Child online safety organisation, Makes Sense, has
welcomed the Government’s introduction of the Online
Safety (Minimum Age and Child Safety Risk Assessment) Bill,
describing it as a significant and long-overdue step toward
protecting New Zealand children from serious online sexual
harm.
The Bill would require social media platforms to
take reasonable steps to keep under-16s off their services,
mandate regular child safety risk assessments, and establish
a dedicated online safety regulator within the Department of
Internal Affairs, with penalties of up to 10 percent of
global revenue for platforms that fail to
comply.
Makes Sense co-founder Holly Brooker says the
organisation welcomes the move. “We are pleased to see the
National Party announce this Bill, with support from the
Labour Party. These are important steps being taken together
to invest in a systemic approach to online safety, with an
Online Safety Bill and an enforcement mechanism to regulate
platforms. We acknowledge Minister Stanford’s leadership in
bringing this before Parliament, and it is heartening to see
our two largest parties find common ground on a response to
online safety that our tamariki have needed for many, many
years.”
Co-founder Jo Robertson says, “For a decade,
successive governments have said they want to address online
harm to children. It is good to finally see firm action, and
to see National and Labour working together. This is a
social issue that demands a strong, bipartisan
response.”
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The House should give the Bill
it’s First Reading urgently, before
Christmas.
“The evidence is now impossible to
ignore,” said Makes Sense co-founder and researcher Jo
Robertson. “Grooming, sextortion and the creation of child
sexual abuse material have risen steeply. It takes a
predator an average of eight minutes to bond with a child,
and reports of online child sexual exploitation in New
Zealand have quadrupled in five years”.
“Waiting
until after the election means another 6 months of delay in
the protection of children from real harm. We urge the
Government to prioritise this now”.
Drawing on
co-authored report, ‘The Digital Sexual Landscape’,
Makes Sense points to a body of evidence that says urgent
action must be taken:
- New Zealand Police reports
of online child sexual exploitation have quadrupled over
five years (NZ Police, OIA 2025) - Reports of
sextortion to Netsafe rose 237 percent in a single year, to
1,707 reports in the year ended 30 June 2023 (Netsafe Annual
Report, 2023). - At least one in ten young people
experience online grooming – and it takes a predator an
average of eight minutes to build a bond with a
child. - Globally, self-generated child sexual abuse
material involving 7-to-10-year-olds has risen 1,816 percent
since 2019 (IWF, 2025)
Strength in
collaboration
Membership with the Global Online
Regulators Network will strengthen any enforcement action,
through collaboration with other comparable
countries.
“Governments around the world are
reaching the same conclusion: regulation is necessary,”
said Brooker. “These platforms have knowingly allowed
horrific harms to occur because it is more profitable to
look away. When a market causes harm to children to this
extent, for this long, it is entirely appropriate, in fact
it is the Government’s job, to step in and implement
regulatory frameworks and to develop a robust systemic
approach to the prevention of harm”.
Makes Sense
acknowledges the many years of work by researchers,
clinicians, educators, parents, and young people around the
motu who have advocated for young people to be safe
online.
Makes Sense again, welcomes this Bill and
extends gratitude to National and Labour for their support
of this Bill, and the background work with the Inquiry into
Online Harm and Select Committee leading up to this Bill.
Makes Sense is urging every party in Parliament to get
behind it to ensure vulnerable tamariki are safe online from
harm. Makes Sense welcomes any opportunity to work with the
Government to develop a robust online safety framework to
prevent online harm.
Notes:
About
Makes Sense: Makes Sense is an Aotearoa New Zealand
child online safety organisation co-founded by Holly Brooker
and Jo Robertson, advocating for the protection of children
and young people from online harm with robust policy
approaches and platform
accountability.
Statistics: Figures
are drawn from The Digital Sexual Landscape: Children and
Young People in Aotearoa (Makes Sense / Safe Surfer / The
Light Project, 2025). Additional sources include NZ Police
(2024), Netsafe (2023), the Internet Watch Foundation (2023)
and the International Centre for Missing & Exploited
Children
(2024).
