Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Enhancing Online Safety for Children Bill 2014. Before I get to the detail of the bill, I would like to quote a section from my maiden speech. I quote:

Social media will be the great challenge of this generation. While it presents incredible opportunity, it is complex, far reaching and constant. It can envelop every waking minute, preventing victims of bullying and abuse from getting any respite. Social media's greatest threat is to our children, not because of the medium itself but because you can never be sure who is on the other end. Our challenge as elected members of parliament will be to find the delicate balance between free speech, the right to information and protecting the vulnerable.

This bill is about trying to strike that balance. It is about providing opportunity for parents. As a parent of a 14-year-old young son and two young daughters, one of 12 and one of seven, I can tell you that this is an issue which is of incredible interest to me, my family and my wife. It is a challenge we deal with on an almost daily or weekly basis.

Certainly, the ability for a e-safety commissioner, which gets enacted under this bill, gives a single point of contact. As a member of the Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications, I have had the unique opportunity, along with my colleagues of course, to be briefed by the Australian Federal Police and other services around just how difficult these things for police. The main point of contact before this bill was around was the Telecommunications Act and the use of a carriage service. It is fairly difficult to get our enforcement agents interested in victims of bullying on Facebook. They do take action and there are other opportunities but this is good step forward.

We will also provide $7½ million under the National Safe Schools Framework to allow schools to access the online safety program. This really is a big issue. As was stated by the previous member, of Australians aged between eight and 17 around 20 per cent of those people are receiving online bullying and discrimination. It is incredibly difficult to monitor. As I said before, as a parent it is something of great concern to me—great concern indeed. The bill also provides for a 2-tier rapid removal process. But as I said, the best part of this bill is there is a position for a parent to go to when they have concerns.

The debate in my house on the weekend was about passwords and access to iPads and iPhones and everything else, including iPods. My young son of 14 considered it more important that he have his privacy than mum and dad have access to his devices. I would suggest to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that that was an argument which he has lost. However, it did take some considerable motivation in order for that to happen. I am sure that his sister is enjoying her new iPhone. It is a difficult thing to get across.

From a personal viewpoint, in my day—and this is certainly not something I would advocate, and it is not something I have ever done—if a young gentlemen was outside throwing rocks on the window of your daughter's room trying to attract some attention, it was quite easy to go outside and have a discussion and a suggestion about other opportunities for them to take up elsewhere. Unfortunately, with social media that opportunity just does not exist. Certainly in terms of harassment it can be very difficult. As a young gentlemen, at school I was probably fifty-fifty—50 per cent of the time I was the protagonist and 50 per cent of the time I was the recipient. So I think it is a bit of a balance. However, you could actually get away from that. You could literally get on your pushbike and go home and do something else.

With social media there is no opportunity for escape. It is a text message, it is Facebook, it is Twitter, it is all the other activities which run constantly. I do not need to tell the other members of the House just how difficult it is to deal with those things, which we deal with regularly and constantly. If I look at some of our members right now I am sure they are on social media sending text messages and all those other things. But for a child, someone who is only young, who is susceptible, who perhaps has some difficulty making the right decisions, this is an incredibly serious issue.

I would like to speak about a young lady who I met yesterday, Britteny Hunter. Britteny is one of the winners of the Heywire competition from my hometown of Bundaberg and is very social media savvy, I must say. It was an absolute pleasure to meet Britteny. She is a graduate of Shalom Catholic College in Bundaberg. I took her on a behind the scenes tour of Parliament House. She met the Minister for Agriculture, Barnaby Joyce, and at the time she informed us that her flooded home was one which we gave a helping hand to during the flood. The now Prime Minister, the Minister for Agriculture and I actually lifted some pianos.

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