George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to take this opportunity to speak on this important motion moved by the member for Forrest, who we all know has a very, very keen interest in the safety of children online. I know that she regularly takes the time to deliver online safety presentations for school children and for parents. She has fought in this place, within the Liberal-National party room and also in this parliament, for better protections for children in the online world. She was a driving force behind this government's passing of the Criminal Code Amendment (Protecting Minors Online) Act 2017. That law, which is also known as Carly's Law, is another step toward greater online security, and it recognises that preparing to commit an offence is something that should be viewed as an offence within itself. Carly's Law is proactive legislation and it targets online predators before they have the opportunity to harm an innocent child. Rather than wait for a heinous act to be committed, this offence relates to preparations for that act. It relates to the grooming work that these predators do in preparation to cause harm to procure or engage in sexual activity with a child. It allows law enforcement officers to take action against predators sooner and with greater consequences, including imprisonment for up to 10 years.

This legislation is commonly referred to, as I said, as Carly's Law in honour of Carly Ryan, who at the age of 15 was groomed by an online predator who later assaulted and killed her. I had the honour of meeting Carly's mother, Sonya, a very, very brave woman in Mackay, and she said that she never wanted to see another mother go through what she was forced to endure. So she started up The Carly Ryan Foundation which raises awareness in children, teenagers in particular, about the dangers of online predators. She also started an online petition through Change.org, securing more than 95,000 signatures, I'm told, advocating for legislative changes which resulted in Carly's Law. She's looking at others as well.

There's more to online safety than just catching, preventing and punishing predators—it's very important though. But in addition to ensuring we have these strong laws to protect children online, the Liberal-National government has introduced a number of other initiatives to empower parents and children to use the online space with greater safety. In 2015, the government passed the Enhancing Online Safety for Children Amendment Act. This law created the Office of the Children's eSafety Commissioner, which is a one-stop shop for online safety. It allows the reporting of serious cyberbullying and illegal content. It also allows for providing resources for parents and educators to help protect privacy online and show them how to get image-based abuse removed from the internet.

The Australian Federal Police, the great men and women who work for us in that agency, also have a program called ThinkUKnow. It provides cybersafety education for mums and dads, for carers and for teachers. These presentations cover online grooming. They also cover a range of other online safety issues: sexting, as it's colloquially known; privacy; inappropriate online behaviours; identity theft and fraud. The ThinkUKnow program has been running for a number of years now and, in 2015-16, it delivered more than one presentation every day—a total of 386 presentations in the year reaching more than 10,000 parents, carers and teachers.

The internet has opened up this vast new possibility: a world that grows in size and complexity every year. It opens up enormous capacity for good things: entertainment, communication, commerce and education. It's hard to imagine the world without online capability, but with those benefits come these risks. The anonymity of the internet provided a perfect cover for the predator Garry Newman—the man convicted of assaulting and murdering Carly Ryan—a 50-year-old paedophile. He was able to present himself online as an 18-year-old muso. He could present himself as having the same interests as the victim and carefully manipulate them into trusting him. He created a fake online profile, a fake name, a fake photo—all of this is done easily in the online environment. We need to target it, we need to stop it and we need to protect our children.

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