Albanese loves to ban things. But PM, your prohibition fixation’s not working

One slogan summed up the spirit of the 1968 youth uprisings in France: it is forbidden to forbid. It was the essence of the ’60s and ’70s, which birthed protest chic and a culture of transgression. The young left demanded liberation. Then they grew up. And thought better of it.

The Albanese government loves to take freedoms away. This week, it’s been trying to ban what it calls “hate speech” – though the draft bill was defined so broadly you may as well leave off the modifier. Last month, it banned social media for under 16s. The year before, recreational vapes.

But to the prime minister’s great chagrin, Australians aren’t letting themselves be treated like children. And that includes the children.

The report card on the vapes came in last year. Amber Shuhyta, who heads up the government’s fight against illegal puffing, estimates that 95.7 per cent of the e-cigarette market is now illicit. Recreational vaping remains popular. What’s more, despite millions spent on anti-smoking ads, real cigarettes are “cool” again. But in Australia, the price of legal cigs is through the roof due to government taxes. So now, a bit over half of all smokes consumed here are illegal. The tsarina of nicotina estimates that it’ll go up if smoking rates increase.

It’s a case study of government failure. Unless you’re an economist looking for a real-life example of how the Laffer Curve works, in which case it’s pretty much perfect. The theory predicts the revenue taken in from a tax will reach a peak, after which it declines because the behaviour has been discouraged. People make different choices. Applied to income and company tax, the apex of the Laffer Curve is the point at which individuals and companies either find a way to minimise their taxes or choose not to work or produce anything further. Government revenue plummets back down.

Now we know what happens when it’s applied to recreational substances: an illegal market. Servicing that market, organised crime. With links to international terrorism. Head of product and logistics at the Not-Your-Nanna’s-Winnies Co, Kazem Hamad – the kingpin of Australia’s multibillion-dollar illicit nicotine trade, accused of controlling a network of violent thugs who firebomb businesses and gun down rivals – was arrested in Iraq just a couple of days ago. Hamad is known for his connections to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

So now the government’s addiction to increasing doses of tobacco excise has reached a point at which it’s costing the state money through lost revenue, coupled with a rising law enforcement and terror-monitoring bill. Meanwhile, consumers are still satisfying their cravings.

The social media ban for under 16s is proceeding with similar aplomb. On Friday, the eSafety Commission boasted that platforms had removed about 4.7 million accounts held by under 16s in order to comply with the law. The government has declined to release a breakdown of the figures. Meta, however, offered up that it has removed 544,052 accounts.

According to Meta’s claims, 173,000 children had Facebook accounts, which just seems off. The place is a wasteland these days, occupied mainly by over 60s. Meanwhile, most of the 13-year-olds I know identify as 25 online and remain unaffected. When challenged, they condescendingly point out that it would be stupid to hand your real details to a big tech platform. Touché, kids, touché. Maybe the social ban has delivered us an IQ test at scale.

The clue that all was not well with the social media ban was published a few days earlier. Digital communications academic at the University of Sydney Timothy Koskie wrote a tortured defence of the policy for the ABC website, claiming the ban could be said to be working even if it’s found not to be actually working. The article is full of caveats and squishy language. The age restrictions rollout has been “cautious rather than dramatic”. It has relied on “standard-setting and public communication rather than hard enforcement” (that is, it’s up to parents to set boundaries for their kids – same as it ever was). But, and here’s the rub, “the hardest question to answer after one month is whether the ban is improving safety or simply moving risk elsewhere”.

The greatest success of the ban, according to Koskie and the government, is that it’s “started a conversation” and sparked the interest of other ban-fetishists. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is said to be interested in trying it himself. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has lavished it with praise.

One thing we know it can’t, and hasn’t, done is stop kids from being exposed to online algorithms. Doomscrolling is still doable, even without an account.

Which reveals the real flaw in Al-ban-ese’s ban-happy approach. Rather than set out with a clear objective, his government likes to reach straight for the bluntest tool in the bureaucracy. Instead of reducing the harms associated with smoking or vaping, making them more expensive and inaccessible has simply shifted consumption to illegal replacements of questionable quality and strength. Instead of making social media a less harmful place – for kids and adults alike – by demanding social media companies allow us to opt out of the algorithm or by making its workings more transparent, the government is rewarding workarounds. Parents who pay attention know this; who knows in what wildernesses unsupervised tweens are meandering?

Now the prime minister is wielding his banning cudgel again, trying to ram through a hate speech law so poorly drafted that it’s created (oh, delicious irony!) a moment of the unity and social cohesion he’s been hoping for, as all sides of politics gang up to defeat it.

It is time Albanese’s closest advisers took him aside and reminded him of the wisdom of the 1968 rebellion. Prime minister, the bans aren’t working for either you or the nation. Pull on an old band T-shirt to remind yourself that it is forbidden to forbid.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is an independent insights and advocacy strategist. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.

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