Institute of Public Affairs

“#FixOurFeeds, the campaign widely credited with pushing the federal government to
adopt a digital duty of care model has received millions of dollars from the federal
government. The Prime Minister claims the digital duty of care is a bottom-up movement,
when it is clearly astroturfed by his own government,” said Jordan Abou-Zeid, Research
Assistant at the Institute of Public Affairs.


Analysis of filings with the Australian Charities and Non-for-profits Commission has revealed that Teach Us Consent, the parent organisation of the #FixOurFeeds campaign received $2,670,156 in government funding across the 2024 and 2025 financial years. Some 86% of its revenue comes from government.

At a press conference unveiling the Digital Duty of Care, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said: “I do want to give credit to the organisations who are represented here because this is an example of change from the bottom-up. My government listening and acting.”

Bullshit, to put it into the Australian vernacular.

“An unpopular government, seeking to alter the means of online communication in their favour whilst funding NGOs to imply grassroots public support shows the digital duty of care is nothing but a cynical political exercise,” said Mr Abou-Zeid.

A new IPA research note, authored by Dr Andrew Bushnell and released this month, analyses
the Digital Duty of Care concept and identifies five reasons it will enable government censorship of the internet

The federal government’s proposed Digital Duty of Care is conceptually flawed and will necessarily impinge on Australians’ rights to free speech, association, and political participation.

IPA analysis of the available government materials outlining the proposal identifies five dangers inherent in the Digital Duty of Care:

  • The meaning of “serious harms” is vague, subjective, and will expand over time.
  • The duty to eliminate intangible harms will allow the government to smuggle its abandoned
    misinformation laws in through the backdoor.
  • The wide and uncertain scope of the duty will incentivise over-compliance by regulated companies.
  • Compliance with the Digital Duty of Care will require increased surveillance of internet users.
  • The duty will be enforced by the unaccountable Office of the eSafety Commissioner.

The Digital Duty of Care poses an inherent risk of legal, non-harmful speech and information being censored, simply because the duty covers a non-specific and changeable set of harms.


The concept is premised on a misleading analogy between internet regulation and regulation pertaining to physical safety, like workplace health and safety law or trade practices law. This approach misses what is distinctive, and most important, about regulating the internet: the object of the regulation is not a physical environment, but a place shaped by, and used for, the thought, expression, and interactions of human minds.

The proposed Digital Duty of Care appears to be a stealthy and steroidal version of the federal government’s failed 2024 bill to regulate so-called misinformation and disinformation online.


The vague concept of “harm” provides a direct connection between the two proposed attempts to police speech on the internet. The misinformation/disinformation draft bill purported to restrict the dissemination of information that was “false, misleading, and deceptive” and “likely to cause or contribute to serious harm” (whether done with or without intent to deceive). In that bill, “harm” was defined broadly to include “hatred against protected groups; disruption of public order or society; harm to Australian democratic processes or government institutions; harm to Australians’ health; environmental harm; and economic or financial harm”.

As noted, the Digital Duty of Care uses the same regulatory architecture, built around the concept of harm.

“Safety by design” will give eSafety extraordinary reach inside companies.

It should be noted that the current eSafety Commissioner, Julia Inman Grant, is closely aligned and entwined with the World Economic Forum.

Only in Australia would a government appoint as the nation’s Chief Censor a person so closely affiliated with one of the world’s most controversial and reviled institutions, the WEF.

To read the full report go HERE.