Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to make a contribution to the debate today on the wide range of threats that are being enabled by social media platforms: threats to individuals, threats to communities and, indeed, threats to the very fabric of democratic systems like ours. I thank the member for Mallee for raising this important issue today and I thank her for reaching out to me to establish the bipartisan group of Parliamentary Friends of Making Social Media Safe, a group designed to put these issues very firmly on the national agenda. We will be launching the Parliamentary Friends of Making Social Media Safe next Tuesday with a breakfast in the Mural Hall, and I encourage all members to come along and join in the discussion on this important issue.

Upfront, I would like to recognise that social media has given us some very positive things and enriched our lives in ways that we couldn't previously have imagined. Through it we have found lost friends, fostered new connections and shared knowledge, free of many of the constraints that exist in the physical world. Indeed, in these COVID times, it has helped bridge the tyranny of distance for many.

But this remarkable reach and ubiquity also has a darker side because it also created fertile ground for some serious threats to flourish: for individuals to be defamed and their reputations sullied; for vulnerable people to be bullied, harassed and exploited; for coercive control to be utilised to instil fear in women; for entire communities to be maligned, victimised or persecuted; for the amplification of hate speech from far-Right extremist groups; for the glorification and incitement of violence; for dangerous misinformation to spread like wildfire; and for democratic processes to be undermined and subverted. These things matter and these threats are real, but at the moment there are precious few avenues for redress when people have been wronged. For their part, the social media companies often behave like outlaws in the new digital Wild West: answerable to no-one and not responsible for so many of the harms they are enabling.

These platforms can and do moderate content on their sites, so we've moved well beyond the idea that they are merely passive, neutral conduits of information. But they have set themselves up as global entities, effectively, outside all jurisdictions, dodging scrutiny and accountability all too often, and we've seen the ills that have resulted. Enough is enough. Social media companies need to take responsibility for what their platforms have unleashed. They are well resourced and they have an obligation to the communities they currently exploit for profit.

However, government has a responsibility too. The current hotchpotch of laws and self-regulation clearly is not enough, and indeed dominant platforms have even gone so far as to call for governments to regulate them properly. So what is taking this government so long? Frankly, the regulatory environment is a mess. The Morrison government talks a lot about the online safety act, but the fact is that that act still does not exist, despite all the talk. Similarly, the disinformation code still isn't in place, and I fear it won't do nearly enough, given that it's only voluntary and doesn't address misinformation as the regulator said it must.

I, along with all of my colleagues on this side, welcome the eSafety commissioner and some additional resourcing that has gone to her, but let's not underestimate the enormity of her task. We know that recent global studies have shown that social media is the new frontier for gendered violence and we have witnessed the rapid escalation of it during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is chilling to say the very least and should ring alarm bells for everybody in this House. Some 65 per cent of girls and young women surveyed in Australia have been harassed on social media. If that is not pause for thought, I'm not sure what is. But, given the incredible reach of social media, there is a lot of work to do. I thank the member for Mallee for bringing this forward. It's just the start.

See this speech in context