Sarah Henderson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's my great pleasure to rise and speak on the Online Safety Bill 2021 and the Online Safety Bill (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2021. As of this year there are 22.82 million internet users in Australia, which is 89 per cent of the population. More than 20 million of those people are active social media users. On average, Australians spend six hours and 13 minutes per day on the internet. That's almost 40 per cent of their waking hours. A full third of that time is spent on social media. The online world is an incredible place. It is an ineradicable part of the everyday lives of millions of Australians. It is a world where we can find everything from obscure mathematical theorems to the latest in fashion. It is a world in which we can engage in conversations with others thousands of kilometres away in forgotten parts of the world in forgotten cities. It is a world of over 30 trillion unique webpages.

In such a dizzying labyrinth of texts, images and videos, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information and opinion thrown at us every time we enter it. For an increasing number of Australians, the experience is harrowing and destructive. Over 20 per cent of young people experience abuse online, and the statistics for the population more generally are no better. Let me just say that again: over 20 per cent of all young people going online experience some form of abuse. Alarmingly, some 87 per cent of young people have witnessed cyberbullying online. Again I say that number: 87 per cent. Unlike abuse on the street, cyberabuse and harassment can happen at any time and be broadcast to thousands, if not millions, of strangers. Cyberbullying also shows human beings at their most petty and their most shallow and, at times, their most destructive. Seventy-two per cent of victims of cyberbullying are targeted because of the way they look. Given these statistics, it has never been more important to ensure that Australians stay safe online. We should enjoy the same standards online as we do in the town square, and the online safety bill guarantees exactly that.

I note with some concern the criticism of other senators opposite, from the Greens and the Labor Party. While they are supporting this bill, I note their criticisms. But I say very strongly today that I'm incredibly proud that the Morrison government is the government fixing this issue. We did not see this sort of action from Labor when it was in power. We did not see the Labor Party combating these issues. Along with all the other work we've done to protect the safety of women, in particular, and children and to combat domestic violence, these bills are a very important part of the suite of measures that our government has taken to protect people in our community.

The bills establish a set of basic online safety expectations for industry, and include mandatory transparent reporting requirements which allow the eSafety Commissioner to require online services to provide specific information about online harms. These include responses to material depicting abhorrent, violent conduct and volumetric attacks in which organised digital lynch mobs can overwhelm a victim with abuse. The bills also include a strengthened cyberbullying scheme for Australian children, building on the government's existing scheme for protecting children online. The bills set out a new cyberabuse scheme to remove serious forms of online abuse from the internet and, very importantly, this is backed up by strong civil penalties. Similarly, internet content hosts face new requirements to take down image based abuse within 24 hours, on pain of penalty.

The eSafety Commissioner's powers—and let me say that the eSafety Commissioner is doing an extraordinary job in our community in protecting people, particularly children, online—have been expanded. The commissioner can now use a rapid website-blocking power to block material depicting abhorrent, violent conduct during an online crisis, such as what occurred during the Christchurch massacre when, disgracefully and disgustingly, Facebook failed to remove that abhorrent content in any reasonable time frame. The commissioner's information-gathering powers have also been expanded so that the commissioner can unmask the identities of anonymous online accounts being used to bully, abuse and humiliate innocent people.

Statistics tell one kind of story, but it is a remote and abstract one. The concrete reality is that most of us know someone who has been affected by online cyberbullying, cyberabuse or humiliation. This is an issue particularly close to my heart as well, and I have stood in this chamber previously and spoken about the trolling to which I have been subjected by my political opponents. In my particular experience, which happened over a period of some four years, I was subjected to shocking abuse, humiliation and false claims by people running a number of anonymous Twitter accounts. They made some really distressing claims, including attaching my face—my head shot—to the photo of a woman who has the name Sarah Henderson. She is a woman from Texas who had been charged and has now been convicted of killing her two children. I can say that my local political opponents on these anonymous Twitter accounts thought it was okay to compare me with a woman by the same name who had killed her two children. How revolting and disgusting is that?

I'm very pleased that Geelong police took this on. They investigated this conduct and sought a warrant from Twitter. Equally disgustingly, Twitter refused to comply with that warrant to provide Geelong police with any information about the cowardly people behind those anonymous accounts. I will not give up on this issue; I will not give up on continuing to hold the people behind these anonymous Twitter accounts to account for what they thought was okay to do. As I say, it was absolutely disgraceful that Twitter refused to comply with a police warrant, despite the head of government relations telling me that Twitter would have no issue in doing so once they had a police warrant or a court order.

So I am very, very pleased with the government's work in relation to these bills. We must do everything we can to arrest this abhorrent and corrosive phenomenon. I am a very, very proud supporter of this legislation. It is necessary. It is effective. It provides immediate response powers. It holds many people to account for their conduct online, and it obviously supports the government's determination to protect Australians from the tsunami of horrific material which can occur online. I commend these bills to the Senate.