Australia's eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman-Grant has filed a lawsuit against Telegram in the Federal Court of Australia. She says the platform failed to remove terrorist material, including video of the 2019 Christchurch mosque shooting, the May 2022 Buffalo shooting, ISIS-related content, beheading videos, and terrorist execution footage (BBC; Nine).

The case was filed on July 30, 2026. It asks for penalties of up to A$54.6 million (£28 million, US$38 million) for breaking the rules under Australia's Online Safety Act. That law gives the eSafety Commissioner the power to require online platforms to remove harmful content and report on what they are doing to keep users safe (BBC).

The eSafety agency first started looking into what Telegram was doing about terrorist and extremist material in March 2024. According to Inman-Grant, there were "five very difficult months of unresponsiveness" before the platform started talking to the regulator (BBC).

In February 2025, eSafety fined Telegram nearly A$1 million (US$640,000) for missing a deadline to report on its safety measures by more than five months (eSafety; Reuters). Telegram then asked the Federal Court to review the reporting requirement but dropped the case before it was decided (eSafety court documents).

The reporting requirement is not just for Telegram. eSafety has sent similar notices to Google, Meta, Twitter/X, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Reddit, asking each to report on their safety measures (eSafety). Telegram is the one that has now escalated to a full lawsuit.

The commissioner says Telegram's own rules did not ban pro-terror material. She also says the platform left terrorist execution and mass shooting videos online for weeks after people reported them (SMH). The specific content includes the Christchurch mosque shooting video, the Buffalo shooting video, and videos of terrorist executions and beheadings (BBC; Nine).

A Telegram spokesperson said the platform rejects the allegations and will fight them in court (BBC).

The Albanese Government has also spoken out. An official statement from the Department of Infrastructure, posted July 30, 2026, welcomed the eSafety Commissioner's action against Telegram (minister.infrastructure.gov.au).

Inman-Grant also said the eSafety agency could ask the Federal Court to block Telegram entirely in Australia, though she noted those powers have never been used (BBC).

Reuters reported on the legal action on July 29, 2026, in a dispatch authored by Alasdair Pal (Reuters).

The broader context here matters for anyone following how governments regulate online platforms. Australia's Online Safety Act gives the eSafety Commissioner powers that are among the widest in any democratic country: sending reporting notices, issuing fines for not responding, and ultimately asking a court to block a service entirely. You can think of it as a staircase of enforcement steps, each one more serious than the last, with the top step being the power to shut a platform down in the country altogether.

The fact that Telegram initially challenged the reporting notice in court and then dropped it suggests a legal strategy that may now shift to defending against the actual allegations rather than questioning whether the regulator has the right to ask.

The government's decision to issue a public statement of support is also notable. It signals that this is not just a regulator acting alone but an enforcement action backed by the government, which could raise the stakes for any platform thinking about not following Australian law.

The case will now turn on whether the Federal Court agrees with eSafety's view of what Telegram is required to do under the Online Safety Act, and whether the platform's failures, as alleged, are serious enough to warrant penalties. The A$54.6 million maximum fine, the mention of unused service-blocking powers, and the government's public support all point to a test case with implications well beyond Telegram's operations in Australia.