On 15 October 2026, POLITICO reported that Communications Minister Anika Wells is considering replacing Australia's single eSafety Commissioner with multiple commissioners when Julie Inman Grant's term ends in January 2027. Wells tied the idea to the resourcing a proposed digital duty of care would require and to rising complaint volumes. It is an idea under consideration, not a decision, and no legislation has been tabled to change the office's structure.
The strongest case for change
The argument for restructuring is serious. The eSafety Commissioner is a single statutory officer who handles child cyberbullying complaints, image-based abuse, adult cyber-abuse, illegal content, industry codes and now platform-wide systemic duties. ABC reporting on the minister's remarks says the duty of care bill would require every online service to run an annual risk assessment and would add obligations for platforms to take reasonable steps to protect children. One person cannot credibly be the final decision-maker on all of that. The work is also growing: MLex reported that the office received 3,406 cyberbullying complaints about Australian children in 2024–25, a 26 percent rise on the year before. Sharing the load across specialist commissioners could speed decisions, reduce key-person risk and make the regulator's expertise deeper than one individual can provide.
Where the single-commissioner model has real costs
The concentration of power in one person has also drawn legitimate criticism. The current Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, has held the post since 2017 and was reappointed in January 2022 for a further five years, and her office has repeatedly been at the centre of disputes about the reach of takedown powers. A single officer, answerable mainly to the minister who appoints them, makes high-stakes speech decisions with little internal challenge. Splitting the role could add the kind of internal checks that speech-sensitive regulation needs.
But a restructure is not automatically a safeguard. Three commissioners with the same broad powers are still three commissioners with broad powers. If the aim is better governance, the structure has to be paired with limits on what the office can do.
The enforcement picture shows where the pressure is
The enforcement record suggests the office already prefers informal pressure to formal process. According to the combined 2024–25 ACMA and eSafety annual report, as summarised in the public record on the office, eSafety issued four formal takedown notices for adult cyber-abuse material against 219 informal requests to platforms. Informal requests are fast and often effective, but they are harder to challenge, appeal or scrutinise. A multi-member body that decides on formal, reasoned grounds would be a better fit for speech-affecting decisions than a system that depends on a single officer's phone calls.
Risks of the proposed expansion
The duty of care is the reason the workload is growing. According to the ABC, the bill would require annual risk assessments from all online platforms and websites, including small businesses, although low-risk services would face minimal obligations. It also drops the earlier proposal for ministerial power to designate additional harms, which is a welcome narrowing. Even so, a blanket assessment duty creates compliance costs for small and emerging services that cannot match the legal budgets of the largest platforms. Regulators in other regimes have learned that risk-assessment duties tend to favour incumbents.
The same ABC report says Labor is considering a Greens proposal for a private right of action that would let individuals sue platforms, including through class actions. Wells argued this would spread enforcement beyond the Commissioner. That is a real alternative to growing the regulator, but it carries its own risk: private litigation without clear liability standards pushes platforms to over-remove lawful speech to avoid being sued. A proportionate design would pair any private action with clear, narrow definitions of harm and safe harbours for good-faith moderation.
What a good restructure would look like
First, any multi-commissioner model should put reasoning in writing. Formal decisions affecting lawful speech should come with published reasons and a clear route to merits review, so that internal division of labour becomes external accountability.
Second, appointments should be insulated from short-term ministerial preference. Staggered terms and a transparent selection process would help a multi-member body stay independent as governments change.
Third, resourcing should follow a scoped mandate, not precede one. Wells has linked the structural change to the resources the duty of care would need. The better order is to settle what the duty of care covers, test it against its costs for small services, and then size the regulator to that mandate. Building the institution first invites it to find work to fill the capacity.
Fourth, the government should publish the evidence. The complaint growth cited is real in at least one category, but complaint volume alone does not show how many complaints lead to meaningful harm reduction, or how many formal actions are taken. Reporting outcomes, not only intake, would let Parliament judge whether more commissioners are needed.
Bottom line
Sharing the Commissioner's functions across several people is a defensible response to a growing mandate, and it could be a net gain for accountability. But structure is not a substitute for limits. If the reform is paired with narrow harm definitions, reasoned and reviewable decisions, and a duty of care that does not load small services with fixed costs, it could improve Australia's online safety regime. If it only enlarges the apparatus, it will expand the regulator's reach without making its decisions any more accountable. Because the Senate inquiry into the duty of care bill is due to report before Parliament rises at the end of November, the next few weeks are when these questions should be put.