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[Erica Stanford] This is personal.

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[David Seymour] I mean, it's a dog with fleas and it's dying before our eyes, is the social media ban, but there are better alternatives.

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Cabinet's own minute calls it "the start of a shift" in how New Zealand regulates the internet.

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B416 is run by business figures: co-chairs Cecilia Robinson of My Food Bag and Anna Curzon, formerly of Xero, with Zuru co-founder Anna Mowbray on the team. It calls itself "proudly non-partisan".

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In April 2025, it privately asked the Prime Minister for an election promise, Australia's model, and a regulator.

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Luxon replied within two minutes: "Great stuff. You sent to personal email?"

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Next morning, his office asked officials to "work something up".

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Then he connected B416's co-chair with his chief of staff: "I'm super excited about this work."

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Stanford had messaged them first: "I'm keen to be involved." Then she relayed an offer of advice on "all the things that will be fired at you from the opposition groups and how to combat it".

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When National announced a member's bill, Mowbray texted Luxon: a "pretty disappointed team… to not be going out united on Sunday".

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That Sunday, at B416's launch, it became Government work. 24 days from the aide-mémoire.

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Parliament's inquiry recommended what B416 asked for: a regulator with "a flexible mandate" to "make, or advise the Minister on" new rules, and to explore VPNs.

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[Grant McCallum] …but parents are somehow expected to navigate their way through privacy settings, parental controls, VPNs, whatever they are…

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Submissions had closed in July 2025. These proposals came months later, and were never put to the public.

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A retired judge: "No regulator in New Zealand's history has held such sweeping powers."

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The Government's bill: fines up to $40 million, or 10% of global turnover.

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And by regulation, the Minister could add any service that "displays… digital content".

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Asked in May if age checks would be universal:

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[Erica Stanford] We are going to have to have age verification because we're going to make sure that under-16s are not able to access social media for the best that we can, knowing that it is not a silver bullet and it will take time. I can't go into much more of the detail because I've still got one more Cabinet paper to come…

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Australia's Attorney-General's office had warned Internal Affairs that the privacy side "was significant".

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Asked for any analysis of age checks done on your own device, Internal Affairs held no documents.

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The Privacy Commissioner warned Cabinet that making all New Zealanders prove their age online "itself creates the risk of privacy harms".

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Asked whether a sixty-year-old would have to hand over ID:

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[Erica Stanford] As I've already mentioned, like you say, credit card details, your email, your phone account. [Reporter] Age of your account. [Erica Stanford] There's a whole range of things.

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The bill says ID alone isn't enough: platforms must offer another way, like a face scan. In Australia, if a platform flags you as under 16, it almost always offers a face scan to prove otherwise.

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Yoti told Internal Affairs that when Meta offers several methods, "over 80% of people choose age estimation". Australia's own trial found it least reliable near 16. And here, "there is no accreditation process."

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Sovereign leader Joshua Riley:

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[Joshua Riley] …you want to protect the kids, then you probably wouldn't just tell every platform from here to Zimbabwe that you can collect biometric information on our children and just make sure that people under 16 don't go on your platform. That's one of the worst things that you can do with child privacy.

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Checks that prove your age without revealing who you are exist. The inquiry encouraged them. The bill requires none.

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The bill's digital ID route runs through a law introduced under Jacinda Ardern. And Internal Affairs told Stanford a 2026 push on digital ID "could help lay the foundation" for age checks in 2027.

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Winston Peters:

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[Winston Peters] So you start here with a legitimate position and all very sudden it's changed into no longer 16-year-olds, it'll be 20-year-olds, it'll be 30-year-olds, it'll be all of us. They'll digitise your identity and nobody will be able to stop them if they're given a chance.

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Officials recorded Stanford's priority: "alignment with Australia where possible".

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[Catherine Wedd] Almost 5 million social media accounts was disestablished in the first few days, and it's been successful.

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Australia's own regulator: 81.5% of under-16s still on social media, from 85.9.

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Albanese: "there are still too many children on social media."

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His Labor government, its support slumping, is now going further: a digital duty of care.

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Mowbray had even forwarded Stanford an ACT newsletter warning that "blindly following Australians is never advisable".

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ACT and New Zealand First said no, so National turned to Labour. Seymour:

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[David Seymour] But certainly you wouldn't want it to become normal that, you know, a third of the government, two of the three parties disagree with something, and then they go it alone with Labour. I mean, there's not much point having a government on the right if your best friends are in Labour.

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Labour promises to "join Australia" with a "Digital Duty of Care" and "an independent online regulator". National's Cabinet had already agreed to develop both.

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Who decides what's harmful? Britain made 12,183 arrests in 2023 under laws against offensive messages.

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Here, the Health Ministry's disinformation team drafted a report likening a group's "references to protecting children" from vaccine harms to QAnon.

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Its own advisers had said a young person's decision to skip a second dose over myocarditis risk "is justified".

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[Christopher Luxon] The reality is we're not going to get through to first reading. We've got the RMA to do, we've got a lot of important bills to get out the door.

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[Erica Stanford] And if they had been this passionate about it weeks and weeks ago, we could have introduced it and had a first reading, but they buggered around and here we are and we're out of time.

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National and Labour both promise to bring it back.

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Cabinet calls it the start of a shift.