Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for moving this motion which has bipartisan support. I too want to recognise the important work that the eSafety Commissioner does to help minimise online harms to Australians. The eSafety Commissioner does enjoy bipartisan support. On the eve of Safer Internet Day, it is timely to acknowledge its work. But this day does give us occasion to reflect on how we are going at responding to emerging internet harms. It's fair to say in this regard that the responsibilities of the eSafety Commissioner today traverse a wide range of online threats. The eSafety Commissioner stands alone today in the world having responsibility for triaging complaints about online child sexual abuse, online bullying, non-consensual sharing of private sexual material via the internet and the distribution of abhorrent violent content on the internet, particularly terrorist material in the wake of the Christchurch terrorist attacks. This strange miscellany is the result of the improvised way that government has developed policy in this area.

The eSafety Commissioner has been performing its core functions well over time, particularly on the prevention and education front. It has been rewarded in this success through an ever-growing portfolio of responsibilities. But in 2020 we need a more coherent approach to proactively thinking through the best way government and society can respond to the evolving ways that people use the internet to cause harm in our society. While I respect the eSafety Commissioner's work, a better approach to some of these emerging issues might simply be better educating existing law enforcement agencies about the role they play in responding to new harms, the powers they already have in responding to these harms and then providing them with the resources that they need to properly police these issues.

I know the government are engaging in consultations about their online safety act at the moment—introducing a new law. I do encourage those opposite to look at the existing powers—particularly criminal powers—available to law enforcement responding to some of these issues. It seems to be a common failure in the Australian government's response to many of these online harms to date to focus more on educating people about how to stay safe online and less on teaching people that their actions online have consequences. It is true that the rules that govern internet platforms matter here, but so too do perpetrators and the response that they receive from law enforcement. I'm thinking particularly in this instance about online intimidation, abuse and stalking. Any Australian can be a victim of hate speech, intimidation or stalking. a report the eSafety Commissioner recently participated in about online hate speech provided dispiriting if not surprising results in this regard, reporting that 14 per cent of adult Australians had experienced online hatred in the last 12 months.

We know from multiple studies that women and minority groups are disproportionately targeted—they are two to three times more likely to be the targets of online hate speech. But, when victims enter police stations in Australia to report these crimes, and they are crimes, that victim is not always guaranteed a satisfactory response. They're not even, indeed, guaranteed a consistent response. Unfortunately, it's still a postcode lottery—a lottery of who happens to be on the front desk at that police station on that night. Yet I wonder if anyone in this place appreciates the seriousness and the prevalence of this kind of abuse and how detrimental it can be to people in our public. I also wonder how seriously law enforcement takes it across the nation.

It is an issue of police resources that this kind of abuse has been proliferating in recent years, but it does demand a response from government. Take, for example, the situation of journalist and comedian Vicky Xu. She's been subject to a tide of organised online abuse for her reporting in Australia. It's not trivial. It's a coordinated attempt to intimidate her into silence. There have been thousands of abusive messages from many people living in our own community, but what is the coordinated response from the Australian government? I ask the question: who's assuming responsibility for this? Who's assuming responsibility for protecting people with politically unpopular opinions from online campaigns of this kind? Are our local police stations trained to respond to this threat? Do they take it seriously?

Then there's the emerging contagion of misinformation and disinformation. In recent weeks, conspiracy theories and malicious untruths about the coronavirus and the Australian bushfires have proliferated online. In the case of the virus, they've encouraged panic and racial vilification. In the case of the bushfires, they've helped obscure a vital policy debate. In both cases, institutions spoke quickly and credibly. The New South Wales department of health denounced the confected media release as an obvious fake, and various police jurisdictions have denied the purported fact that a majority of Australia's fires this year were deliberately lit. But, in some instances, misinformation has either been shared by some in this place or misinformation has been allowed to spread without intervention. Again, who is taking responsibility in government for monitoring and responding to these disinformation campaigns? We require a more coherent approach moving forward.

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