Michelle Anne Rowland is an Australian politician and lawyer. She has served as the Attorney-General of Australia in the second Albanese ministry since 13 May 2025. She is a member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and has represented the Division of Greenway in the House of Representatives since 2010.
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As communications minister in the Albanese government, Michelle Rowland championed a statutory minimum age for accounts on designated social-media platforms. The prime minister’s parliamentary announcement (opens in a new tab) records passage of the bill on 29 November 2024 and identifies Rowland among the government ministers responsible for the measure. The law did not make children personally liable for underage access. Instead, it placed a reasonable-steps obligation on platform operators and attached potential penalties for systemic breaches. This is a regulatory shift in accountability from individual households to technology companies. A parliamentary passage announcement is not the same as proven protection from online harms, and a legal age boundary is not evidence that every platform can accurately determine a user’s age without collecting sensitive personal information. Rowland's attributable contribution is public sponsorship and ministerial administration, within a collective cabinet and parliamentary process.