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'The coalition committed $10 million towards an online safety for children policy.': Malcolm Turnbull. Photo: Rob Homer

Since the Coalition took power in September, Malcolm Turnbull has valiantly played the happy Communications Minister - uninterested in higher office, perfectly content plugging copper into Labor's national broadband network and axing redundant legislation. On Wednesday, the Abbott government will hold its first ''repeal day'', with Turnbull overseeing about half of the 8000 repeals.

But there's a fly in Turnbull's deregulation soup. If you want to make the loquacious free-marketer go quiet, ask him about his understudy Paul Fletcher's plan to introduce a new ''children's e-safety commissioner'' with the power to force social media sites to take down content deemed harmful to children.

Celebrated by anti-bullying groups, the policy is strongly opposed by social media companies, telecommunications firms and newly appointed Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson.

The idea emerged from the Coalition's online safety working group, set up by Tony Abbott in opposition, which travelled around the country to talk to parents, students and teachers about cyber bullying.

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Victorian Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie, a member of the group, says she was disturbed to learn about a Bendigo Facebook page, ''Benders root rater'', which judged the sexual performance of teenagers as young as 13.

''The men involved in that site eventually have been sentenced, or received suspended sentences, but that was a year after the page went viral.''

Fletcher, chairman of the working group and now parliamentary secretary for communications, says: ''Twenty or 30 years ago, if you were bullied at school, you could at least go home and feel safe That's not the case any more. All the major sites have complaint schemes but the feedback we got was that, when people report problems, the experience is not always what they want it to be.''

Fletcher's solution is to appoint an official with the power to issue ''rapid removal'' orders if large social media companies refuse, or are too slow, to remove material deemed harmful to someone under 18. The government is also considering creating a new Commonwealth cyber-bullying offence.

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Liberals split over plan for cyber-bully pulpit