Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker Buchholz—charmer! The sentiment and purpose behind the amendments outlined in this Criminal Code Amendment (Protecting Minors Online) Bill are significant. They respond directly to our innate need to protect our vulnerable young people from existing and emerging risks to their safety. While this bill responds will to our primal protective nature, we also need to ensure that this emotive response is balanced with the rule of law, so I am looking forward to hearing the outcome of the inquiry the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee has conducted into the bill and the amendments, and I understand it is due to report today.

This is not the first time that a bill like this one has been introduced in parliament; this is actually the fifth time. In previous iterations the bill was too broad, it did not demonstrate the necessary element of intent or it did not improve on existing provisions contained in the Criminal Code. I really admire the tenacity it has taken to progress this bill to where it is today.

I admire it because a young girl named Carly Ryan is the reason this bill and the previous iterations were introduced. Ten years ago, 47-year-old Gary Francis Newman posed online as an 18-year-old named Brandon, who paid attention to 15-year-old Carly Ryan. He convinced Carly to meet with him. After she rejected his advances, Newman became irate. Carly suffered a horrible death. She was assaulted and drowned at Port Elliot in Adelaide. When the police found Newman, he was allegedly logged in as Brandon, once again chatting to another girl online. Newman was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a 29-year non-parole period. It is Carly's tragic story that highlights the risk to our young people of exploring the world on the internet. It has resulted in this bill. It highlights the need for measures to prevent other young people from possibly meeting the same tragic fate.

Up until now our focus has been on promoting education and awareness of internet safety and responsibility, as was suggested by the previous member. This bill is the first time in many years that a government has pursued a legislative enforcement option to address online predators. Our Criminal Code needs to continually adapt to the technological environment and community expectations as they evolve over time, and the evolving online environment is no exception. What this bill proposes is that any person who prepares to harm a child using the internet should be just as accountable for their actions as a person who succeeds in committing a crime. This bill provides a pre-emptive measure. It will ensure police have the ability to investigate behaviour that could lead to the harm and sexual exploitation of children.

Schedule 1 of this bill amends the Criminal Code by including a new offence for adults who use a carriage service to prepare or plan to cause harm, engage in sexual activity with, or procure for sexual activity someone under the age of 16. It attracts a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment, which is less than other preparatory child sex offences—procurement has 15 years and grooming has 12 years. Unlike previous versions of this bill, the new offence targets preparatory behaviour where the offender has not proceeded far enough for the conduct to be captured under the existing offences. In fact, the offender may not have actually communicated with the victim. That is the key point of difference with this bill—it considers behaviour that could lead to harm or sexual exploitation of children. It does not necessarily apply after the event has happened. In doing so, it sends a very clear message to the community that the use of technology to harm children will not be tolerated.

Just the other week I met with a group who brought an issue to my attention that absolutely sickens me to my core: 'cybersex trafficking'. It is a form of cyberabuse that involves offenders commissioning the abuse of children in developing countries on a pay-per-view basis. For example, somebody jumps on a social media platform like Skype and pays a trafficker via a wire transfer to view—via webcam footage transmitted over the internet—a child engaging in sexually explicit acts or posing for sexually explicit photos or videos. The cost of the show to the viewer increases with the level of abuse required by the viewer. Most of the victims in this type of cyberabuse are under the age of 12. We are talking about something absolutely horrific here. It is absolutely appalling to hear of the horror faced everyday by these children in developing countries.

But this is not just happening in a faraway land—something that we can put to the back of our minds and forget about. Australians are making the wire transfers for this absolute abomination on these children. This is happening, probably tonight, in our Australian communities. Earlier this year, Sydney paedophile Bryan Beattie was charged with ordering sex offences over the internet for as little as $12 per session. During the court hearings, Beattie reportedly rationalised his behaviour—how you can rationalise that I do not know—by saying he thought the children looked 'happy', and that he was not the person physically abusing the children. He also said he thought these children were receiving financial benefits due to his viewings. It is reported that NSW Police sex crime detectives also found over 300 images and videos of child abuse on Beattie's laptop and external hard drive. It is not a giant leap to see how someone involved in cybersex trafficking could also build a fake social media profile with the purpose of grooming and meeting with children, just like Carly Ryan's killer did.

Carly Ryan's story and the story of cybersex trafficking has only reinforced in my mind the need to strengthen laws around online predatory behaviour. Our laws must keep up with the evolving technological world. I recognise there are different points of view in how this is to be achieved.

