Australia is on a collision course with US big tech. Could it cause Trump to turn on his ‘mate’? | Mark Kenny

New risks to a deftly managed personal relationship with Donald Trump have not slowed the Australian prime minister’s plans for a showdown with America’s all-conquering social media companies.

Anthony Albanese, who will rub shoulders with the US president and other world leaders in New York later this month at the UN general assembly, is pushing ahead with changes that would impose fines on big tech firms under a newly created “digital duty of care”.

“Just as we have basic safety standards for cars, toys or food, the duty of care applies basic standards for the online products we use every day,” said the minister for communications, Anika Wells, while releasing the draft legislation.

The change would also require social media platforms to provide users a guaranteed “opt-out” facility from the opaque algorithms that funnel polarising and harmful content to subscribers and expose them to carefully targeted advertising.

The government is calling it “empowering” for users, while critics are reaching for comparisons with communist China and using words like “Orwellian”.

Australia’s digital foray is being watched in Washington and Silicon Valley amid expectations it will stiffen the resolve of other countries to insulate their own polities from the wilds of disinformation, fakery and toxic political extremism.

Australia’s relationship with the US is routinely described as an enduring “mateship” based on strategically aligned interests as well as more basic cultural commonalities.

However, that amity will be tested if the famously tetchy Trump fixes on a new acronym for his Aussie “mate” – Make Albanese The Example.

Even so, it would not the be the first Trump-Musk-Zuckerberg irritant emanating from Australia.

These changes build on Australia’s world-first social media ban for under-16s, legislated in November 2024.

While only partially effective, the ban drew the ire of the Trump administration and the social media titans, all of whom favour the unregulated populist character of social media over the “elitist” variety.

And there’s the News Bargaining Incentive, which forces social media companies to strike deals with Australian media outlets or pay a 2.5% tax on their Australian advertising revenues.

Australia’s changes to the calculation of tax liabilities of these companies have also caused consternation inside the Trump administration, which remains hyper-alert to mechanisms it believes operate like tariffs in another form.

Albanese’s apparent resolve to clip the powerful US corporations marks an interesting contrast with the more supine posture he adopted recently when addressing the flagrant social harms of gambling.

There, he resisted majority public support for a phased advertising ban on online gambling, out of concern for the business models of mainstream broadcasters, and the major sporting codes.

Australia instead adopted partial restrictions on advertising during children’s viewing hours and limits on in-game gambling promotions.

The comparison suggests the Australian PM is more attuned to the special-interest arguments of domestic capital than to those of the foreign variety.

So far, reactions out of the US on the digital duty of care have been at officer-level, with the president yet to take to social media with his thoughts – although that is rarely far away.

On Wednesday, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said the Trump administration would raise its concerns with “trading partners”.

“President Trump has unequivocally warned trading partners against imposing digital services taxes, fines, and other forms of extortion on America’s leading technology sector”, Desai said.

But even within Australia, the social media changes have provoked furious free-speech hyperbole, with the opposition branding the duty of care as the manifestation of its “worst fears”.

The opposition’s communications spokesperson, Sarah Henderson, warned that the relevant minister would be armed “with unfettered powers to make any regulation into what she would describe as serious harm in the case of adults or harm concerning children”.

“Now, this means almost anything,” Henderson told the conservative-aligned News24 broadcaster.

“The government could shut down any content or material that they deem to be harmful.

“This is a very egregious breach of our freedom of expression, and we must fight this extremely hard.”

Pauline Hanson, the leader of the hardline One Nation party, depicted the proposed curbs on social media firms in even more extreme terms.

“Labor is copying the Chinese Communist Party’s censorship playbook,” Hanson fumed on Facebook.

Australia’s regulatory creativity, some elements of which are novel while others have been finessed from Europe, will ensure Albanese has plenty to talk about during the looming “summit season”.

Conversations with the US president, however, might be more problematic.