Dutton said he was speaking as a parent today when he expressed concerns over the mental health impacts, bullying, body image issues and safety of young children online.
He reiterated his push for age verification laws on social media to provide guardrails in an otherwise “lawless environment”.
“It’s inconceivable you would allow your 13-year-old to go down to a park and start mingling with any random person who comes by, or you would have a magazine on the table with all sorts of explicit content in it and you would allow your kid to flick through that content,” he said at a press conference.
“There’s a lot we can do and the technology is trending in our favour to make sure we can deal with the scale of the problem.”
Shadow communications minister David Coleman, also at the press conference, added that companies should be held accountable but failed to elaborate what the penalties against non-compliance would be.
“There is no scenario where social media companies will do the right thing so we’re going to force them to,” he said.
“Plainly, the companies will be required to comply with the new law and that will include penalties.”
Dutton said the matter required a bipartisan approach and called on Albanese to work with him toward a solution.
“We would be happy to work with the prime minister and the government to see the outcome here and send a very clear message that both sides of parliament stand united against the scourge of social media and its influences on young minds,” he said.
“Any impediments that are put in place that restrict young people from having access to social media will work, are effective,” he said in May.
“We want to respond positively to the requests from parents that we do something about this.”