Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Before the break I was reflecting on the point that social media was causing a lot of concern for a number of people, particularly its use as a tool to inflict bullying behaviour. Some of those stats are quite extraordinary. The University of New South Wales Social Policy Research Centre says that one in five of our nation's children between the years of 10 and 17 experience cyberbullying. Evidence shows that cyberbullying experienced by some young people leads to lower levels of connectedness, higher levels of loneliness and a feeling of less security at school. So it does have a big impact.

I earlier noted that Australia does not rank well in world standings when it comes to the degree to which young people and people generally are bullied via social media. There has been an admission—and I reflected very briefly on this—by some social media that they are not doing a good job. In fact, the CEO of Twitter—if I can use his rather florid and colourful terms—admitted that 'Twitter sucks at dealing with trolls' and agreed it is their fault. He said that in a memo to his staff. Dick Costolo, the CEO, to his great credit accepts responsibility for the problems and promises to change it on the way. The issue for us is that the continual promises do not seem to eventuate.

The shadow minister, the member for Greenway, indicated that some of the social media services in Australia have committed themselves to improving the way they work. She detailed some of the things that they do. In fact, under voluntary agreements that exist—and we had this detailed elsewhere—they were undertaking a number of things to actually improve their track record on this issue. In some cases Facebook even undertakes programs to promote antibullying but, as I said before, people often experience difficulty in trying to remove material that might cause them some grief.

The government has committed to this mechanism. We have indicated support for their legislation and there will be interest to see how effective it is. We have highlighted what we are concerned about—some practical problems. For instance, technology is evolving. The social medial that we have experienced previously has a degree of, if I can call it, permanence. Whereas, there are some platforms that are emerging, be it Snapchat or other avenues where the messages that are communicated are not around for a long period of time, so it is hard to capture the evidence and then hard to act on it. There are also some practical impediments. Again, the shadow minister has outlined this. For instance, with end-user notices—how do you deliver it, in some cases to anonymous users? How are you able to track those end users down if they hide and use anonymity to protect themselves but still undertake bullying? The speed at which those notices can be issued can potentially be an issue as well—and this has been raised with the government.

We have said that there may be some issues there that need to be followed up. For instance, what happens when the end user is a child or a minor? How will that actually be given effect? These things do happen and have been experienced. I imagine this is something that the government has been trying to work through as well. This degree of complexity has meant that there has been a delay in bringing this to the parliament. I do not say that as a criticism. I think it reflects the fact that this is a wretchedly complex area to try and move very surely in, but it is something that is of concern.

The best thing is that there is going to be a statutory review period put in place. There is a statutory review mechanism which is, as has been reflected, highly appropriate and certainly welcomed. Ultimately, however, the best thing is—and I am a firm believer in this—that if the market is able, if the companies, if the industry itself, if the sector itself is able to deal with this, it is way more preferable than government intervening. The problem has been they have not been able to do so in an effective way and that has triggered responses on both sides of the House in one shape or form. But, the better they get at this, then hopefully after a statutory review period, there may even be the prospect of us being able to remove these types of regulations down the track. In the meantime, I reiterate the opposition's commitment to work with the government on this. I thank the House for the opportunity to speak to the bill.

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