Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Throughout my time as the member for Canberra, the issues of cyber-safety, cyber-security and cyber-bullying have all been raised with me by members of my electorate again and again. I know that I have spoken in this chamber and in the House many times about the online scams that my own family members have been victims of—including my mother and my father-in-law. My father-in-law, immediately after my mother-in-law died, was racked with grief and was the victim of an online banking scam. So I am well and truly aware, both from my family's experience and the experience of people in my electorate, of cybersecurity issues and cyberbullying. I have been approached by parents who are concerned about their kids' actions; by young adults who are concerned about their own online presence; by older Canberrans who want to engage with the internet but are scared about the threats they might face; and by everyday men and women, boys and girls, young and old, who have been the victim of some form of attempted scam or phishing exercise. Cybersafety concerns us all and we can all very easily become victims.

That is why over the past few months I have been running a series of cybersafety forums in my electorate. These free community forums are designed to engage and inform the community about how they can be smarter and safer online. I held two pilot forums about a month ago, and they were a great success. I am holding three more in July, one targeting older Canberrans, one targeting parents—through school, through the P&C—and another targeting small business. They are all different audiences but quite often they have things in common in terms of their concerns about the cyberenvironment. But they also have their own specific interests and concerns. That is why I was very keen to hold these forums for these three target areas.

Contrary to what we have just heard—and I have the greatest respect for the former speaker for raising this issue of cybersecurity; I think it is really important that we talk about it often out in our communities—there has been a lot of work done in the school space, the space for young people. But I felt that there was a gap in the market for small business, for older Canberrans and for parents, which is why I am holding these forums. The presenter at these forums is Alastair MacGibbon, from the Centre for Internet Safety at the University of Canberra. Alastair is an internationally respected authority on cybercrime, including internet fraud, consumer victimisation and a range of internet safety issues. He has worked in Washington for the AFP and other security agencies. He has worked in the region. He is an incredibly well-respected authority. I am very lucky to have him help the people in my electorate to navigate the maze of online security. I thank him for his time in helping the people of Canberra to deal with these issues.

In the forums I have held to date, Alastair has given some pretty frightening examples of ordinary Australians who have been the victim of online scams. I was really saddened to hear that the most common type of scam is a romance scam. We have all heard the story: you meet someone online; you email for a couple of months and everything seems perfect, but unfortunately your new loved one lives overseas, so you send them some money for a plane ticket; however, on the day of their flight something goes wrong—a family member of theirs is in an accident and for some reason their insurance will not cover it—so you send them more money for medical costs. Then you never hear from them again.

Alastair provided many examples of these romance scams that exist. There was an extraordinary one in The Australian a few weeks ago. A physics professor at a US university is in jail in South America for some extraordinary romance that he has been involved in. Things became very unstuck for him. You hear about these sorts of scams—of that proportion but also of a more general nature, where people are ripped off for money. It really does highlight how predators play on the vulnerabilities of people who are looking for love. It is just tragic. It is exceptionally cruel.

Alastair also told the incredibly sad story of a beautiful young Australian girl, Nona Belomesoff. Nona was an 18-year-old animal lover who thought she had been offered her dream job working with the New South Wales Wildlife Information and Rescue and Education Service via Facebook, but instead she was lured to her death. Nona's heart-wrenching story is the very worst kind of story, but we can all learn something from her cruel and unnecessary death, and that is that we need to be smarter online and we need to teach our kids to be smarter online.

Having run my own small business, I know that cybersafety for small business owners is a particular concern. Often, when you are running a small or micro business, you are the jack-of-all-trades. You are managing every aspect of your operation. Quite often, the IT security reminders are put to the bottom of the in-tray or the bottom of the jobs-to-do list because you are so busy marketing yourself or out meeting new clients or delivering jobs. However, if you are not equipped with the appropriate skills and knowledge to manage cyberthreats, it is a difficult task to face and that is why I have designed my forums for these small-business groups.

The internet has the capacity to transform this country. Through the internet, the vastness of our land will no longer be a barrier to education, to health, to community and to culture. That is why this government is investing in the National Broadband Network. However, with expanded opportunity comes expanded risk. Cybersafety is likely to be an issue that we must face well into the future. I am really pleased with what the government is doing on this front. We are taking this issue seriously.

We are delivering a $125.8 million cybersafety plan to combat online risk to children and to help parents and educators protect children from inappropriate material and content while online. This list is incredibly long in terms of what we are doing on that front as part of this plan, but I would just like to take the time to go through some of the measures. These include: funding for cybersafety support, education and awareness-raising initiatives and law enforcement. We have provided funding for the expansion of the AFP's Child Protection Operations team to detect and investigate online child sex exploitation. This includes funding for 91 additional AFP officers. This has resulted in a total of 316 offenders being arrested and summonsed for 840 child sex offence charges since mid-2009.

Funding has also been provided to increase the capacity of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions to ensure that prosecutions are handled quickly, and it has also been provided for education and awareness-raising resources through the ThinkUKnow program. I was involved in the launch of this program with Canberra Grammar a few years ago. This program assists parents and children to deal with the risks posed by online predators.

Funding has been provided to develop and maintain online tools, like the Cybersafety Help Button and the Easy Guide to Socialising Online websites, and we have provided funding for the Australian Communications and Media Authority's Cybersmart program. There is a whole website called www.cybersmart.gov.au. It is a national cybersafety and cybersecurity education program.

In addition, we have provided $3 million to The Alannah and Madeline Foundation for a national plan for its e-smart cybersafety initiative, and following the success of this pilot e-program—which has been delivered to 1,600 schools—the Victorian government has announced funding for its own program, and the Queensland government has too. The Alannah and Madeline Foundation are discussing similar rollouts of this program with other state education departments.

To support the take-up of the National Safe Schools Framework, we have also committed about $4 million towards the development of new resources for school communities. Part of this plan is also the funding of the National Cyber Security Awareness Week, which this year ran from 20 to 24 May. The awareness week is a partnership with industry, community organisations and all levels of government. For this year's awareness week, around 1,400 organisations, including 700 schools, partnered with the government to deliver cybersecurity and cybersafety messages around Australia.

I know that there are a number of programs rolling out in my electorate. There are pilot programs at Wanniassa School, programs at Canberra Grammar and programs right throughout the electorate specifically designed for students. I am focusing on small business, parents and older Canberrans. Cybersecurity is a collective responsibility and it is shared by all of us who use the internet. It is important that we all take measures to protect ourselves online.

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