Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Enhancing Online Safety for Children Amendment Bill 2017. As stated by the member for Gellibrand, Labor supports this bill, and I would like to particularly thank the member for Gellibrand, in working with the member for Griffith, I think, for the great work that they are doing in making people aware of the challenges in this area. This bill before the chamber amends the Enhancing Online Safety for Children Act 2015 and amends the title of the statutory Office of the Children's eSafety Commissioner to reflect the broadening of that role to an e-safety commissioner for all Australians, not just Australian children.

This bill adds to the legislative regime supported by Labor in 2015 to address the serious problem of online safety affecting a very large proportion of our population. Sadly, it is a proportion which is growing. It is easy to forget that the World Wide Web was only invented in 1989—not even 30 years ago. Obviously, over this time, the internet's interconnectedness has exploded. By 2005, there were one billion users of the internet worldwide and, by 2016, there were 3.4 billion and rising. Already, 47 per cent of the worldwide population is interconnected or able to make connections and see material that is distributed. Facebook was first launched in 2005 for American university students to connect with each other. The next year, it was expanded to all people who had an email address. Since then, people across the world have taken to Facebook in droves. By 2012, Facebook was being used by one billion people a month. In 2017, there are more than 16 million Australians using Facebook.

Social media has become an important platform for communication. It has incredible benefits. It allows friends and families spread across the world to continue to share their lives in an immediate way. Who has not been connected to an old school friend or a family member who you do not see but still have an idea of what is going on in their life? It allows a connectedness that we would otherwise never be able to have. Sadly, these days, writing letters is a skill that is being lost. Now we have more people than ever to have face-to-face conversations with, especially online.

However, obviously, with this level of connectedness comes also a vulnerability. It leaves us exposed to the darker side of human nature—the side that most of us never encounter in person-to-person contact. Social media is the haven for cowards wielding keyboards as their weapon of choice. These gutless keyboard warriors do not care about the harm they inflict, often, sadly, I would suggest, because they are sad losers themselves.

As Deputy Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights Committee, we did an inquiry, as I am sure you well know, Deputy Speaker Goodenough, into freedom of speech. We heard much evidence about online abuse during that inquiry. In particular, I note the professors from the Cyber Racism and Community Resilience research group who gave evidence about the extent of online racism. From a survey they conducted, 35 per cent of the people they surveyed had witnessed racism online. Evidence shows that cyberbullying, including online racism, is becoming much more common on social media. While schoolyard or workplace bullying can be devastating for the target—back when I was at school as it is now—when that bullying occurs online, the reach of the audience is magnified, as is the harm caused to the victim. Obviously, the difference between when I was in primary school and now is that back then at least home was a sanctuary. Now there is no sanctuary. Kids and adults drag the horror home into their own bedrooms, sadly.

Online bullying is serious. It can cause the victim to suffer from mental health issues, including depression and anxiety, and, in some cases, tragically, it can result in suicide. Obviously, as you as a member of parliament would know, Deputy Speaker, the victims of online bullying are not all children. Adults also are often the targets. That is why it is important that the role of the Office of the Children's eSafety Commissioner be broadened to include adults as well as children. Now the commission will be responsible for the online safety of all Australians.

I have young children who are eight and 12. I know how difficult it is for me to keep up with the changes to social media—the different platforms, the different terms, the different dangers, the different things that they are told and the games that they wish to play. So the role of the e-safety commission is crucial in assisting all Australians but particularly parents so they understand the possible dangers of using social media and how to avoid them. Maybe we should add grandparents to that because often they are caring for their grandchildren and are not aware of the technology challenges.

Of course, there was no such thing as Facebook when I was growing up. The dangers we faced as children were many, but they did not include online bullying. As a parent, it is difficult to keep abreast of changes in the technology that my children and their friends are using. Just keeping up with the terms used for the various platforms can be a challenge. For instance, I have only recently learned that the sinister-sounding term 'dark social' refers to the private features of a social networking service. Facebook Messenger, Twitter Direct Messages and apps such as WhatsApp and Snapchat are all dark social. These messaging services can be a valuable tool—I acknowledge that. They allow communication between two people or within a private group without sharing on a public platform. But the very nature of dark social does pose potential dangers. Because the platforms are hidden, it is not as easy for service providers to monitor or regulate the content that is being shared. It is also much harder for parents to monitor this type of content sharing. Inappropriate content can be sent direct to a child's phone through an app without much, if any, monitoring. There is also a danger that children or young adults may be more easily lured into communicating with someone they do not know very well, or with someone who they are misinformed about, when these types of direct messaging platforms are used. A text message or a phone call from a number they do not recognise might seem suspicious to a child and they may ignore it or tell a parent, but a direct message through an app can seem deceivingly benign.

