Last month, The Australian House committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs published a report regarding the potential for an online age verification system to access pornographic content.The committee proposed this system to be integrated with the existing ‘Digital Identity’ program, in an effort to “Protect the age of innocence”, as the report’s title puts it. According to the DTA, we can be assured that the ‘Digital Identity’ program “does not involve a unique identifier, nor does it allow tracking online activities.” The report already has support from the LNP and the Labor party, who’s stated that Labor “strongly supports” work to protect children from the harms of pornography.

To further discuss the implications of the report and the effects of pornography on young people, we were joined by Associate Professor Michael Flood from the Queensland University of Technology.