Australian government advancing plans for digital duty of care legislation
Guardii Analysis
The Australian government announced on 11 June 2026 that it is developing a digital duty of care framework requiring online platforms to proactively identify and reduce risks of harm, particularly to children, through ongoing risk assessments, mitigation measures and transparent reporting. The framework will be enforced by Australia's online safety regulator with penalties reaching up to 100 million Australian dollars for serious or systemic breaches. Draft legislation is expected later in 2026 with a 12-month transition period, designed to complement existing online safety laws by strengthening platform accountability and user protection across the tech ecosystem.
Risk assessment and transparent reporting measure what platforms are doing; real-time pattern detection stops harm as it unfolds. Guardii addresses the operational demand at the centre of a duty-of-care regime by identifying grooming escalation, sextortion tactics and CSAM distribution in children's direct messages the moment the conversation turns hostile, flagging the shape and seriousness of the exchange to a parent, school or the eSafety Commissioner without handing anyone a feed of what was said. Where the proposed Australian framework mandates ongoing mitigation, Guardii delivers continuous detection across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox, surfacing a child in acute distress to the adult authorised to act and enabling platforms subject to the duty to demonstrate that they identified and reduced the risk before the harm occurred.