Parmjeet Parmar: Act Education and Workforce Committee representative on its interim report into online harm

ACT says New Zealand isn’t ready to follow Australia with a youth social media ban.

An interim report from Parliament's education committee suggests we consider taking a similar approach to our neighbours, who introduced a ban yesterday.

It's found social media is exposing young people to a wide range of harm.

Act representative Parmjeet Parmar told Andrew Dickens we should watch how the policy unfolds in Australia before moving ahead with our own.

She says this is a natural experiment happening in real time, and it would be irresponsible to rush forward with a ban.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So, in the wake of Australia booting under sixteens off
social media, our own government's Education and Workforce Committee has
dropped its interim report on youth online harm and it's
recommended cross party support on a potential age ban here
and the creation of a new online regulator. So Dr
palmje Palmer represents Act on that committee, the Education and

(00:24):
Workforce Committee, and Palmjeek joins me. Now, hello, hello, so
are you in support of the age band?

Speaker 2 (00:31):
So what I would say is that you will see
that we have a different view in the report and
the reason for the different view is that we felt
as the parties are the parties that is National and
Labor are getting ahead of themselves because there is more
work that needs to be done. And so what we
saw was that they were already jumping to policy recommendations

(00:52):
talking about the band.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
So what what? No, So what work needs to be done?
Do we need to be just sitting back and just
watching whether the Australian thing works?

Speaker 2 (01:03):
So definitely, I would say to my parliamentary colleagues that
we need to take a deep breath, We should watch
the role out of this policy in Australia because this
is a natural experiment happening, and we have this great
opportunity to learn from them in real time. So we
should not be rushing for a policy of ban because

(01:23):
in my view it would be kind of irresponsible for
us to do that because we can learn from Australia.
And also already I'm seeing some reports in media about
young people trying to get around the band. So the
ultimate goal is to reduce harm, but with what is happening,
we know that we will be pushing young people into unregulated,
harder to monitor, darker spaces of Internet, so there will

(01:47):
be more suffering, more suffering and more secretly.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
So in that case, you need an online regulator, and
that's been proposed in this report. So what would an
online regulator do?

Speaker 2 (01:58):
So the idea of this vote was actually to summarize
what we have heard and also summarized the advice. So
the idea of this report and trim report was not
to provide any solutions or recommendations, and that is what
our concern is. So we need to do more work
in the Select Committee to ensure that we come to
right kind of conclusions. And if you asked me, I

(02:20):
trust ban as a solution at this stage, what I'm
seeing in Australia, my response will be now and we
need to understand more what this regulator would do, because
we need to understand what the powers of this regulator
will be. So what I'm saying is that at this
stage we needed to actually just summarize submissions and summarize advice.

(02:42):
But seeing that some parties have jumped to policy recommendations,
actually that compromise.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Okay, yeah, exactly, can I just summarize? Can I just
summarize it? Therefore that you and act say, ty Hoe,
let's have a look at what's happening, and you don't rush,
but you're saying that National and Labor they're rushing in
far too quickly because they feel it's a positive thing.
It's a good vote, vote winn.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
So our concern is this that the ultimate goal of
this inquiry was to provide some kind of solutions. So
if we identify some risks, we have to come up
with solutions. Just like cars, we know they're dangerous, we
need seat belts, we need road rules, so we need
to do something. But that doesn't mean we jump to
this conclusion of a pen or a regulator. That was
not the purpose of this report. So you'll remember that

(03:26):
when I wrote to the Select Committee, the plan was
to provide a report in November, and then the SELEC
Committee realizes it's actually a bigger task than it was imagined.
And that's why this report is split into two parts.
The first part was about submissions and advice, not jumping
to policy recommendations without getting proper advice on solutions and
recommendations and how they would work.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
And really I thank you. Panji Paman is the Xbox
person who's on that committee. For more familiar edition with
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