Australia Online Safety Act
Statute
Australia
· 2021
The Online Safety Act gives Australia's eSafety Commissioner takedown powers, Basic Online Safety Expectations and industry codes — and, since 10 December 2025, the Social Media Minimum Age obligation under Part 4A, which made Australia the first country anywhere to require platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent under-16s holding accounts. Penalties reach AUD 49.5 million, and the standard is deliberately technology-neutral: the platform must justify its method.
Horizontal regime. It binds companies by what they do with data, software or
customers, not by the sector they sit in. The industries below are where it creates
specific, additional duties — not the limit of who has to comply.
Regions
Industries
Each links to that industry as a scored cohort — so the question "how ready is this sector for the regime that governs it?" becomes one you can actually look at.