Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Moncrieff for her question and commend her for her leadership in her electorate with women and young girls. The Morrison government is committed to protecting Australians from online harms. This includes protecting them from harmful, defamatory comments made by online trolls. This is such an important piece of legislative reform. It will make a difference that really counts in a challenging and fraught public policy area when you consider the demands and pressures of the online world and how profoundly they are felt by younger women.

Many of us in this place who were at school or were young women before social media became such a powerful and defining force in people's lives may need to remind ourselves that it is a different landscape that now exists when it comes to relationships and social interactions, and there is real hurt and damage being done by online trolls. As I said, this is critically important if we think about how vulnerable women are in their teenage years and young 20s, how vulnerable our daughters are now, and how what your friends and your peer group think about you becomes your whole world, a world that can too easily come crashing down under the force of online trolling.

To call it by its name, 'slut shaming' is one of the worst forms of cyberbullying, when young women are targeted on social media and bullied and humiliated because of the way they look, the way they dress and their presumed level of sexual activity.

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