Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) anonymous perpetrators of family, domestic and sexual violence use social media to bully, harass, and target their victims;

(b) anonymous predators use social media to groom, traffic and exploit children;

(c) anonymous parties and organised crime gangs use armies of operatives and automated bots to radicalise, terrorise and steal from vulnerable Australians; and

(d) the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs, in 2021 recommended the introduction of identity verification for social media platforms to strip malicious actors of their anonymity in an effort to prevent technology-facilitated abuse;

(2) acknowledges that:

(a) this recommendation was made with bipartisan support; and

(b) the ongoing, and in some cases default, application of end-to-end encryption on social media and messaging platforms risks undermining existing mechanisms to deploy, detect, disrupt, and prosecute harmful and unlawful conduct;

(3) further notes that the Government did not support recommendation 30 of the final report on the Inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violence;

(4) condemns the Government for its:

(a) refusal so far to support the recommendation to implement a mandated social media identification verification regime;

(b) failure to address the child safety, organised crime, and national security risks posed by online anonymity; and

(c) patent fealty to big tech, big porn and the big end of town; and

(5) calls on the Minister for Communications to:

(a) charge the eSafety Commissioner with expeditiously developing a roadmap toward social media identification verification within 12 months; and

(b) commence the implementation of the social media identification verification regime within three months of its release.

I want to acknowledge the efforts of the previous Social Policy and Legal Affairs Committee, of which I was the chair, and I want to acknowledge the shadow minister for communications, who's sitting at the table. He was also the minister for mental health in the former government. There is a lot of discussion at the moment around social media. Mr Speaker, you, quite rightly, threw me out of question time last Thursday because I saw red when the Prime Minister was spruiking what the Labor Party were doing in relation to social media protections. This government has sat on its hands for two years and fought us every step of the way.

The shadow minister for communications and I stood up here in November when he moved a private member's bill to introduce age verification for social media, online gambling and porn, and those opposite rejected it. They fought us every step of the way. Now, without justification, some six or seven months later, they're standing up and crowing about all of these wonderful things that they purport that they're going to do in relation to protecting young people online. They've only done this because parents in Australia have mobilised. They have prepared petitions. Tens of thousands of people have signed these petitions calling on this government to get its act together in relation to social media. They have now finally made a political decision to do something, but, when we start scratching away at the surface of what this government plans to do in relation to age verification, it looks about as useful as—I probably need to be careful what I say. But, when we scratch away at the surface, we can see that there are a lot of holes in what the communications minister intends to do.

In relation to identity verification, I was also the Chair of the Social Policy and Legal Affairs Committee. The good member behind me, the member for Grey, was also on that committee and did some great work on that committee. Domestic violence is a scourge in our community—an absolute scourge—and social media has a significant part to play. But, once again, the government is left wanting. Once again, the opposition has to drag this government kicking and screaming to implement anything in relation to safeguards—in this case, particularly for women who are being abused by their partners or former partners online. This is inexcusable. The member for Jagajaga was also a part of that committee. What we came up with as a committee was a recommendation that, if you want a social media account, you need to be identifiable.

Some people are going to find this very uncomfortable. One of the biggest problems we have with social media is anonymity. If you hide behind anonymity, you can say whatever you like without fear of being sued for defamation or having the police knock on your door. The identification of people who use social media accounts is as important as age verification. If you threaten someone on social media, if you threaten a partner or a former partner, don't you think they should be able to go to the police and say: 'Here's his Facebook account. Here's what he has said to me on social media'? I would have thought that would have been a relatively uncontroversial statement, an uncontroversial principle, but yet again this government is asleep at the wheel, and yet again it continues to be dragged kicking and screaming in relation to introducing social media reform.

I'm going to continue to work with our shadow minister, the shadow minister for communications, to hold the government to account, to implement the recommendations of both the Protecting the age of innocence report and our domestic violence report. We'll continue to do that, and I thank the Deputy Speaker for his indulgence.

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