Wyatt Roy (Longman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I commend the previous speaker from across the political divide, the member for Hotham. She is absolutely right when she says that there is no silver bullet to deal with the pervasive impacts of online bullying, or bullying in general, among young people.

The bills we are debating before the House here today are a very significant step in the right direction. The Enhancing Online Safety for Children Bill 2014 follows a significant amount of good work that I am very proud to have been part of. Such was the coalition's resolve on protecting young people from an increasingly evident threat of predatory, bullying and other harmful cyber behaviours that in January 2012 we formed an Online Safety Working Group, of which I became the Queensland representative. Over the ensuing 18 months, our engagement, which included many forums with parents, with children, with teachers and with community leaders in capital cities and regions across the country, informed a very strong policy platform that we took to the 2013 federal election as a commitment.

In January 2014, after the election, a public discussion paper was released to consider aspects of the Enhancing Online Safety for Children policy, with more than 80 submissions received. The suite of measures before the House reflects this conversation we had with the Australian people, as well as extensive and targeted stakeholder consultations with industry groups; large social media sites, including Facebook, Google and Twitter; child safety advocates; and law enforcement officials. In essence, this bill seeks to establish a children's e-safety commissioner, establish a two-tiered scheme for the rapid removal of cyberbullying material from large social media services, and, finally, implement an end-user notice regime under with the commissioner will have the power to issue notices to any person who has posted cyberbullying material aimed at an Australian child.

Traditionally, bullying would stop at the school gate. Today, unfortunately, that is often where it just begins. It is a 24/7 invasive action, with anonymity for those who inflict this pervasive behaviour on Australian children. Put simply, social media has made bullying easier to perpetrate, and unfortunately you end up having more of it. Our Online Safety Working Group frequently heard disturbing stories, particularly from school students and sometimes their parents. We were told of how individuals had used social media networks to coordinate assaults on other children. We discussed how, if a child was bullied in the schoolyard, two or three people would see it, but if you were bullied on Facebook, thousands of people would see it; you had a sort of viral humiliation.

In today's digital world, fuelled by smartphones, tablets and computers, 90 per cent of high school students are on Facebook. We heard how one 12-year-old girl would go to sleep with her phone under her pillow and get abusive Facebook and text messages at 2 am or 3 am. Quite aside from relentlessness of that sort of bullying, there is a clinical term for the habit she had developed: FOMO, or fear of missing out. Thousands of children are reporting disturbed sleeping patterns and compromised functionality in their daily lives because of a refusal to give their computers and phones—and their minds and their bodies—a break. The fear is that if all your friends are participating in something on Facebook and you do not see that, then you are missing out on the social interaction and may even lose touch with your entire circle of friends. It becomes an addiction that creates constant anxiety, stress and discomfort. It makes sufferers less likely to cope with the challenges of life. It makes them less likely to reach out and be a confident, well-rounded and happy individual.

So we owe it to the current and future generations to ensure that the Australian cybersphere is safer and healthier. This is not about vilifying or demonising social media and all the positive benefits that it brings to our society. It is about equipping our young people to deal with the challenges that they may face online and increasing their ability to safeguard themselves.

The Children's e-Safety Commissioner will head an independent statutory body within the Australian Communications and Media Authority. The commissioner will assume national leadership in online safety for young people, and central to that role will be the administering of a complaints system against cyberbullying. The bill sets out a common-sense, two-step scheme for the rapid removal from social media services of cyberbullying material targeted at an Australian child.

Social media services participating under tier 1 will do so cooperatively. Following investigations of a complaint, the commissioner may request that the tier 1 social media service remove the cyberbullying material, but there is no legal obligation to comply. However, the commissioner will have the power to revoke tier 1 status if the social media service provider repeatedly fails to remove cyberbullying material after repeated requests over 12 months and may make a recommendation to the minister that the service be declared a tier 2 social media service. A service may also be declared tier 2 at its own request.

Those declared to be tier 2 social media services will be subject to legally-binding notices or face the risk of civil penalties for noncompliance. The commissioner will maintain registers of tier 1 and tier 2 social media services. The commissioner will also be able to publish statements about social media services that fail to comply with the basic online safety requirements, fail to comply in the removal of cyberbullying material or fail to comply with a social media service notice.

The working group in which I participated found another major issue to be the lack of a coordinated approach, not only across state jurisdictions but across schools and community groups. Instituting the Children's e-Safety Commissioner will help fix this. One of its other functions will be as a central agency responsible for managing the upskilling of students, teachers, parents and carers in strategies to meet cyberbullying, online predatory behaviour and the dangers of age-inappropriate content.

Importantly, the commissioner will also carry the power to issue an end-user notice to a person who posts cyberbullying material targeted at an Australian child. An end-user notice could require the person to take all reasonable steps to ensure the removal of the material, refrain from posting further material targeted at the child or apologise to the child for posting the material in the first place. The commissioner may proceed to the Federal Circuit Court to seek an injunction against an end user who fails to comply with an end-user notice.

A theme that emerged from my discussions nationwide with teachers and from feedback from my local community was an underestimation of hazardous online behaviour. Part of the insidious nature of online bullying is that it is so secretive. Parents and teachers are often unaware of online bullying—or at least unaware of the extent to which it is occurring. It is clear we need to be break through this cloak of secrecy, and this bill will go a long way to doing that by lifting a lid on the issues and moving to address potential dangers while also, via the Children's e-Safety Commissioner, conducting, evaluating and accrediting schools and community awareness programs.

In relation to concerns that have been raised about the propriety of a rapid removal scheme, may I offer a few salient points. Freedom of speech has an intrinsic value, which is not under siege here. Protecting children against harm is our priority, and any perceived threat to freedom of speech is mitigated in two ways. First, these measures will apply only to communications directed at children; they have no impact on freedom of speech between adults. Second, the scheme applies specifically to cyberbullying—that is, content targeted at, and harmful to, an Australian child. It is not a general content regulation scheme, nor will rapid removal ambush large social media sites and unfairly disrupt their business processes, because a clear principle is that in the first instance, before a complaint can be received and considered by the Children's e-Safety Commissioner, the complainant must have reported the cyberbullying material to the social media site under its already established protocols.

The government acknowledges that many large social media sites have significantly improved their complaints-handling arrangements for removal of cyberbullying material. If a site receives a complaint and acts on it promptly there will be no need for the complaint to go to the Children's e-Safety Commissioner, and the scheme will have no impact at all on the operation of the social media provider. Only if the site does not comply or does not respond will the Children's e-Safety Commissioner get involved.

The rise of social media has led to an explosion of connectivity between people which is difficult for us to grasp as a society. These interactions have brought joy, humour and enlightenment. They have encouraged and helped bind relationships. But, with all its virtues, we cannot afford to be blind to the vulnerabilities implicit in cybercommunication. We have a duty to, as best we can, protect our children from the oftentimes devastating consequences of online bullying and other cyberharms. For that reason, I commend these bills to the House.

Debate adjourned.

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