In New York, Mr Albanese was asked if the Trump administration’s comments undermined his fight against global tech giants on the world stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Not at all,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I’ll always stand up for Australia’s national interests, and the digital duty of care is something that we’ve foreshadowed for some period of time,” he said, referring to the US embassy’s intervention.<\/p>\n
“It’s not about government control, it’s about giving people back control over what they receive on their devices.”<\/p>\n
The draft legislation would require the tech giants to pre-emptively address harms and pave the way for giving users a choice to opt into or out of the algorithm.<\/p>\n
He stressed the government would “engage constructively” before finalising the legislation.<\/p>\n
“I hope the whole of parliament supports it. This should not be a partisan issue,” he said.<\/p>\n
![\"Albanese,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/aded54ac98c82643b99869694c457254.jpeg\")
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Anthony Albanese has hit back at criticism of his proposed social media reforms.\u00a0 (ABC News: Adam Kennedy)<\/p>\n
But Coalition frontbencher Andrew Bragg has echoed the US’s censorship concerns.<\/p>\n
“I think there is a risk of censorship. There is a risk of bestowing too much power onto unelected bureaucrats,” he told ABC Radio National today.<\/p>\n
The opposition has previously said the proposed changes<\/a> would give a “blank cheque for political censorship” and warned they posed a threat to free speech.<\/p>\n US slams Australian digital care bill<\/a><\/p>\n In an extremely uncommon move, the US government has publicly criticised an Australian government policy proposal.<\/p>\n Earlier, Mr Albanese spoke on the sidelines of the United Nations about protecting children in the age of AI.<\/p>\n In his address, he defended the proposed changes, saying this was an “inevitable next stage” the government had to take to protect people online.<\/p>\n “With misinformation, disinformation, with the increased polarisation that we’re seeing as well in the political system, people are moving away from the centre and more and more to the extremes, be they of the left or the right,” he said.<\/p>\n “And that is why we think that this is a very positive move that we are [putting] forward.”<\/p>\n Trump dismisses calls for AI guardrails<\/p>\n On the eve of the UN General Assembly, Australia was one of 22 countries to issue an urgent plea<\/a> for global guardrails to keep AI “under human control”.<\/p>\n They warned “the pace of development [of AI] could outpace our ability to manage emerging risks” and efforts to ring-fence it were failing.<\/p>\n The statement came in the weeks after a trio of tech leaders \u2014 Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and SpaceX’s Elon Musk \u2014 all backed a slowdown<\/a> in the pace of AI development.<\/p>\n Xi Jinping and Donald Trump will meet later this week to discuss AI.\u00a0 (Reuters: Evan Vucci)<\/p>\n Mr Trump has previously described dire warnings about the safety of AI as a “hoax”. The US and China are jostling for supremacy in the AI race.<\/p>\n![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/57b6fd8af78bce906b826a347241de44.jpeg\")
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