, and much more besides.

A few bills dropped off over the course of the day, including electoral reform, the veterans entitlements bill, and the super tax changes, all of which we expect will be revisited in the new year if the parliament returns. None were declared scrapped, they were only deferred.

The House of Reps will be back tomorrow morning for a couple of hours to tick off the amendments passed in the Senate tonight, and then it too will adjourn for the year.

A tremendous thank you to those of you who kept me company on the blog this evening! I had fun, believe it or not.

Correction: Liberal Richard Colbeck abstained rather than voting against, after earlier confirming he would not support the bill.

And there it is. The bill passes by a comfortable margin, with Labor and most of the Coalition voting together.

The crossbench has voted as one against the bill. They have been joined by Alex Antic and Matt Canavan. Richard Colbeck abstained.

There were 19 votes against. David Pocock wasn’t present in the chamber, but told the ABC he had arranged a ‘pair’ with a yes vote, so that his vote would count against the bill.

We’ve progressed through all the amendments, and we’re now voting on the bill

The period for debate is over, and we’ll work through amendments before the bill is put to a vote.

There are several to get through, so it might take a few minutes.

Richard Colbeck, a Liberal senator and former minister, is now on his feet. He had reserved his position on the bill and indicated some misgivings.

He now confirms he will not support the bill.

“This government shows its disrespect for the parliament by trying to shove it through in the way it has,” he says.

“The concept of excluding an entire segment of our population from a form of communication just doesn’t sit well with me… I respect the arguments of my colleagues who think we should be doing something, and clearly we should be doing something, but this is not the way.”

Antic and Canavan are the two Coalition Senators set to cross the floor. He says the bullying of children online is real and “cannot be dismissed,” but that this bill “throws the baby out with the bathwater.”

He criticises the truncated debate, saying it is “not the way to run a democracy.”

He’s followed by the United Australia Party’s Ralph Babet, who calls the bill an intrusion of the state.

Hanson-Young takes a different approach to the conservative Senators who spoke before her. She agrees with them that the bill is rushed and flawed, but her main criticism is that the ban doesn’t do what it claims to do.

“It doesn’t actually make social media safer for young people, and that’s the devastating thing about this, because we know there are young people who are struggling… finding themselves addicted to these dangerous algorithms”

But she says the bill is a “fig leaf” designed to let parents tell their kids over summer “it’s illegal to be on your phone.”

Next up is Matt Canavan of the Nationals, who strongly opposes the bill.

He is moving several amendments which he says would improve it, but he adds he fundamentally objects.

And he says many young Australians are furious and see the bill as an encroachment of their rights. He cites someone who is livestreaming this debate with tens of thousands of angry, young viewers.

“They’re going to grow up and they’re going to become voters…. I think there’s going to be a lot of change coming to our parliament in years to come if we continue to ignore those people as we are doing now”

It takes the form of an accusation, that the government plans to use this bill to force people to adopt a government-issued ID.

The bill does not do that. With the amendment that Labor and the Coalition have agreed on, the bill will explicitly state that a government-issued ID cannot be required to be used for age verification.

And the original bill didn’t propose that either. It is agnostic about which technology would be used, one of the things that will be determined over the next 12 months.

The amendment simply rules out the government ID as the sole option.

McAllister accuses him of a “fundamental misunderstanding” of the bill and the amendment.

Like other crossbenchers, Senator Roberts adds that the bill is flawed and won’t work.

Gerard Rennick has asked the government a series of questions, including why parents can’t simply take phones off them, and whether this is another example of ‘big brother’ encroaching on the public.

In between, there are almost constant heckles from the Greens’ Sarah Hanson-Young and others including Jacqui Lambie.

McAllister from Labor answers Rennick’s questions, but after a while she is interrupted by Nationals Senator Matt Canavan, who complains that she is wasting limited time for debate, when there are Senators with strong concerns about the bill who have had no other opportunity to speak.

