Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As I was saying, Bendigo South East College in my electorate was the first school in Victoria to be accredited as an eSmart school. It demonstrates a whole-of-school approach to tackling the issue of cyber bullying. Ms Fitzgerald of the school said that she hoped that this particular program the school was implementing would help clarify teachers', parents and the students legal responsibilities in dealing with cyber bullying. She said that current laws are struggling to keep up with the improvements in technology and the practices that come with those technologies. Ms Fitzgerald believed that setting in place procedures and practices that were discussed openly with students and parents would allow the whole school community to understand its responsibilities.

It is challenging for schools to be on top of everything that not only happens in the classroom but also in the virtual classroom and that not only happens in the playground but also in the virtual playground. She said that there was definitely a need for students to engage their parents and for parents to engage their students to understand the new eSmart accreditation at the school. This is another demonstration of another school stepping up and saying it understands the complexities of this problem and wants to be proactive in getting on top of tackling cyber bullying within the school community. This came about not because of this legislation but because of state and federal governments previously encouraging schools to take up education programs. A point that we need to make in this debate is that whilst it is good that we are establishing a commissioner, we need to continue to encourage and fund programs in our schools and in our community. The education role cannot be underestimated in tackling this issue of cyber bullying.

The former Labor government, apart from announcing new education programs to help combat cyber bullying also, as a result of a 2011 parliamentary committee report into cyber safety, developed a voluntary non-binding protocol in response to the recommendations. Companies such as Facebook, Google, YouTube, Yahoo, Microsoft all signed up to this protocol that committed them to a robust process of looking for and acting upon complaints, establishing clear guidelines to users about acceptable behaviour online as well as providing education and awareness programs. At the time, Prime Minister Gillard called the protocol a step forward by the giants of social media but added there were more steps needed to be taken. This is an issue that we have all been proactive about for quite some time.

At the time, the Prime Minister also said, in words that we many of us will agree with, that we all know what it feels like to be in a room of people, perhaps back your school days, where you felt humiliated in front of the class or in front of your sporting team. At that time, it may have been 20 or 30 people. Many of us live with the feeling of humiliation in front of thousands of people or indeed tens of thousands of people because of the social media environment. Online, there is a fear that it could be tens of thousands witnessing the trauma you are going through. The ongoing impact of cyber bullying we have heard from other speakers here today. Those words of two years ago are as true today. And that is why this bill will continue the good work that has been started by previous governments.

However, there are some concerns with what has been put forward. Industry and community consultation needs to occur with these particular proposals and that is why it is important that this legislation be referred to a Senate committee—to make sure we are bringing community industry with us. This piece of legislation does create a new commissioner. To ensure that it is effective, we need to make sure, just like Bendigo South East College has done, that we engage all elements of the community that will be engaged by this commissioner so that the commissioner and the purpose of the commissioner do actually succeed.

Labor is conscious of concerns that have been raised about some parts of the sector. It must be noted that internet companies like Google and Microsoft have said that existing state and territory laws already prohibit cyberbullying and that they are already engaged to remove offensive material under state laws. As I have already mentioned, there is also a voluntary code that these companies have signed up to, so we need to make sure that, when establishing the commissioner, the role interacts with the framework that we already have in place. That is why it is important that this bill be referred to a Senate committee, to make sure it does exactly that.

To give credit to the parliamentary secretary, these comments have been acknowledged publicly. In the media he said:

We are conscious of not imposing any more additional regulatory burden than is necessary to keep Australian children safe online.

This is an acknowledgement that we need to work together with the other authorities, with the Australian community and with state jurisdictions as well as the companies to make sure we have a commissioner role that works. Nevertheless, when we are talking about protecting our children from online bullying, it is worth giving it a go.

Finally, in this debate I believe that we need to take a moment to stop and look at our own behaviour as the political class. We know that children model adult behaviour, so this is an important time to remember that what we do online, what we do in this place, how we treat one another, needs to be recognised. If we want our children to treat each other with respect and to not bully one another, then we need to be open and transparent about our conversations. And if we are engaged in political debate then we need to debate the issues and not the person. It is important that we remember that.

In researching for this speech, I did pull together very various quotes and tweets that were put out during the previous government. We all acknowledge that former Prime Minister Gillard was subject to what can only be described as some pretty intense cyberbullying. They are not appropriate to read out in this House, but I did want to make the point that if we want to ensure our children treat each other with respect then we need to treat each other with respect. Quite often when schoolchildren come to see me in this place and speak about what they would like to see from their political leaders, the first comment that many of them make is, 'Be nicer to one another; don't be so mean'. It is a demonstration that children are picking up on our day-to-day behaviour that we have modelled. So we as a community, we as a society, we as a government and we as parliamentarians all play a role in ensuring that cyberbullying is not something that children continue to be subjected to. If we want to ensure this commissioner role works, then we need to make sure it is engaging with the key stakeholders to make it successful.

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