Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The state has many roles. It is a regulator, a revenue raiser and a provider of services to those most in need. But above all else, the first and most important duty of government is to protect its own people and, by extension, to be a good global citizen that protects others in the world too. Nowhere is this guardian role more important than with respect to protecting children from exploitation. They are the most vulnerable members of society and deserve our very best efforts.

Today's reality is that new technologies and the rapid expansion of the internet has created a booming yet horrific, commercial trade in the production and sale online of child sexual abuse material. This is not pornography, as the term implies mutual consent. Child sexual abuse involves the imposition of one's will on another in breach of every moral value and every legal code.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, each year, 50,000 new child sexual abuse images are produced in an industry worth more than $250 million. Alarmingly, nearly three-quarters of the victims on these sites are, according to Internet Watch Foundation, under 10 years old. It is also important to note these are not peer-to-peer networks that share images with each other but a lucrative commercial enterprise predicated on abuse. Be under no illusions, Australia has taken action to target these crimes of sexual exploitation of children.

The Australian Federal Police have been resourced, laws have been passed and internet service providers, like Telstra and Optus, have on a voluntary basis taken action to limit access to certain proscribed sites. Indeed, Australia is a party to a range of international conventions and protocols, like the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime, but more can and must be done. The community expects it of us and we should not them down.

Just last week, a delegation of senior representatives from Christian organisations in my electorate, including from the Uniting, Anglican and Catholic churches, came to see me about this very issue. We had a very constructive discussion about a number of new measures that could be deployed to disrupt the supply chain of this horrendous trade. Their suggestions included mandatory requirements for ISP to disrupt access to sexual abuse material, closer cooperation with payment providers to ensure that services are not provided to purchase this material, greater education and awareness of the public to report this material when they see it, tougher penalties for those who produce and purchase such material, greater resourcing for the AFP to target those who produce such illicit material, stronger action against content hosts that have been used to trade this illicit material so that their operations are not utilised for that purpose again, and better utilisation and greater development of new technologies to identify and remove such material.

These are all ideas that should be explored by government and those law enforcement agencies responsible for stamping out this horrific crime. The coalition is very cognisant of these issues, having established a working group looking at online safety, under the chairmanship of my colleague and friend the member for Bradfield. It is focused particularly on the vulnerabilities of children.

In this parliament there are important areas where both sides of the political divide need to come together to take concerted action in the national interest. The protection of children from sexual exploitation both at home and abroad should be at the top of this list. Considered and strong action to protect our children deserves our immediate and full support.