Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Violent and degrading pornography is rife on the internet, and what's particularly concerning is the level of inadvertent exposure that children have to this type of content. Porn that depicts non-consensual sex or is violent or degrading towards women is everywhere, and sadly it's that type of toxic porn that is shaping young people's attitudes and behaviour towards sex, relationships and consent.

We know that in order to address violence against women we need to address problematic pornography. In particular we must ensure that children are not exposed to it. We know that many young men and young people generally are learning about sex from violent porn when they should instead be learning about respect, intimacy and physical connection in a safe way through respectful relationships education in schools and through safe and well-informed discussions with family or trusted adults.

Online spaces can be harmful to everyone, but there is a gendered aspect to them. Girls are three times more likely than boys to have experienced online sexual victimisation before the age of 24, according to research conducted by the Queensland University of Technology last year. We need the big tech giants to take action to ensure that this type of harmful sexual content is not fed into the feeds of young people online. We know that parents will often not have a line of sight on what kids are voluntarily accessing, and it's all the more so in relation to content, ads or pop-ups that force their way into children's online spaces. The tech giants make profits out of this, and they are damaging the wellbeing of our kids. We don't agree with Labor and the Liberals that simply banning kids from social media will fix things, because we think kids will get around that ban so easily and still won't develop the skills to navigate being online safely. There must be an obligation on the online platforms to stop inappropriate content from being pushed to children.

The other part of the solution of course is that education and primary prevention are the most effective ways of driving cultural change. We need to integrate education on the potential harms of exposure to online porn for young people, and the ways in which it can shape harmful sexual attitudes and behaviours, into consent and respectful relationship education. It's now mandatory to include consent education in the Australian curriculum, which is very welcome, but more funding is needed to properly train and support the teachers that deliver that material, to resource any third-party providers that teach it and to address the general underfunding of public schools for teaching this and any other material.

There have been some positive steps in this space. Last year I welcomed the deepfake sexual material bill, which criminalised the sharing of deepfakes and other artificially generated sexual material. That was a much-needed change. But that bill didn't take the extra step of criminalising the creation of the deepfake sexual material in the first place. I moved an amendment for that to occur but sadly didn't get any support for it. The next government should revisit that issue and fix it properly.

We know deepfakes and harmful pornographic materials minimise, degrade and objectify women, and they embed a culture of gendered violence. Changing our rape culture requires more education and prevention efforts to ensure young people can be safe online.

The Greens are committed to ending our rape culture. Education about harmful porn as a driver of sexual violence is an integral part of that effort. Educating all arms of the justice system to be trauma informed is another. Fully funding frontline family and sexual violence services is another crucial way to save women's lives, and the lives and futures of their kids. There was an additional $100 million for crisis housing announced over the weekend and the Greens welcome that, but, sadly, we are still at around three-quarters of the funding that the women's safety sector said they needed to meet demand back in 2018. The epidemic of violence against women has only worsened since then, so demand has increased more. But the federal government have chosen not to allocate the full funding that is needed for every woman or person who reaches out to try and escape violence. They say they are too poor to do so but they waste billions on nuclear submarines and taxpayer handouts to property investors and fossil fuel companies. They need to re-prioritise, stop pandering to the tech giants and the big corporations, and put the community and women and children's safety first. I commend Senator Payman for bringing this issue to the chamber.