Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Earlier today I spoke in the Federation Chamber about Etsy, which is an online, US based shopping portal. It's a very popular website, especially with women. It sells a lot of handmade, handcrafted goods. It's a really, really good website, except that, on this website, alongside Father's Day gifts, you can buy child sexual exploitation material. You can buy child sex dolls, which, of course, are illegal in Australia. But they make these available on the US based website, and Etsy—a major company with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and a very well-credentialed board of directors—are doing nothing to stop this disgraceful trade. They're doing nothing to stop this reprehensible material being made available on their website.

Shoppers will get onto Etsy and look up Father's Day gifts and gifts for the kids and they'll come across this material if they use the search function. It's really filthy stuff. I don't even want to say what the messages and slogans are on T-shirts, and, of course, the child sex dolls are absolutely outrageous. The dolls are illegal in Australia, and the rest of it should be. There's an online petition being run by a Victorian designer called Anna Cordell. It has 33,000 Australian signatures. I ask every member of this House to join this petition. Let's get this US based website to drop this disgraceful material. If they don't act, then the authorities should.