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Wednesday, 8 July 2026

National has briefed Labour on its proposed social media ban as it has failed to gain support from coalition partners for the policy, Stuff has learned.

It’s understood that a draft bill and paper was circulated to coalition partners two weeks ago and was proposed to go to cabinet committee last week.

However, a source has confirmed that after New Zealand First raised concerns about the paper and told National the bill would not have its support, the paper was removed from the agenda of the committee meeting.

Act has also consistently raised concerns about the bill and indicated it needed to change before it would support it.

Stuff understands Labour has recently seen a draft bill and has yet to discuss it as a caucus and take a position.

Three weeks ago, Education Minister Erica Stanford told Stuff the Government was in the final stages of considering its social media ban for under 16s, with the final Cabinet paper to be considered in the following couple of weeks.

And last week Prime Minister Christopher Luxon was adamant the government was pushing forward despite his Australian counterpart, Anthony Albanese, conceding his world-first laws had not yet been fully effective.

“We’re going to die trying to do something,” Luxon said.

Both New Zealand First and Act had expressed concerns about the potential ban from the beginning.

ACT had raised concerns about workability while New Zealand First was worried about the potential wider implication of introducing a digital government ID that everyone would need to access the platforms.

Both coalition partners were angered by reports on Tuesday morning the Education Minister was considering a ban on Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), something she and the Prime Minister have since denied.

“I can reject that outright. There's no plan to ban VPNs at all. I don't know where that reporting and where that story came from, but I can reassure you that's not the case,” Luxon said.

VPNs are one way under-16s have managed to evade the Australian ban, as they are the easiest way of disguising your country of origin when going online.

It’s understood a potential ban of VPNs was not covered in the cabinet paper, but questions about enforceability may have put the issue on the table.

Today when asked about the legislation, Luxon said the bill was still being drafted and still maintained it would come before cabinet for a discussion “shortly”.

Coalition dynamics and collective responsibility

While there have been instances of oppositions supporting government legislation, most recently Labour backing the India Free Trade agreement, this raises a slightly different prospect with a third of the cabinet not supporting the progression of the bill.

And here is where this gets constitutionally interesting.

Cabinet rarely votes on legislation - it operates on the basis of consensus being reached and once that consensus is reached, there is collective responsibility taken for the decision.

Where there are differing views of political parties inside a coalition government, “agree to disagree” clauses are drafted into agreements to allow governments to move forward with legislation but parties to express their differing position publicly.

However, the cabinet manual says that Ministers must implement the resulting decision or legislation, regardless of their position throughout the decision-making process.

While both coalition partners have invoked their “agree to disagree” provisions this term, Act over the firearms registry and New Zealand First over the India free trade deal it is yet to be tested in this coalition to have two partners opposing a piece of legislation and the government attempting to continue with it.

There are a few possible scenarios that could play out.

The paper could go to cabinet - it is the Prime Minister who sets the cabinet agenda - and two parties could invoke their “agree to disagree” clauses and send it off to the house to be introduced, debated and potentially supported by others.

It’s understood New Zealand First will not be using agree to disagree - it will be expressing no support for the bill.

This makes Luxon’s public statements about taking the issue to cabinet somewhat puzzling.

The most conventional scenario is the two coalition partners could voice their opposition to the bill in cabinet and not agree to disagree, effectively killing the bill.

Or, we could enter uncharted territory.

The two coalition partners could refuse to lend support to get it through cabinet, decline to invoke agree to disagree provisions, but the National party could try and push ahead anyway if they know they’ll have Labour’s support.

If Luxon were to attempt to push forward with introducing the government bill without the support of either coalition partner, this could amount to a major test of the consensus of cabinet and cabinet collective responsibility.

Stuff has sought clarity from the cabinet office as to whether this option could be pursued.

Alternatively, there is still a members bill on the order paper that National could try and progress the work through, effectively using that as a vehicle to adopt what its been working on in government.

National Party backbencher Catherine Wedd introduced the Social Media (Age-Restricted Users) Bill last year as her own member’s bill. It is not Government policy.

That bill was “paused” in May just before it was set to come up for its first reading in the house, with a spokesperson for Stanford saying at the time the bill was being put “on hold” and “is being deprioritised” as the government was progressing work which was broader than what that bill covered.

It wasn’t withdrawn completely - rather shelved to the bottom of the order paper and has a note on it saying “postponed until further notice”.

Dr David Wilson, the Clerk of the House of Representatives, confirmed that to get this bill back before Parliament for debate, the member in charge of the bill (in this case, Catherine Wedd) simply needs to give notice to the Clerk to bring the bill back up the Order Paper.

Wilson confirmed it would be placed at the back of the queue for members bills.