The federal government’s proposed ban of under-16s from social media accounts will not require all Australians to use its digital identity scheme, communications officials have said.

But the public servants were forced to admit this exclusion is not expressly stated in the relevant legislation.

The Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee held a short public hearing on Monday into the social media minimum age bill, as part of its whirlwind inquiry that has already come to an end.

The hearing heard from officials from the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts, who attempted to waylay the widespread and significant concerns surrounding the planned ban on children aged under 16 from using certain social media platforms.

The public servants said any methods to prove the age of social media users will not involve the use of myID (previously called GovID), and that the tech giants will be required to take steps to ensure users are not using virtual private networks (VPNs) to get around the ban.

One of the concerns surrounding the ban has been it will require all Australian social media users to provide documents of some sort to prove their age, and this could involve the federal government’s own digital identity offering.

The department’s first assistant secretary for digital platforms, Sarah Vandenbroek, told the hearing there was no connection between the government’s plan and the digital ID scheme.

“I know there have been questions raised in a few areas about whether there’s any linkage here to the government’s digital ID system,” Vandenbroek said.

“And to be clear, there is no linkage. That is not the intention.”

But when asked by Nationals senator Matt Canavan if this was expressly included in the legislation currently before parliament, department representatives admitted it was not.

“[There is] nothing in this law that says that,” deputy secretary James Chisholm told the hearing.

“[But] this is nothing to do with the digital ID.

“There’s no requirement for platforms to use the digital ID system to comply with the obligation.”

Sunita Bose, the managing director of tech industry association DIGI, had earlier told the committee that the government’s digital ID service could be used to prove the identity of social media users.

“To verifiably know whether someone is 14 or 40, young people and adults alike will need to take regular actions like providing an ID, an image of their face, or link to [myID],” Bose said.

“The community needs to be consulted on their willingness to provide more personal information every time they use one of these services.”

Despite giving only 24 hours for organisations and members of the public to give their thoughts on the planned social media age limit, the committee received more than 15,000 submissions on the matter.

VPN crackdown

Communications officials also said social media companies may be required to crosscheck posts made by users against where they said they lived, in order to ensure they were not using a VPN to sidestep the Australian age ban.

For example, a social media company may be able to tell that a child is posting from Australia if they post a photo from Bondi Beach, despite them having used a VPN to claim they were in a different country, a communications spokesperson said.

There was also a hint that the eSafety Commissioner may be supported in launching legal action against tech firms that don’t do enough to stop users from using VPNs.

“That comes back to questions of extraterritoriality and ensuring the commission continues to be supported in any litigation on that front,” Chisholm said.

Representatives from DIGI criticised the lack of information on what platforms will be included under the ban.

“The bill doesn’t make it clear who is in or out of scope… that is a really serious flaw in the bill, but it is absolutely unclear who is in or out, and we don’t know what criteria will be used to determine these exemptions,” DIGI policy director Dr Jennifer Duxbury said.

“The explanatory memorandum suggests that some services will be out of scope, but that will not occur until a future date, and that date is unknown.”