The independent review examined the operation and effectiveness of the Online Safety Act 2021 and considered whether additional protections are needed to combat online harms, including those posed by emerging technologies.

The report makes 67 recommendations to strengthen Australia’s online safety laws, including changes to existing complaints schemes for those experiencing online harms, stronger penalties for non-compliance by online services, increased transparency requirements for online services, and changes to governance arrangements for the Office of the eSafety Commissioner.

There were four core goals of the review. 

1. To keep all Australians safer online.
2. To create the right incentives for platforms and other services to continually strive to make their offerings as safe as possible and not just when sufficient public pressure is placed on them.
3. To future-proof the Act.
4. To align with emerging international best practices. This should create savings for industry and hopefully more coordinated and timely action to deal with the problems we are seeing across the globe.

This report recommends the introduction of an overarching duty of care and a due diligence approach which would require all services to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harms. It would also bring with it a requirement that online services apply safety by design principles to the design of all new services and to any significant changes to existing ones.