David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Enhancing Online Safety for Children Bill 2014 and the Enhancing Online Safety for Children (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2014. This legislation fulfils an election commitment that we made to protect Australian children. This is also something that has been promoted in discussion papers and in very broad industry and community consultation. Before we go on, I would just like to define for the House what I mean, and what the legislation means, by cyberbullying. Some of my constituents who are not familiar with this have raised this issue: what is cyberbullying? They read about it. Basically cyberbullying is a phenomenon of the digital age. It is using electronic digital media to seriously threaten, intimidate, harass or humiliate a person. This issue is so important because so many of our children now are connected in a digital way, through social media or texting.

In days gone by, bullying was always there. It has been a feature of schoolyards and social communities for generations. The issue that is different with cyberbullying is that the schoolyard is exponentially larger and more connected. We have all heard about issues going viral in the digital space. If cyberbullying happens, it has the potential to go viral. Threats, intimidation, harassment and humiliation can spread like wildfire through digital media. Digital media is so universal now. Whether it is a smartphone, a tablet or hard-wired computers at home, it is pervasive particularly with youth culture. Depending on which age group is surveyed, the incidence of cyberbullying is quite frightening. I have seen figures of six per cent for one age group up to the other extreme that up to 40 per cent for teenagers to the age of 16 have experienced some form of cyberbullying, whether it is profound and severe or short term. That is a scary phenomenon.

The phenomenon too is that it does not go away. The schoolyard bully can be sorted out in the schoolyard. You could escape a schoolyard bully and go home; you could retreat to your friends. But if someone is harassing you online, it is very hard to combat. This bullying can have long-term serious effects on mental health and self-esteem, and can create anxiety and depression. The perpetrator is perpetually out of reach and it is hard to respond to that.

This legislation will give parents and children a mechanism. They will now have a system by which they can respond if this phenomenon is happening to them and they cannot resolve it person to person. The essence of this legislation is the establishment of a Children's e-Safety Commissioner. He or she will have several powers. The first is a promotional role where the Children's e-Safety Commissioner can promote research about online e-safety and occasionally make grants of financial assistance in relation to rolling out online e-safety programs for children. They will have a role, most importantly, of intervention and be able to enforce undertakings both to online services and to individuals posting bullying material. Material and behaviour that appear on large media sites as well as people posting bullying material will be under his or her remit of responsibility.

None of us on the coalition like overdoing or creating a nanny state. But the internet is a new phenomenon and you do not have the power of a personality to fight this sort of bullying. We need systems in place because of the reach of the internet. It is a light-touch system of enforcement. There will be two tiers of service created under the legislation. Tier 1 is the level that everyone is in. Any media service whether large or small will be voluntarily enrolled in the tier 1 system. Tier 1 is universal. It is not a question of having misbehaved to be a tier 1 service. But if there is an issue of bullying, a tier 1 service can be notified that there is a problem, and they either stop posting it and remove it if they are an individual or remove the bullying material from their site if it is a social media site.

Tier 2 is the so-called naughty corner where the minister can direct someone to become a tier 2 service—that is a service that has not complied with requests to remove offensive material. Once a site or a social media organisation is in tier 2, the Children's e-Safety Commissioner can issue a compliance notice, and there are consequences. If they repeatedly fail to act on the notices served upon them or on an individual, they can be fined up to 170,000 units. Up to 100 units can be levied and each unit is worth $170, so that means a $17,000 fine—and that is per day. So there are some teeth to the enforcement scenario that the legislation sets up.

The notices are of a certain type. There is an end-user notice which will be levied to a person posting aggressive material. The person or the party making the aggressive post will have to comply. A social media service is to a broader body; it is to the body that may not have posted it but is hosting the site where the bullying is occurring. It is pleasing to hear that all the large social media services that we are familiar—whether it be the huge ones like Google or Facebook—are complying with this.

Hopefully no-one will ever be in that tier 2 space. Usually a letter to the offender from a legal officer of some sort results in the situation being resolved there and then. The Children's e-Safety Commissioner can notify police of appropriate intervention. An injunction can be sought. All sorts of interventions can be made before a body, either an individual or a huge organisation, is declared tier 2.

My electorate of Lyne has a mixed demographic. It is now not unusual for children once they get to their teens to have their own mobile phone. As you know, the internet is available to them whether they have got an iPad, iPhone or one of the many other smartphones. Facebook is permeating youth just as it is everyone else.

Fortunately, in our electorate, internet services are improving all the time due to the actions of the coalition government in fixing and delivering the rollout of the NBN. We have got 17 towers of fixed wireless capability being rolled out across the electorate. New announcements have been made for improved internet services in Taree where we have got fibre to the premise being rolled out, including in the CBD and to the north-west of Taree in Cundletown; moving up with fixed wireless towers near Harrington and into the Camden Haven where improvements will be rolled out in the very near future.

With the internet being so pervasive, this phenomenon of social bullying is quite prevalent as I have mentioned—up to 40 per cent; that is a scary figure. I must admit my children have never told me they have been bullied on the internet, but these surveys are quite reliable. It is a real issue for parents, so there will be a mechanism for parents to complain to, there will be a mechanism to effect a notice to the end user—that is, the person who is posting it or the site that is hosting the offensive material. Hopefully, with the promotion of the Children's e-Safety Commissioner and the rolling out of these programs, the issue will fade. I do not think we will ever get rid of it, but it is our duty to look after members of our society. So I commend this bill to the House and, hopefully, it will be put to good use.

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