Hanson-Young agrees, accusing McAllister of talking “rubbish”.

We go to questions and comments from Jacqui Lambie, who points out that a lot of the details of the ban will not be worked out for 12 months after the bill has passed.

From Archie Staley and Matt Neal, we have the perspectives of young Australians themselves.

From Maani Truu again, we have a summary of the thousands of responses the Senate inquiry received when it opened for just a day.

And below, from the inimitable Annabel Crabb, analysis on what she calls “a performance piece of legislative enshittification.”

Plenty to read as you await the outcome.

Although it’s important to say: there is no mystery about what’s going to happen at the end of this process. As we’ve just heard, the Coalition and Labor will both vote for the bill and it will pass.

As we wait, I’ll spotlight a selection of the ABC’s coverage of this proposal over the last few days.

First, from earlier this month, an explainer from political reporter Maani Truu and tech reporter Ange Lavoipierre.

Labor’s Jenny McAllister delivers the first speech on behalf of the government, outlining the rationale for the ban.

She is followed by Liberal Sarah Henderson, who confirms the Coalition’s support for the bill and thanks the government for what she says were constructive discussions, which led to amendments.

This includes a specification that the government-issued digital ID cannot be required to be used as a means of verification.

She speaks about parents who have told her they support the ban, and whose children have suffered harm on social media.

“We have heard the cries of families who are suffering. This cannot be allowed to continue any longer.”

McAllister gets up again and thanks the Coalition for working with them.

We’ve just had a couple of votes on amendments by the Greens and One Nation trying (in vain) to effectively scrap the bill.

But the votes give us an indication of those who have concerns about the bill, including Pocock, Lambie, Payman, Rennick, Ralph Babet, and the Coalition’s Matt Canavan and Alex Antic.

The debate is starting now. Most of the senators have taken the opportunity to leave the chamber for a break.

And there it is. The only bills to have passed with some consternation on the floor, with the Greens calling out ‘shame’ as the result was read out.

Now it’s time for the social media ban.

No disagreements from me there, Narelle. By my count, we have now progressed through 28 out of the 31 that were part of the big guillotine. Everything has passed.

The only three remaining are the migration bills, which will also pass. Then it’s over to social media, which is separate and will have up to an hour of debate.

A trio of migration bills is now being considered. They’re expected to go through with Labor and the Coalition voting together, but there will be many amendments first.

There’s a lot in the package, but most can be summarised as giving the immigration minister far-reaching powers to arrange deportations of migrants on certain visas, or migrants whose visas have been cancelled and have no legal right to remain in Australia.

The minister will be able to pay any third country to receive someone, will be able to overturn an assessment that someone is a refugee, and will be able to threaten people with jail should they refuse to comply with efforts to deport them.

The bill is also a second attempt at using ankle bracelets and curfews to monitor the cohort of just over 200 people released following the NZYQ High Court case, including some with prior criminal convictions. The High Court struck the first attempt down.

Lastly, it would allow guards to confiscate mobile phones in detention centres.

There is more detail than I can do justice to here, some of which I explained earlier in the week in this piece. And in the below piece, I explored one aspect of the bill criticised by refugee advocates, and the government’s response.

As does some surveillance legislation.

The mergers reform will give the ACCC new powers to screen company mergers to give regard to competition and the interests of customers.

For example, it will take an interest in supermarkets or other dominant market players gobbling up smaller competitors, a power it has long been asking for.

Next up, migration changes.

Another fairly substantial one makes it through.

Not as substantial as the full suite of privacy laws that Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus had wanted to pass, it should be said.

But the bill does allow people to sue for “serious invasions of privacy,” if they can demonstrate they had a reasonable expectation to privacy that was violated deliberately, recklessly, or seriously.

More on the proposal here (but note that the misinformation and disinformation changes mentioned did not proceed, and the hate speech bill is also not on tonight’s list):