Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Communications. Will the minister update the House on the government's action to protect Australian children online.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am especially pleased to be asked this question by the member for Forrest. I know that every member of this House, and indeed all Australians, I believe, are concerned about ensuring that our children are safe online and that cyber bullying is stopped and its consequences are mitigated as far as much as they possibly can be. The member for Forrest has set an extraordinary example to all of us with the way she has campaigned about online safety and the way she has conducted classes and seminars in the many schools in her electorate and elsewhere to ensure children and their teachers and parents are made aware of online safety issues. This morning, another champion for children's online safety, the Parliamentary Secretary for Communications, the member for Bradfield, introduced into the House the Enhancing Online Safety for Children Bill 2014. This fulfils an election commitment to take real action to ensure that our children are safe online.

The internet is the most transformative invention or piece of infrastructure that mankind has ever devised. That has been supercharged by the development of the smartphone. We all have one of these in our pockets. These devices have the processing power of a supercomputer of 20 years ago. They are supercomputers, and they enabled the billions of people who have them to be connected to each other and to all of the knowledge and wisdom of mankind. It is a remarkable change. But there are serious threats online. We all know that children can be cruel to each other. We know that adults can be cruel to children. But the internet offers a means of amplifying—

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There will be silence! The question of children's safety is not one for ridicule.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It offers an opportunity to amplify bullying, which, as we know, can have very severe and indeed tragic consequences—and I would have thought honourable members opposite would take it seriously.

The bill establishes a children's E-Safety Commissioner, which will take a national leadership role in online safety, both in education, above all—building on the work of the member for Forrest, $7.5 million for better education in certified courses in schools over four years, and the ability to ensure that large social media websites take down offending material quickly and promptly said that the damage is mitigated, and also of course to send notices to the perpetrators of online bullying so that they are brought to account, and in very serious cases there are criminal remedies already available under criminal law. This is an important step in protecting our children online.

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

After that excellent question and answer, I ask that further questions be placed on the notice paper.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before members depart, I would just like to say that I think we might have made a little bit of history today. I think for the first time the chair of the Deputy Clerk of the parliament, the chair of the Leader of the Opposition, the Chair of the Prime Minister and the chair of the Speaker are all occupied by women.