The Law Council of Australia have raised concerns about this bill, and it is their view, along with that of the Australian Federal Police, that the existing laws are sufficient. The Law Council notes:

… the proposed offence is much broader in scope than the ones proposed in previous Bills. The focus of the previous Bills was upon misrepresentation of age, whereas the Bill would criminalise a broader range of conduct …

In 2015, the Australian Federal Police gave evidence that they did not consider the new law to be necessary because they believed existing laws, which had been updated to keep up with the online world, already provided police with the powers they needed to intervene before a sexual offence took place. To respond to the Law Council's point, the previous bills were introduced at different points in time and responded to the one event—the tragic event involving a 15-year-old girl named Carly Ryan. Unfortunately, the online world is a lot blacker, a lot darker, a lot more appalling than we thought. The growth of cybersex trafficking in Australia is just one example, and this bill attempts to address that. Technology changes, and with it we see changes in use. Whether the AFP hold the same view now, two years on, would be interesting to know, because in February 2015 the AFP reported receiving 5,617 referrals of online sexual exploitation in the 12 months prior, an increase of 54 per cent from the period before. I wonder what those figures were like over the last two reporting periods.

I know that International Justice Mission Australia has some drafting ideas on how to strengthen existing provisions in the Criminal Code in relation to cybersex-trafficking offences, so there may be other ways that the intent of this bill could be captured and drafted. That is why I am looking forward to seeing the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee report on this bill.

Labor is committed to ensuring that all Australians feel safe online, and it recognises that parents should be able to feel safe that their children will not meet the same tragic fate as Carly Ryan. This bill will ensure that online predators can be prevented from harming children, whether the child is in Australia or overseas. It puts an additional enforcement safeguard in place so that Australian parents can have peace of mind, knowing that their children are being kept safe.

Before I conclude my speech, like the previous speaker, the member for Groom, I want to touch on the earlier bill, the Enhancing Online Safety for Children Amendment Bill. I spoke about this when we were discussing the actual legislation, but we are two years down the road since Labor first introduced a bill to criminalise the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, known as revenge porn, and unfortunately the government is no further ahead. Labor first introduced its bill on 12 October 2015, shortly after the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee established an inquiry into the issue. The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions expressed concern that there were limitations on existing Commonwealth laws to adequately deal with revenge porn conduct. The DPP submission to the inquiry acknowledged existing Commonwealth laws covered only part of revenge porn conduct.

So, what happened next? Unfortunately, the government refused to support Labor's bill, and the Minister for Women wrote to the opposition in January 2016, indicating that the government would instead wait for advice from COAG. This was a month before the Senate inquiry report was published. It was published in February 2016 and it called for Commonwealth legislation to create offences in relation to revenge porn. The COAG Advisory Panel on Reducing Violence against Women and their Children, chaired by Ken Lay—also comprising 2015 Australian of the Year Rosie Batty; and the head of Australia's National Research Organisation for Women's Safety, Heather Nancarrow—released its report in April 2016, recommending:

All Commonwealth, state and territory governments should introduce legislation that reinforces perpetrator accountability by removing uncertainty and explicitly making it illegal to use technology to distribute intimate material without consent.

The Minister for Women advised Labor that one reason she did not support Labor's bill was that the COAG advisory panel had yet to advise on the issue. But, once the panel actually gave its report, recommending that revenge porn be criminalised, the government failed to act.

Labor reintroduced the bill in October 2016, and, in parallel, some states and territories—and many of us in this chamber would have heard about that—have begun to criminalise this conduct at the state or territory level. But even now there is still no overarching Commonwealth law that can provide a consistent baseline of protection across the nation, the whole country, so that we do not have inconsistencies from state to state.

The Turnbull government will make the excuse that in November 2016 COAG agreed to develop principles for harmonising revenge porn laws, but they have made no commitment to introduce or support Commonwealth legislation that applies right across the nation that, in a way, standardises legislation to criminalise this egregious behaviour. Labor on the other hand went to the federal election promising Commonwealth legislation to criminalise revenge porn within the first 100 days of being elected.

I just want to go back to the enhancing online safety for children legislation. We welcome the expansion of the Children's eSafety Commissioner's role to adults as well as children. It is sensible that the commissioner's website contain resources on revenge porn, as was mentioned by the previous member, and that the new complaints mechanism be handled by the commissioner's office. Unfortunately, rebadging the office and creating a complaints mechanism is not enough, however, nor is trying to change attitudes about pornography.

The images and videos used against victims of revenge porn are not pornography; they are largely images and videos created with the subject's consent. By sharing them without consent, or threatening to do so, the perpetrator is abusing the trust that had been given to them by the victim. The victim should never be blamed for that abuse of trust. Labor will continue to fight for the criminalisation of revenge porn, including the creation of appropriate Commonwealth offences.

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