Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Social media is playing an increasingly significant role in our lives. It's where we make friends, do business, stay connected with loved ones and, for many, find out the news of the day. It has never been more entrenched in our lives than right now. Many of us, and, importantly, our children and grandchildren, have been glued to screens throughout the pandemic. Right now, we can only guess what impact this will have on their minds and mental health into the future. This is why we need to do everything possible to ensure social media is safe for all users. While our government is working hard to prevent the spread of dangerous material through the Online Safety Act, we need to go further and hold social media services to account—as publishers—for the content posted on their websites.

Content posted on social media sites is pushed around the world, far and wide, and the platforms are intelligent, using AI to show individual preferences. So, when content that seriously defames another person is promoted to a wider audience, the social media service, along with the end user, should be responsible for damages. For too long social media platforms have hidden behind the shield of protecting free speech, while at the same time moderating their platforms—often with arbitrary rules. Freedom of speech is an inherent right that we must protect at all costs, but it is not a right to lie or incite violence. Free speech is vital to our democracy, but there must be limitations to prevent harm. We need consistency from social media platforms to ensure we strike the right balance, and this won't be achieved if we leave these platforms to be a law unto themselves with no penalties.

Big tech platforms write their own rules and this is causing serious issues for end users. The rules are inadequate and are sporadically enforced, with no external accountability. I have personal experience of how these issues can affect people's lives. For several months in 2020, my husband and I, as well as the charity we founded to help single mothers access education, were the target of baseless and defamatory accusations made by a conspiracy theorist on Facebook. It was unrelenting for months. Claims were widely distributed and reached local networks in my electorate of Mallee. To this day I still see echoes of the insane conspiracies this person continues to espouse. It was an incredibly trying time, including for the young mothers that rely on this essential charity in our community. I was concerned that these mothers would be driven away from the service by lies and left even more vulnerable. I pursued a legal course of action against her in a civil case but it cost my husband and I, personally, upwards of $200,000.

Through this horrible experience I have been inspired to take action and to use my position to seek to prevent others going through this. What concerns me is that many thousands of people who endure bullying and defamation online will lack the means to clear their name or protect their family; we need measures in place to stop these cases rising. At the moment, there's very little impetus on social media services to ensure safety and protect users from harm and defamation. This bill aims to change that by making these services jointly liable for the perpetration of defamatory material hosted online. It also allow the minister to outline basic expectations for the distribution of defamatory material and gives the eSafety Commissioner the power to issue fines for breaches of these expectations. These are important changes and build on our government's progress of making social media safe for Australians by addressing the distribution of defamatory material. This bill fills an important gap left by the Online Safety Act. It also builds on the collaborative work of the Parliamentary Friends of Making Social Media Safe, co-chaired by myself and the member for Newcastle.

I'm focused on fighting for change to ensure that our kids and grandkids are safe online, and that our society has a healthy relationship with social media going forward. I defer the rest of my time to the member for Berowra.

Trent Zimmerman (North Sydney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is there a seconder to the motion?

Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to second the motion by the member for Mallee. I admire the member for Mallee for her dedication to a safer social media environment, and I admire her for her courage, as a new member of parliament, for taking on the social media trolls and seeking a better deal for all Australians online.

The member for Mallee has done great work preparing this Social Media (Basic Expectations and Defamation) Bill 2021, encouraging greater responsibility for social media companies and greater access to justice for those defamed on their sites. She formed a parliamentary friendship group aiming to better regulate content, which I'm proud to be part of, after she became the victim of vile defamatory posts last year. These posts, which were shared hundreds of times, accused her of terrible things, including on accounts associated with Mildura in Victoria, her own hometown. The perpetrator was ordered to pay damages of $875,000 after Justice Jacqueline Gleeson, then of the Federal Court and now of the High Court, labelled the claims as 'disgraceful and inexplicable'. The damages were awarded to the member for Mallee, her husband Philip, and the not-for-profit organisation, Zoe Support, which they established.

Zoe Support helps more than 150 mothers aged from 13 to 25 and their children to access education and medical appointments each week. Justice Gleeson said that any effect the untrue posts had in deterring young women from seeking support was perhaps the most harmful aspect of the perpetrator's offences. Referring to social media at the time, the member for Mallee said:

It's not an unknown world—but it is a bit of a scary world—where people can share whatever they like and it's only by going through legal cases that things can change.

So the member for Mallee had to go to the legal expense and lawyer-up to defend her reputation. This is just not something that every Australian can afford to do. We might ask where the social media executives were while this was going on? Where was their accountability? Surely something needs to change, and it needs to change now, so I'm pleased to support this bill and the member for Mallee in taking the lead.

Social media has extraordinary reach. Half of the 7.7 billion people on the planet have been signed up to social media applications. Social network platforms including Facebook and Instagram almost tripled their total user base in the last decade from 970 million in 2010 to over 4.48 billion users in July this year. The average social media user engages with an average of 6.6 different social media platforms. Social media sites provide people of all ages with a range of benefits and opportunities to empower and to express themselves. The communities built and the social interactions people form online can be invaluable for keeping in touch and sharing valuable information with people with shared interests. But we have an expression in our family about foreign water that could easily apply to social media platforms: they are good servants but bad masters. Unfortunately, it's increasingly apparent that social media can present enormous risks for individuals, communities, firms and our society as a whole. The dark side of social media includes cyberbullying, addiction, trolling, privacy abuse, fake news, disinformation and, of course, defamation. Defamation cases are notoriously hard to land, especially on social media.

This bill does two important things. First, it enables the minister to set basic expectations of social media services regarding the hosting of material on social media platforms. In doing so, the minister must have regard to the importance of social media services, the value of truth and free debate, the harmfulness of defamation and the importance of preventing social media services from being used to facilitate unlawful conduct. The minister must also endeavour to consult the general public before making or varying determinations on the basic expectations of a social media service. The bill also serves to ensure that service providers are liable for defamatory material hosted on their platforms that is not removed in a reasonable time frame. The bill intends to address the lack of accountability of service providers when defamatory material is published on their sites. It also sets out a process whereby members of the public can make a complaint to the commissioner if they have reason to believe that they are being defamed by material posted on a social media service. The bill gives the commissioner the power to issue defamation notices to a service provider in circumstances where a complaint regarding defamatory material has been made. If the commissioner issued a defamation notice to a provider and the material is not removed within 48 hours, the service provider can be liable for defamation. So this bill shifts the needle from the perpetrators and the companies back to the ordinary citizen, and that's why the member for Mallee's bill is so important.

Churchill said: a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has put its pants on. How true this is in an age of social media. It's now time the social media platforms came to the table and took more responsibility. The difference between a lie and the truth on social media has become blurred, and it's up to the companies to put in place measures to protect people. If the companies do not, it's our job as legislators to put in place protections and regulations of the sort that are proposed in the member for Mallee's bill. This is a timely bill. It complements many of the initiatives that the government is already taking in relation to cleaning up the environment in which social media companies operate. I congratulate the member for Mallee on bringing this bill to the House and I commend it to the House.

Trent Zimmerman (North Sydney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate is expired. The debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.