From CommsDay of 11 September 2026
Our Story of the Week is an article that was published in CommsDay today on the ongoing public (and Paliamentary) discussion about the Federal Government’s Digital Duty of Care draft legislation. The draft legislation forms part of a series of amendments to the Online Safety Act. The Exposure Draft was published on Tuesday 8 September, and the debate has taken many turns since then, including concerns about how the decisions about harmful consequences of online content might be determined and who will make them. All sorts of extreme scenarios about potential Ministerial misuse have formed part of the discussion. The debate has also turned to the nature of algorithms that shape the information that is delivered to individual users of social media and other online platforms. As the article below indicates, the Exposure Draft only incidentally refers to algorithm transparency and placing some level of algorithm control in the hands of individual users. That will be one of the many amendments that can be expected before the Government finalises the legislation for passage through Parliament later in the year. The digital duty of care is a very important subject with far-reaching consequences, and that is why we have chosen to republish the article here. You can bet on this being a very big story for a very long time, and we will seek to give it attention both here on the website and in the Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy.
If you want to see the Exposure Draft text in detail, go to https://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/bill/osadocb2024407/ For the policy statement from the Government go to https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/department/media/publications/digital-duty-care-australia-developing-duty-care-framework-online-services-used-australians
Wells promises algorithm disclosures as Opposition rejects digital duty reforms
Communications minister Anika Wells has committed to strengthening the proposed Digital Duty of Care by requiring digital services to disclose details of their algorithms and content-moderation systems to the eSafety Commissioner.
In a letter to Greens communications spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young dated 10 September, Wells said the government would add an obligation covering services with algorithmic feeds, including social media platforms, search engines and AI applications.
Providers would be required to disclose “the logic and decision-making architecture” of systems used to select, rank, recommend, promote or demote content, accounts or search results.
They would also have to provide information about the logic, rules, parameters and error rates of systems used to moderate content and accounts, including the circumstances triggering human review.
The commitment would expand the exposure draft of the Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill released on Tuesday, which would impose a positive duty on online service providers to take steps to protect Australians from harm on their services.
The draft applies across a broad range of digital services rather than social media alone, potentially covering messaging, search, app distribution, hosting, generative AI and internet carriage services. It would require providers to assess risks arising from the design and operation of their services, implement proportionate safeguards and comply with enforceable codes and standards overseen by eSafety.
The exposure draft also includes the government’s “My Feed, My Way” measure, under which social media services would be required to give users aged 16 and over an option to receive content from accounts they follow without algorithmic recommendations.
Wells said information supplied under the proposed disclosure requirement would not be made publicly available but could be used by eSafety to support compliance and enforcement of the duty.
Approved researchers under the Online Safety Act would also be able to request and access the data directly from service providers.
The letter does not specify whether providers would have to make disclosures routinely or only in response to a request. It also does not explain how commercially sensitive information would be protected.
Wells said the reforms remained subject to advice from the eSafety Commissioner, legal and constitutional advice and drafting by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel.
The letter indicates negotiations with the Greens are underway following the release of the exposure draft.
Meanwhile, Wells used Question Time yesterday to attack the Opposition over its resistance to the government’s proposed online safety reforms.
“For the last 20 years, tech companies have been running unregulated, real-time user testing of their products on Australians,” Wells said.
“For the first time, Australia’s Digital Duty of Care will set basic safety standards for the digital services we use every day, just like we have for food, for cars and for kids’ toys.”
Wells said organisations including Headspace, the Butterϐly Foundation, PROJECT ROCKIT, the Alannah and Madeline Foundation, Teach Us Consent and the Australian Education Union had called for the reforms. “What did these leading national organisations hear today from the leader of the Opposition? No. No to your pleas,” she said.
The Opposition has argued that the exposure draft could enable political censorship and confer excessive discretion on the communications minister and eSafety Commissioner.
Wells rejected those concerns and accused the Opposition of standing in the way of basic online safety standards sought by community organisations and experts.
Grahame Lynch
IN TODAY’S COMMSDAY (Friday 11 September 2026)
Australian long-haul and DC connect telcos are poised to benefit from an AI-led demand surge, with NVIDIA estimating its local partnerships could generate up to 2GW of infrastructure activity by 2027.
Nokia is preparing to conduct local mobile tests in the upper 6GHz band later this month after obtaining a temporary scientific licence from the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
Communications minister Anika Wells has committed to strengthening the proposed Digital Duty of Care by requiring digital services to disclose details of their algorithms and content-moderation systems to the eSafety Commissioner.
Superloop has launched Kay, a new AI account assistant designed to help business customers, partners and managed services resellers self-manage their connectivity services.
AirBridge Networks has appointed Wavelink as its Australian distributor as it seeks to meet growing demand for deployable connectivity infrastructure across emergency services, mining, energy, health and agriculture.
NEXTDC is raising nearly $1.1 billion through a convertible notes offering to provide funding for its data centre development pipeline.
Telstra-owned Digicel PNG and Vodafone PNG have signed a tower-sharing licence agreement.
Apple has launched its long-anticipated foldable iPhone model, joining a segment currently dominated by Samsung and Huawei.
and in the AI Infra supplement:
Asia Society global president and former prime minister Kevin Rudd has urged Australia to become a substantial AI power in its own right, warning that dependence on foreign technology would weaken national resilience.
Transgrid has quadrupled its forecast for NSW data centre electricity demand over the next decade, warning that existing transmission capacity in Sydney is now largely committed and that major new connections will require developer-funded network upgrades.
New Zealand’s Labour Party would require large data centres to secure their own renewable energy and cover their grid connection costs if it wins the country’s general election on November 7.
Funds managed by Blackstone have invested US$5 billion in Crux AI, with the US-based AI infrastructure startup announcing that Google will provide tensor processing units, software and services to support its launch platform.
Escalating demand to build compute capacity resulted in a 182% year-on-year surge in revenues from IT systems and components inside data centres for the second quarter of 2026, says market watcher Dell’Oro Group.
Oracle is seeking proposals to develop up to 2GW of renewable energy in New Mexico to support its Project Jupiter data centre plan.
DigiCo Infrastructure REIT has completed the sale of its Chicago CHI1 data centre, with the sale of its LAX 1 and 2 facilities in the final stages of due diligence.
Google committed €13 billion (US$15.1 billion) to expand digital infrastructure in Finland over the next two years.
A day after Qualcomm and Amazon announced a partnership to develop their own artificial intelligence silicon, a report suggests Samsung and OpenAI have embarked on a similar initiative.
STMicroelectronics expects fibre-optic connectivity chips to generate about 80% of the more than US$2bn in AI data centre revenue it is targeting for 2027, highlighting the growing value of networking infrastructure surrounding accelerated computing.
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