Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Justice) Share this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to speak on the Enhancing Online Safety (Non-consensual Sharing of Intimate Images) Bill 2018. I want to thank the member for Fisher for his contribution. He had a good go there at explaining some of the reasons why this bill has bipartisan support and why we think this bill is such an important contribution to our federal criminal law.

It's terrific to talk on bills like this, because I find that so much of what we do as a federal parliament feels really remote from the lives of the people that we represent. I have responsibilities on my side of politics to speak about issues of federal criminal law and issues of financial services, and a lot of the legislation that I'm in charge of on the Labor side of things probably couldn't be understood by very many Australians. It's highly technical, highly detailed stuff. I think that a lot of the time, when I talk to my constituents, they look at our parliament and wonder why it is that we spend our time dealing with those things. They're really important and they're often really urgent, but it doesn't feel like they're going to the heart and soul of the issues for the people we represent. But the bill before us is very different to that. It tackles a problem that is affecting a lot of people in this country, and particularly a lot of young people. If Labor has any criticisms about the way this has unfolded, it's just that it's taken us a long time to get to a point where these four or so pages of legislation are going to create a completely different pathway, an opportunity for Australians to seek justice when a criminal wrong is done to them.

The issue that we're discussing today in the debate on the bill is called non-consensual sharing of intimate images. That's generally known to the public as revenge porn. We try not to use that terminology anymore when we discuss this issue, because it's seen to trivialise it in some ways, but I use that term for the benefit of people who might be watching at home or up in the gallery, because that's probably how they talk about and understand this problem. It describes something that's become incredibly common today, and that is people sharing intimate images of each other. It could be in the context of a relationship; but, when the relationship falls apart and things go sour, those intimate images are retained, and then they're shared without the consent of the person they are of. We see other examples of this. For example, there have been some very high profile incidents where intimate images of women have been captured without their knowledge and those images have been shared. What is crucial to understand is that up until this point, subject to various complications in the stories, people having criminal acts done to them have had no recourse under federal law to have these wrongdoers held to account. That is wrong. That is our parliament not keeping up with the way people are living their ordinary lives.

I enjoyed the contribution of the member for Fisher, but I want to pick up on a couple of points he made, just to clarify that I have a slightly different view about things. The member for Fisher stood up and said to the young people who were in the gallery earlier, 'You have to stop sharing these images.' That's not how we should be approaching this problem, because that is saying that the person at fault here is the person who shared the image. That's what we call victim blaming. It's also not appropriate because the horse has bolted on this one. Those of you who have teenage kids are probably having this discussion with them around the kitchen table. Young people are sharing intimate images in the context of a relationship. It is very hard for adults to stop that practice. Adults have been trying to control the behaviour of young people for thousands of years, to no real avail. We need to have a federal criminal law that says to those young people, 'Look, we don't really want you to share these images, but when you do and when your trust is fundamentally broken by a person who might have been in an intimate relationship with you, then the federal law is here to protect you, and we're not going to tell you that it's your fault and that you made the mistake by sharing that image to start with.'

Before I get into the substance of the bill I want to talk about two people in this parliament who I think have more to do with the fact that this bill has been brought on than anyone else. They are the member for Gellibrand and the member for Griffith. The members for Gellibrand and Griffith were both elected with me; we came into parliament in 2013. They understood that there was this problem out there in the Australian community whereby intimate images were being shared widely, peoples' lives were being destroyed as a result of their most vulnerable images being shared without their consent, yet there was no recourse available for the victims. This is an issue on which they drafted a private member's bill in 2015. For three years since that time we have been pushing the government to move forward with either that bill or a new piece of legislation that would help us tackle this problem that's affecting the lives of so many Australians. It's taken us three years to get to this point. The legislative process is not always as fast and furious as we'd like it to be. But I do want to pay tribute to those two members of parliament. I think they draw to light the importance of having fresh voices and fresh thinking coming into this chamber consistently. I think those two people had their ears to the ground a little bit more, were perhaps involved in more conversations dealing more frankly with constituents about these issues, than perhaps some of the other members of parliament who have been here for a bit longer. So, I really want to credit those two members of parliament, and I think it's appropriate that this chamber does so.

I talked about my role as providing a voice for law enforcement issues on our side of the parliament. One of the things I come upon frequently in this area is the complaint that this parliament is not keeping in touch with the way that our criminal law is changing. One thing that changed pretty much every aspect of federal criminal law was the advent of the internet. Technology has completely changed almost every aspect of crime, and the one that we're discussing today is no different. Can you believe that today we live in a world where just about everyone has a camera sitting in their pocket? In conjunction with that, social media has created this potentially limitless audience for the images taken on those phones and cameras. The path that this has led us to is that the problem of sharing non-consensual images has become prolific. Think about the extent of victims of crime in the community. Some pretty good academic studies would suggest that one in five Australians has been the victim of revenge porn at some point. So, one in five of the people living in this country at some point have had an intimate image taken of them. They've provided an intimate image to someone else in the course of a relationship and that image has been shared without their consent.

