Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to speak to the report Highwire act: cyber-safety and the young, a very substantial report that I was proud to be involved with, as a member of the Joint Committee on Cyber-Safety. I commend upfront the chair of the committee, Senator Dana Wortley, and the deputy chair, Mr Alex Hawke, the member for Mitchell, for the great work that they and the entire committee did. This report shows us in no uncertain terms what most of us already know, which is that much more needs to be done to address online safety for children in Australia. It was quite scary hearing some of the submissions. The internet offers great opportunities for our young people, through new technologies and greater connection. The internet came into my life when I was an educator, a teacher, and it was a wonderful learning opportunity for a schoolteacher to be able to access online rather than hard-copy resources. I left teaching to become a lawyer and, going back to classrooms now as a member of parliament, I see a completely different experience, because the internet is obviously in everybody's home—and with the rollout of the NBN we are facilitating that. But this great resource, which can offer so much good, has a darker side, and that is what this report is about.

There are very significant risks to the safety and privacy of young people—and of any people, including older people. Maybe the many things we have done to cultivate older people having connections to the internet are good, but there is then the capacity for them to strike up a friendship with a friendly young man from Nigeria or the like. But the focus of this inquiry was young people. Anybody who has young kids knows how tech-savvy they can be. I have a six-year-old and a two-year-old. The two-year-old is not quite computer-savvy but, my goodness, the six-year-old is incredible. I am no particular technophile, but I have seen the problems that can develop when he is on a free game site. I get recommendations from people whom I trust and who understand the internet about games he can play, and even with these games the ads that pop up are easy and tempting to click on for someone whose morality is not fully developed—and I think morality is fully developed for men at about 30. For some, it takes a little longer! I can see how tempting it is for young people—particularly young men, I would suggest—to make the foolish decision to click on something on the screen, when who knows what could happen.

One of the hallmarks of this inquiry, I am proud to say, was its engagement with young people to find out from them what is happening at the coalface. Much of what we learned during this inquiry we learned directly from the experiences of young Australians. As much as the committee appreciated the submissions of the other stakeholders that we heard from, hearing from the young people was particularly useful. They told us how they used the technology, which was scary, their awareness of the risks and also, thankfully, what they do to keep safe. Obviously, young people do make crazy decisions, but the crazy things that I did as a 10-year-old are long forgotten by everyone except me and maybe my brothers and sisters. What can happen now for a 10-year-old, a 12-year-old or a 15-year-old is that they lay mines that will explode much later in their life—the photograph, the blog or the comment that can go around the world. In the prism of parliamentary life we can see that we have to watch what we say—that maybe we should not slip on a tutu or a set of fishnet stockings when we are out, because it could haunt us for the rest of our life. But the reality is that young people tweet and blog and put things on Facebook, and do not realise that they are laying mines that will explode for them much later on. The classic would be someone like Corey Worthington—it might have seemed like a good idea as a 16-year-old, but when he goes to a job interview down the track they may ask, 'Are you that Corey Worthington?' Young people may not realise or understand the consequences of what they do.

One of the things the committee did to inform itself was put out a survey and get as many people as possible to complete it—33,750 people completed the survey. Many of the committee's recommendations came from the information that those people provided. The committee travelled to MacGregor State School, which is a very large school in my electorate and is one of the best schools in Queensland. Its year 7 students were actually one of the first to take part in an online survey. I thank the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth, Peter Garrett, and the Queensland Minister for Education, Cameron Dick, for attending MacGregor State School, but I particularly thank the MacGregor State School students and teachers. The survey got a lot of media attention in my electorate. All the students, particularly Carmen Zhu, Jason Tang, Linh-Dan Pham and Matthew Borka, were incredibly forthright. I particularly mention Matthew Borka, one of the school captains. He is a slight young man with glasses, who talked about his cyber-bullying experience. He is very switched on. I think it is easier to be elected to the federal parliament than it is to become a school captain at McGregor State School. They have this whole interview and speechmaking process. His platform was basically about combating bullying, both cyber-bullying and physical bullying, so it was a perfect school for us to attend and hear his experience. In an article in the Southern Star, local journalist Angela Ranke said:

Linh-Dan Pham knows first hand what happens when you stand up to bullies. The brave MacGregor State School student said she spoke up when she saw one of her peers being bullied and it put a stop to the behaviour.

"I've helped someone who was being bullied by doing that and it really worked," she said.

"We should stand up for the person who is being bullied and go tell a teacher."

Linh-Dan’s approach has the full endorsement of Mr Garrett.

This was just one example that helps us to realise how the world has changed because it is so interconnected and because of the land mines that exist.

Some of the committee's recommendations are common sense but it is salutary to revisit them, particularly the first recommendation: that we look at the feasibility of assisting preschools and kindergartens to start early on cyber-safety—so my six-year-old would already have had some support in relation to a cyber-safety education program, hopefully. The recommendations include simple things like coming up with an agreed definition of cyber-bullying and having a cyber-safety student mentoring program, so that those who understand the internet a bit better or have good computers at home are able to educate those who do not.

Of particular concern, as an Australian, is that, while we have good laws and a good social contract with our internet companies, they sometimes transfer personal information overseas and that the information is dealt with on a contractual basis with the overseas entities rather than under our laws. Even small businesses in my electorate do this. It is important that we make sure that information transferred overseas is protected in a manner that is at least equivalent to that provided for under Australia's privacy framework. I am reasonably happy with the Australian legislation but I am obviously not too sure what goes on in Mumbai and other places.

Some national core standards for cyber safety education in schools are being developed. We need to work with the teachers, the education ministers and the states to make sure that we have a core understanding of what we need to do to make our schools safe and to come up with some acceptable use agreements so that rather than all 9,800 schools having to reinvent the wheel we can say, 'These are the core things that every student in every school should be able to accept as acceptable use.'

Teachers are coming from a range of professions now. I know that you, Acting Deputy Speaker Bird, were a teacher in a former life. There are a lot of mature age students coming in. They bring life skills, but do not necessarily bring the internet and cyberworld skills that we need. So we need to ensure that all Australian universities that provide teacher training courses ensure that cyber safety material is incorporated into the core units in their curricula—not done as a standalone unit but embedded into the process.

One of the other particular recommendations is that we have the Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy invite the consultative working group on cyber safety to negotiate protocols with overseas social networking sites such as Facebook in particular to ensure that offensive material is taken down as soon as possible. Obviously, if you have to put a phone call through to San Francisco or somewhere like that it can be a bit hard. Incredible damage can be done very quickly with Facebook and other social networking sites. Things can go around the world before they can be taken down.

They are some commonsense recommendations that I look forward to the government and other entities embracing. Obviously, these recommendations will go some way to making things safer. But the obvious fact is that safety starts at home. Schools and legislation and informed teachers all help but it is obviously at home where we can best educate our children about the dangers. Even if we are not a techno savvy person, we can still educate our children about commonsense approaches to the dangers. In closing, I want to again thank the committee chair, Senator Dana Wortley, for her efforts in driving this inquiry. I wish her well in her future endeavours, whatever they might be. I commend this report to the House.

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