Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In the short time I've got before question time, I'd like to speak about the Enhancing Online Safety (Non-consensual Sharing of Intimate Images) Bill 2017. While I commend the government for taking a step in the right direction, I've got to admit to a great sense of disappointment in regard to this. I'm disappointed for two reasons. Firstly, the government has been dragging its feet on this important issue. This bill has been introduced belatedly after numerous calls by Labor and by the general community for the government to act on the non-consensual sharing of intimate images. Secondly, the bill currently before the Senate just doesn't go far enough. This behaviour must be outlawed through a specific Commonwealth criminal offence, and the government's proposed civil penalty regime is simply not strong enough to signal to perpetrators how unacceptable this behaviour is.

I've come across this issue on a number of occasions during my time in this place. As Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Cyber Safety, I chaired the committee's inquiry into options for addressing the issues of sexting by minors, which reported in August 2013. A number of submitters told the inquiry that there is a need to decriminalise the consensual sharing of images by minors. But, at the same time, there was broad agreement that a new criminal offence should be introduced for non-consensual sexting. Given the short time frame available for conducting that inquiry, the committee made some observations but no recommendation other than saying that the inquiry should be continued in the 44th Parliament. Sadly, that did not happen.

It is also a great shame that the cybersafety committee was never re-formed. That committee did some excellent work during its time, as did its predecessor the Joint Select Committee on Cyber-Safety. I believe there's an ongoing need for this committee, given the pace of change in digital technology, with which our laws seem to be struggling to keep up. Had either the joint or the Senate select committee been re-established, it may have had an opportunity to explore further the subject of non-consensual sharing of intimate images.

In November 2015 I sought to refer the issue of non-consensual sharing of intimate images to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee, and the Senate agreed. As a member of that committee, I also participated in the inquiry. Officially, the inquiry was held into the phenomenon colloquially known as 'revenge porn', but a number of witnesses, particularly victim support services, suggested using the term 'non-consensual sharing of intimate images', which we now see in the title of this bill. They pointed out that the term 'revenge porn' was too narrow. The word 'porn'—short for 'pornography', obviously—focuses on the perceived action of the victim rather than behaviour of the perpetrator, and the word 'revenge' does not account for the wide range of motives behind this behaviour. Private intimate images can also be shared for control, blackmail, coercion, punishment, fun, notoriety, sexual gratification or financial gain.

Another commonly used term for this behaviour is 'image based abuse'. While this term is less specific in describing the phenomenon, the inclusion of the word 'abuse' makes it clear that this is an act which causes harm and that those responsible for the harm are clearly the perpetrators.

The Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee handed down its report in February 2016. It recommended a range of Commonwealth offences to criminalise this behaviour, as well as statutory mechanisms to compel internet and social media providers to take down images as quickly as possible. The offences would include knowingly or recklessly recording an intimate image without consent, knowingly or recklessly sharing intimate images without consent, and threatening to take and/or share intimate images without consent, irrespective of whether or not those images exist. That report is yet to receive a formal response from the government.

The Senate's inquiry recommendation to make non-consensual sharing of intimate images a Commonwealth offence was backed up by a report by the COAG Advisory Panel on Reducing Violence against Women and Their Children in April 2016. That report recommended:

To clarify the serious and criminal nature of the distribution of intimate material without consent, legislation should be developed that includes strong penalties for adults who do so.

Shortly before the inquiry started, my Labor colleagues in the House Terri Butler and Tim Watts introduced a private members' bill to create new offences in relation to the use of a carriage service for sharing private sexual material. Sadly, this bill didn't get any further than Mr Watts introducing it and delivering his second reading speech before it lapsed at what was the most political prorogation of parliament in Australia's history. Despite Labor's private member's bill lapsing, we have continued to pursue this issue. Labor went to the last federal election promising Commonwealth legislation to criminalise non-consensual sharing of intimate images—