Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

Few thoughts concern the mind of parents more than the safety of their children. In recent years, we have seen shocking cases of cyber bullying make headlines across the country.

One terrible story is the case of Sheniz Erkan, a 14-year-old Melbourne girl. A week short of her 15th birthday, she took her own life—a beautiful young woman with her whole life ahead of her. The outpouring of grief that followed her death demonstrated the community's resolve to ensure that this heartbreaking loss of life should never happen again.

Her devastated family pleaded with parents to keep a closer eye on their children's internet use. But even the most vigilant parent cannot realistically monitor their child's every interaction on the internet. An estimated 90 per cent of 12- to 17- year-olds in Australia use social media—and I imagine that is an underestimate. A majority of Australian teenagers over the age of 14 use Facebook more than once a day. With the proliferation of smart phones and tablets, access to social media has never been easier. All this comes with a lot of risk.

Research by the Australian Communications and Media Authority indicates four per cent of eight- to nine-year-olds; 21 per cent of 14- to 15-year-olds; and 16 per cent of 16- to17-year-olds reported being cyberbullied. And it is not just parents that are worried about the growth in cyberbullying. Internal emails from Twitter CEO, Dick Costolo, revealed that he had admitted to his staff that he is 'ashamed' and 'embarrassed' by how his company handled bullying and harassment among its users. He stated:

We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we've sucked at it for years. It's no secret and the rest of the world talks about it every day. We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day.

These very revealing emails capture the scale of the problem that we face. Not even one of the largest social media companies in the world has worked out how to deal with cyberbullying. Nonetheless that is the objective of the bill that we are talking about today.

The Enhancing Online Safety for Children Bill 2014, seeks to reduce the risk of our young people becoming victims of cyberbullying. Dr Judith Slocombe, Chief Executive of the Alannah and Madeline Foundation, a national charity protecting children from violence said:

There is no difference between someone who bullies online and one who bullies face-to-face. They are just different methods. They both can cause enormous harm.

There are laws in every state and territory which cover all forms of bullying. This bill backs up these laws for the digital age. It establishes a Children's e-Safety Commissioner and sets out its functions and powers. In practice, the establishment of the commissioner will mean a child or their parent will be able to complain to the commissioner if they have been the subject of cyberbullying. The commissioner may then investigate such a complaint.

The bill sets out an expectation that each social media service will comply with a set of basic online safety requirements. This includes minimum standards in a service provider's terms and conditions of use, a complaints scheme and a dedicated contact person. The establishment of a Children's e-Safety Commissioner is an important step in the right direction. Along with all members, I hope that the establishment of a dedicated Children's e-Safety Commissioner will lift the profile of cyberbullying. This will help to generate further the conversation in the Australian community about what to do. The primary role of the commissioner will be to resolve existing acts of cyberbullying, but we have to accept that cyberbullying is as much a social problem as a technological one. Bullying occurred long before the advent of the internet. The internet does enable the bully to remain anonymous and unaccountable for the torment they create. Preventing the bullying from occurring in the first place is vital to countering cyberbullying.

I am pleased to say in my electorate two local schools in particular have taken such an approach. Viewbank College, a secondary school, and Concord School are taking a positive and proactive approach to countering cyberbullying. Concord School is a special school for students with learning needs, while Viewbank is a large public secondary school with students from a diverse range of backgrounds. In 2013, the two schools established a cybersafety program that saw mainstream year 9 students from Viewbank and special education year 9 students from Concord come together to promote understanding and acceptance of difference.

The program was designed to help students develop strategies for dealing with issues arising from cyberbullying, sexting and unsafe content. I am told the project was very successful. Students from both schools engaged with the topic of cybersafety and enjoyed discussing issues, sharing ideas and collaborating with students from another school. Importantly, the program yielded results. Teachers noticed a change in attitude from the students participating in the program. Just to use one example, towards the end of the project in 2013, a student began to have some issues on Facebook. The student felt the issues were too difficult for her to handle alone. She drew on the skills she had learned in the program and collected evidence, saved it into a folder and discussed it with her mother. The child's mother was very impressed with how her daughter handled the issue and contacted the school, where the issue was resolved.

I do want to especially commend Concord School and Viewbank secondary for their innovative and collaborative approach to tackling cyberbullying in the local community. I want to acknowledge the outstanding leadership of Judith Craze and Ross Purcell at Viewbank; Pam Wright, the e-learning coordinator at Concord; and Claire Park. Pam Wright, who conceived the program understood, that many of the special needs students at Concord had experienced bullying at mainstream schools. She understood that interactions between the two cohorts of students needed to be on a different level, so Pam came up with the idea of students working together to make short films about cyberbullying. The project culminated in a showcase evening of the students' work, where the films were displayed.

Concord School also became the first special school in Australia to become a part of the Alannah and Madeline Foundation's eSmart Schools cyberbullying program. This eSmart program helps establish important behavioural norms early in a child's life. This includes things like asking someone for permission before taking a photo of them on a smart phone, asking the permission of an adult before purchasing items online and, perhaps most importantly of all, establishing a dialogue between child and parent about their online activity. Establishing this last norm is vital if a child is to share experiences of cyberbullying with their parents.

This approach serves to underline an important truth about cyberbullying: changing the attitudes of our young people so that cyberbullying is prevented from occurring in the first place and equipping students with the emotional skills to deal with the challenges of cyberbullying when it does occur is essential to any approach to this problem. It is also worth noting a success achieved by the eSmart program include that 80 per cent of school principals believe that eSmart Schools is effective in changing school culture in relation to cybersafety, technology use and bullying. The message from the report is clear: no one action or approach will do.

Many of the contributions by members on this bill have been very personal and I do want to recognise that there is much goodwill towards this initiative. We will certainly be supporting it. We were pleased, when we were in government, to establish a cybersafety plan in 2008 with funding of $125.8 million, which was committed to combating online risks and helping parents and educators to protect children from inappropriate material. I do support this bill because I know that parents in my electorate expect me to do everything that I can to help them protect their children. It is my hope that this bill will help children and their parents resolve matters of cyberbullying before any harm comes to them. I commend the bill to the House.

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