Online harm report a flawed call for powerful new regulator – David Harvey
A disciplined instrument for scrutinising policy before the Government acts. At its best, it weighs evidence, tests competing claims, and recommends only what the facts can support.
The education and workforce select committee’s final report on online harm to young New Zealanders, released on March 5, 2026, is not such an inquiry. It is a document that reached its conclusions first, assembled selective evidence later, and now urges the Government to act urgently on proposals that range from unworkable to dangerous. The report should not be refined or revisited. It should be rejected outright.
The committee’s central premise – that online harm to young people is “severe” and demands “urgent” intervention – is asserted repeatedly but never demonstrated.
The inquiry relied on 400 written submissions and 87 oral presentations, almost all from a self‑selected group predisposed to view online harm as a crisis. No epidemiological research was commissioned. No attempt was made to measure prevalence across the youth population or to balance risks against the well‑documented benefits of online participation.
The committee itself acknowledged in its interim report that empirical research should precede policy development, then proceeded to base its final recommendations almost entirely on anecdote.
This is not a minor oversight. It is a fundamental failure of method. The committee even calls for more longitudinal research – an implicit admission that the evidence required to justify its recommendations does not yet exist. Faced with an insufficient evidence base, a responsible committee would have waited or recommended cautiously.
Instead, it adopted the logic of Lewis Carroll’s Queen in Alice in Wonderland: “Sentence first – verdict afterwards.”
The Act minority view is blunt but accurate: the committee had a predetermined approach before hearing any evidence. The structure of the report confirms this, with conclusions announced early and evidence marshalled selectively to support them. The Government should not treat such a process as credible policy advice.
At the centre of the report is Recommendation 3: the creation of an independent national regulator for online safety. As described, this body would wield unprecedented authority over content, algorithms, platform design, age verification, enforcement and even potential restrictions on VPN use. It would be empowered to make secondary and tertiary legislation and to compel private companies to disclose proprietary systems. No regulator in New Zealand’s history has held such sweeping powers.
The committee acknowledges the risks to free expression and the burdens such a regulator would impose, but it recommends proceeding anyway – leaving all safeguards to be determined later by legislation that does not yet exist.
In any other policy domain, this sequencing would be considered constitutionally reckless.
The committee points to Britain’s Ofcom and Australia’s eSafety Commissioner as models, but glosses over the serious criticisms both have faced: overreach, opaque enforcement, disproportionate burdens on small platforms, and attempts to extend powers beyond constitutional limits.
When YouTube offered to share its direct experience with the Australian regime – information that might have illuminated these problems – the committee declined. That decision is telling. Evidence that complicated the predetermined narrative was unwelcome.
The report’s most politically charged recommendation – restricting social media access for under‑16s – is also its most intellectually indefensible. The committee openly admits it did not conduct a cost‑benefit analysis, claiming the Government has better access to information.
This is an abdication of the committee’s core responsibility. Age restrictions require age verification, which in turn requires identity disclosure to the very platforms the report deems untrustworthy.
Every New Zealander, not just minors, would need to prove their identity to participate in modern civic and social life online. The privacy implications are profound, yet the committee treats them as implementation details.
The committee also acknowledges that age restrictions can be easily evaded via VPNs, may push young people toward unregulated platforms, and could harm marginalised youth who rely on online spaces for support. None of these objections is resolved.
The Green Party’s minority view makes the obvious point: if harmful platforms and algorithms are the problem, the solution is to fix them – not to exclude young people from regulated spaces. Evidence from Australia offers no compelling support for age restrictions reducing harm rather than merely shifting it. A policy that displaces harm is not a solution; it is a gesture.
Perhaps the most alarming recommendation is the suggestion that the regulator explore ways to prevent young people from using VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) to bypass age restrictions.
VPNs are legitimate tools used globally for privacy, security, journalism, and business. The only countries that comprehensively restrict them – China, Russia, Iran, North Korea – do so to enable state surveillance. Enforcing VPN restrictions in New Zealand would require monitoring the internet traffic of all citizens.
Once such infrastructure exists, it rarely remains limited to its original purpose. That the committee could recommend even exploring this territory without a serious civil liberties analysis reveals how thoroughly its protectionist framing has displaced constitutional caution.
The report also calls for reviewing platform liability and potentially weakening safe harbour protections. This may sound like holding tech giants accountable, but in practice, it would devastate smaller platforms that cannot afford pre‑moderation of all content. Safe harbours exist to preserve the diversity of the internet. Eroding them would entrench the dominance of the very large platforms the committee claims to worry about.
A responsible report would have begun with systematic research, recommended only what the evidence supported, and treated rights to privacy, free expression, and anonymous access as foundational constraints.
It would have proposed narrow, proportionate measures – such as banning nudify apps or tightening enforcement of existing advertising rules – without constructing an open‑ended regulatory superstructure. It would have resolved the privacy implications of age verification before recommending it, not afterwards.
This report does none of that. It treats rights as inconveniences, surveillance as a tool, and urgency as a substitute for rigour.
The Government’s response, due in June, will determine whether these flawed recommendations become law. It should reject them, commission proper research, adopt only targeted measures justified by evidence, rule out VPN restrictions entirely, and conduct a genuine cost‑benefit analysis of age limits before legislating.
Select committee reports are advisory. This one has failed the standards of responsible governance. It should be rejected, and the work should begin again – with evidence first.
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