Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Curtin for her question. As a former vice-chancellor of one of our leading universities, she has a longstanding commitment to the welfare of young Australians, so it's a very appropriate question for her to be asking.

Through the COVID-19 pandemic we have seen a very high usage of the internet by children and by adults. The internet is an extraordinarily valuable resource. But, sadly, a percentage of human interactions online, just as offline, are not positive ones. That's why it's very important that we have the eSafety Commissioner there to protect Australians, particularly children, against some of the risks they may encounter online. Indeed, our government took the lead in establishing what was first called the Children's eSafety Commissioner in 2015, before its responsibilities were expanded, and was one of the leading governments around the world in making sure that there was an agency there to protect Australians. The eSafety Commissioner is funded with $90 million over the next four years.

Over this period, traffic to the website of the eSafety Commissioner—esafety.gov.au—has doubled as Australians, particularly children, parents, carers and teachers, come forward seeking practical advice and assistance. More than 28,000 people have registered for one of eSafety's free webinars since mid-March. Very importantly, the eSafety Commissioner has the power to intervene if a child is the subject of cyberbullying, and the eSafety Commissioner has the power to take action where people are the victim of image based abuse. And I'm sorry to say that we have seen a 200 per cent increase in reports of image based abuse coming to the eSafety Commissioner during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, with more people at home and online. I'm very sorry to report to the House that we've seen an 80 per cent increase in reports of child sexual abuse content. And, as children are returning to school, we have also seen an increase in complaints about cyberbullying—up 128 per cent on last year.

If you are experiencing cyberbullying or one of these other adverse online consequences, please go to esafety.gov.au. It has the capacity to get this stuff taken down, in some instances in as short a period as 30 minutes. The eSafety Commissioner has a range of useful tools and resources, with more being added all the time, including the eSafety Toolkit for Universities, and the member will be interested to know that there have been 3,600 visits to look at various aspects of that toolkit in the first few days since it's been released.

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