Kay Patterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Coonan. Properly harnessed, the internet is a wonderful tool to educate, to inform, to communicate and to entertain, but it does contain serious risks for children and vulnerable young people. Will the minister outline to the Senate measures that the Howard government has taken to assist parents in making the internet safer for their families? Is the minister aware of alternative policies and their effectiveness in tackling this critical family issue?

Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you to Senator Patterson for her question and for her longstanding interest and work as Minister for Family and Community Services. As Senator Patterson well knows, the government have always taken the issue of protecting our families seriously. In fact, Australia has led the world in managing the risks associated with the internet. We have a substantial record that demonstrates our commitment to families. This culminated in last Friday’s announcement of the government’s $189 million NetAlert program. NetAlert is an ambitious and comprehensive program that will give parents the tools to manage their family’s internet experience, as well as provide tough new policing and enforcement measures.

As well as the $84.8 million National Filter Scheme to provide every Australian family with a free PC or home-computer filter or an ISP filtered service, the NetAlert program has been significantly strengthened to include: an extra $43 million for the Australian Federal Police Online Child Sex Exploitation Team to double the number of police who monitor chat rooms and websites and engage in other activity to crack down on online child predators; more funding for the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions to lay charges against predators and put them away where they belong; over $11 million to take on new school and community outreach officers to visit schools to give parents hands-on information on internet dangers; over $22 million to fund a comprehensive public information and education campaign about internet safety; a special working group between the AFP and industry to tackle the issue of social networking sites, where predators often seek to target young people; and an investigation into how we might use the register of child sex offenders to monitor online use.

The Howard government has been delivering the best available solutions to deal with offensive online content since the introduction of the 1999 Online Content Scheme. We have done this, by and large, without the support of Labor, the Greens or the Democrats. In fact, until last week, when he rose to speak on the Northern Territory legislation, Mr Rudd had only ever spoken on one family portfolio bill in his whole eight years as member for Griffith. Eight years and only one mention of families is an appalling record for any member of parliament, but it is a damning indictment of someone who is trying to market himself as Australia’s next Prime Minister.

Parenting is a tough job in today’s world and parents want real assistance to help them keep their children safe and not election rhetoric of the like displayed by Labor. The Howard government are serious about protecting children. That is why we have a serious, well-funded and whole-of-government response to internet safety. In fact, many of our measures are leading edge, and I am not aware of a more comprehensive government program anywhere in the world. The Labor Party are scrambling for relevance when it comes to protecting families online. They do not have a plan—not one dollar of public funding—and their leader’s abject silence over eight years has shown that they have no commitment to families.