An anonymous reader quotes a report from Agence France-Presse: Australia will ban children from using social media with a minimum age limit as high as 16, the prime minister said Tuesday, vowing to get kids off their devices and "onto the footy fields." Federal legislation to keep children off social media will be introduced this year, Anthony Albanese said, describing the impact of the sites on young people as a "scourge." The minimum age for children to log into sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok has not been decided but is expected to be between 14 and 16 years, Albanese said. The prime minister said his own preference would be a block on users aged below 16. An age verification trial to test various approaches is being conducted over the coming months, the centre-left leader said. [...] It is not even clear that the technology exists to reliably enforce such bans, said the University of Melbourne's associate professor in computing and information technology, Toby Murray. "The government is currently trialling age assurance technology. But we already know that present age verification methods are unreliable, too easy to circumvent, or risk user privacy," he said. But the prime minister said parents expected a response to online bullying and the access social media gave to harmful material. "These social media companies think they're above everyone," he told a radio interviewer. "Well, they have a social responsibility and at the moment, they're not exercising it. And we're determined to make sure that they do," he said.

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Millions of Australians just got official permission to ignore their bosses outside of working hours, thanks to a new law enshrining their "right to disconnect." From a report: The law doesn't strictly prohibit employers from calling or messaging their workers after hours. But it does protect employees who "refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact or attempted contact outside their working hours, unless their refusal is unreasonable," according to the Fair Work Commission, Australia's workplace relations tribunal. That includes outreach from their employer, as well as other people "if the contact or attempted contact is work-related." The law, which passed in February, took effect on Monday for most workers and will apply to small businesses of fewer than 15 people starting in August 2025. It adds Australia to a growing list of countries aiming to protect workers' free time. "It's really about trying to bring back some work-life balance and make sure that people aren't racking up hours of unpaid overtime for checking emails and responding to things at a time when they're not being paid," said Sen. Murray Watt, Australia's minister for employment and workplace relations. The law doesn't give employees a complete pass, however.

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Australia's competition regulator has announced that it will closely monitor domestic air fares between metropolitan cities after local carrier Regional Express withdrew from the market last month as it entered voluntary administration. From a report: Rex is the second domestic airline to take that route this year. Low-cost airline Bonza was the first. It said in April it had suspended flights, and would assess the viability of its business. The collapse of Bonza and the withdrawal of Rex between metropolitan cities means that no domestic route had more than two competing airline groups as of July, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The government of Australia's most populous state ordered all public employees to work from their offices by default beginning Tuesday and urged stricter limits on remote work, after news outlets provoked a fraught debate about work-from-home habits established during the pandemic. Chris Minns, the New South Wales premier, said in a notice to agencies Monday that jobs could be made flexible by means other than remote working, such as part-time positions and role sharing, and that "building and replenishing public institutions" required "being physically present." His remarks were welcomed by business and real estate groups in the state's largest city, Sydney, who have decried falling office occupancy rates since 2020, but denounced by unions, who pledged to challenge the initiative if it was invoked unnecessarily. The instruction made the state's government, Australia's largest employer with more than 400,000 staff, the latest among a growing number of firms and institutions worldwide to attempt a reversal of remote working arrangements introduced as the coronavirus spread. But it defied an embrace of remote work by the governments of some other Australian states, said some analysts, who suggested lobbying by a major newspaper prompted the change. "It seems that the Rupert Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph in Sydney has been trying to get the New South Wales government to mandate essentially that workers go back to the office," said Chris F. Wright, an associate professor in the discipline of work at the University of Sydney. The newspaper cited prospective economic boons for struggling businesses. The newspaper wrote Tuesday that the premier's decision "ending the work from home era" followed its urging, although Minns did not name it as a factor. But the union representing public servants said there was scant evidence for the change and warned the state government could struggle to fill positions. "Throughout the New South Wales public sector, they're trying to retain people," said Stewart Little, the General Secretary of the Public Service Association. "In some critical agencies like child protection we're looking at 20% vacancy rates, you're talking about hundreds of jobs." Little added that government offices have shrunk since 2020 and agencies would be unable to physically accommodate every employee on site. Minns said the state would lease more space, according to the Daily Telegraph. Further reading: Ordered Back To the Office, Top Tech Talent Left Instead, Study Finds

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