I think all of us in this parliament have watched a dramatic cultural shift occur on this question. I can remember people talking about the sharing of intimate images five or six years ago, when this problem really started to accelerate. At the time, it was treated as a bit of a joke almost. I think there's been enormous public discussion about how this is not a joke, and I'm going to talk about some instances—shocking instances—where people's lives have been destroyed by the taking of these images and the sharing of them, in some instances, with tens of thousands of people.

We also know from academic studies that the victims of these crimes are more likely to be the most vulnerable Australians. We know that one in two Australians with a disability and one in two Indigenous Australians have in some way been affected by the non-consensual sharing of intimate images. We also know that members of the LGBTIQ community are more likely to have been affected by this than the wider community. I also need to point out to the parliament the gendered aspect of a lot of this. We see this non-consensual sharing of intimate images as an integral part of a new way that domestic violence is being perpetrated against mostly female victims.

I want to speak about one case which was reported by the victim support service in the discussion about this bill. A woman was forced by her husband into having sex with a third person, which her husband recorded. The woman was in an abusive relationship. She felt that she was not able to refuse, and then her husband posted the image online and used it to blackmail the woman: he threatened to send that image to the woman's family and friends. You can see how these images are being used to control the behaviour of women who are in abusive relationships.

What is incredibly shocking about this situation was that, even though the woman was eventually able to report to the police this crime that had occurred—I say 'crime', because it should be a crime—at that time, there was no relevant law in place and her husband was not subject to any legal consequences for his behaviour. There we have the perfect example of where the failure of this parliament to keep up with the way this crime is being perpetrated in the community completely failed that victim, and it failed the community.

The non-consensual sharing of intimate images relates to another area that's of great concern to me in my role as the shadow minister for justice—that is, human trafficking. We know, through various studies that have been undertaken, that images and films of victims are often used by human traffickers as a tool to manipulate women—similar to that case of domestic violence that I referred to earlier. Project Respect has reported several such cases, including the case of a Thai woman who said her trafficker possessed a nude photo of her and threatened to use it to deny her access to her child.

These are some of the sharper edges of the crimes that are being committed using technology to create enormous distress and enormous hurt for individuals and the community, and the bill that's currently before us is going to help us bring some of these people to justice.

I want to address an important point about a disagreement that the two major political parties in this country have had about this bill, and we've managed to find a common solution. I want to refer to the importance of having criminal offences contained in the bill that's before the parliament. I mentioned that two Labor backbenchers, the members for Gellibrand and Griffith, originally proposed a law that would see the non-consensual sharing of images elevated to criminal offences in Australia. The proposal that was put forward by the government took a different tack, which was to keep the offences within civil law. I am very pleased to see that the government has decided to make a change to the bill and agreed that the offences that are under discussion today are indeed matters that should be dealt with under our criminal law.

I've waded into territory that, again, is not necessarily being discussed around the dinner table of Australians—whether something should an offence under civil or criminal law—but it is of enormous importance that we as a parliament make the statement that we see this problem in society. The difference between civil and criminal law is whether we see this as a private matter between two people where redress can eventuate through our justice system, or whether we believe that this is an act that deserves punishment—that is, a criminal offence—where something is not going to be fixed by some compensation being paid between one party and another. This is a crime; it is an act that is worthy of punishment. I think that it is absolutely the case that this should be a crime, and the federal parliament will shortly agree on that matter.

I say that because what is different about this to a matter of civil law is that there is a victim here and that victim needs to feel that there is some sense of justice in the system. There is a crime being done to society. What we're seeing here is not a civil matter. It's not a dispute between two parties, like an issue where they're debating who owns a piece of property. This is a crime: there is a victim here who is being violated in the most profound of ways. It is appropriate that we acknowledge that the crime is not just being done to the victim but being done to our whole society. When a person shares a non-consensual image, they are doing something that is completely unacceptable to this parliament and completely unacceptable to the Australian community. That is why we see this as a criminal matter. I'm very pleased that the government was able to get to the point where they saw this as a matter of criminal law.

I might just finish by speaking a little bit more about some of the victims and the impact that this has had on them. What we know is that when victims come forward, they're often intensely ashamed by the things that have happened to them. I'm lucky that this has never happened to me. I just can't even imagine the shame and distress that a lot of people, and particularly women, feel when the most private images of them are taken from them without their consent and shared potentially with the whole world. We've seen websites that have been created to facilitate this kind of conduct. These are websites that have been created where angry ex-boyfriends can take intimate images of their ex-girlfriends and punish them by sharing the most intimate images of them. It is despicable and disgusting behaviour. It is entirely appropriate that the federal parliament say so, and I'm pleased to see us doing that today through this law.

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