Unfortunately, this is not mere scaremongering; this is a real and present danger that is a threat to Australian children, and children around the world, right now. As a case in point, it was reported recently that a 16-year-old Australian girl was lured to America by a career criminal. He had befriended the girl on Snapchat. It is important that parents are aware, are vigilant and make sure they know their children's activities on social media platforms are age-appropriate and appropriate to their sensibilities. We need to balance freedom, independence and respect with the vigilance that is required. A good place for parents to start educating themselves about online activity is the website of the Office of the Children's eSafety Commissioner.

Of course, children are not the only ones who are vulnerable to the dangers of social media. Labor support this bill that will ensure the title of the commission reflects the need for all Australians to be aware of online safety. Revenge porn, sexting, cyberbullying and other issues that compromise the safe use of the internet are, sadly, on the rise. For young adults who are the victims of revenge porn, life is seriously impacted by this form of abuse. While Labor support this bill, we are disappointed that the government has not supported the criminalising of revenge porn. Labor introduced a bill to criminalise the non-consensual sharing of intimate images in 2015. The Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee inquired into this issue. Evidence from the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions at that inquiry revealed that he had concerns about the 'limitations on existing Commonwealth laws to adequately deal with "revenge porn" conduct'. Before the Senate inquiry report was released, the Minister for Women wrote to the opposition indicating that the government would not support the bill. When the Senate inquiry report was released, it recommended that the provisions of Labor's bill be enacted, but the government has still failed to support Labor's bill to make the non-consensual sharing of intimate images or videos a criminal offence.

The COAG advisory panel released a report in April 2016 which recommended that the Commonwealth and other jurisdictions criminalise revenge porn. The panel acknowledged that existing laws do not adequately capture the scope or nature of the offence. Still the Turnbull government failed to act. There was a brief glimmer of hope in October last year with the announcement of the Third Action Plan of the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children. On that occasion, the coalition government promised $10 million to respond to revenge porn and online abuse. Of that, $4.8 million is to go to developing a national online reporting tool to help counter the effects of non-consensual sharing of intimate images. The remaining $5.2 million is to go to research and to developing educational resources to shift attitudes and behaviours about pornography.

Unfortunately, this seems to suggest that, rather than calling out the wrongdoing of the person sharing the images, the government is almost blaming the behaviour of the victim. It also reveals a lack of understanding of the nature of non-consensual sharing of intimate images. The images that are shared are not pornography. They are usually created with the consent of the subject—we might question the wisdom of it; nevertheless it is with the consent of the subject—but the sharing of those images without consent, or threatening to share those images without consent, is an abuse of trust or worse. The victims should not bear any blame for the abuse of that trust. It is past time for the Turnbull government to protect women, and men I guess, from online abuse in the form of non-consensual sharing of intimate images. We need strong criminal laws to make it clear that sending nude pictures or videos of sex acts without the consent of the people involved is not acceptable and threatening to share such images is also not acceptable. The making of laws would send a message to the community about what is acceptable behaviour. I want my children to grow up in a community where everyone is aware that it is not acceptable to share such images without consent and that doing so will invoke the wrath of the law and the consequences that flow.

I repeat: Labor supports this legislation before the chamber. It is a good thing that the public will more easily be able to identify where they can seek assistance and advice in relation to online safety measures. However, the fact that the Turnbull government has introduced this bill to make amendments to the eSafety Commission just two years after its inception might indicate that the original bill was not thought out by the government at the time. I want to make it clear that this bill does not create any new offences or civil penalties; this bill does not provide any new regulatory powers; this bill does not impose any taxes; this bill does not set any amounts to be appropriated from the Consolidated Revenue Fund. It is an example of the Turnbull government having to correct a piece of legislation because of their 'regulate first, think later' approach to government. And, as far as the Turnbull government's record on tackling violence against women is concerned, this bill is simply window-dressing. The Turnbull government talks about the importance of tackling violence against women, but they have failed to take any fair dinkum or meaningful action. If they were serious about protecting women, they would support Labor's private member's bill to criminalise the non-consensual sharing of intimate images or they would introduce their own bill to make that abusive behaviour a criminal offence, because, after all, caring is doing. Because the Liberal-National Party government do not do that, they really do not care.

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