Skye Kakoschke-Moore (SA, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with a deep sense of honour, sorrow and continuing frustration that I rise to speak on the Criminal Code Amendment (Misrepresentation of Age to a Minor) Bill 2016 today. This is a bill to deal with what I, my colleagues, many parents and the wider community believe is an issue of great importance to the safety of our children. My colleague Senator Xenophon has introduced prior versions of this bill into other parliaments. This version of the bill mirrors the bill introduced in the 44th Parliament, aside from stylistic changes to reflect current drafting methods.

The reason the bill exists is because of Carly Ryan. Next year marks 10 years since her brutal murder at the hands of a paedophile. When Carly was 14 she started chatting online to someone who she was made to believe was a 20-year-old man named Brandon Kane. Brandon was Carly's ideal boyfriend, who portrayed himself as a young guitarist. She fell in love with him as their relationship online grew ever closer. But what Carly did not know, and what was purposefully and dishonestly concealed from her, was that 'Brandon' was a fictitious person, an internet construct. In truth, Brandon was actually a 47-year-old predator, Gary Francis Newman. Newman masqueraded as Brandon, Carly's teenage dream, in a perverted plan to secure the trust of Carly and her mother, who were completely innocent to his sinister and sickening motivations. This cyberspace alter ego was cunningly used by Newman to make and maintain a connection between himself and Carly. Dialogue between Carly and Brandon was conducted over the internet, the telephone and through emails. Over the course of the period between the start of that dialogue and until her death, Carly fell in love with Brandon and believed that this person was genuine and that he loved her. Carly innocently trusted this person.

Appallingly, the fictitious Brandon was one of up to 200 fake online identities Newman had created in a bid to communicate and have sex with young girls. When Carly turned 15 she invited Brandon to her birthday party. He told her he would be overseas and that he could not make it, but that his adoptive father Shane would go in his place. Shane was another fake persona created and used by Newman in his continued manipulation of Carly. Carly had already been chatting to Shane online, and she convinced her mother that it would be okay for him to come along to her party. Newman, in his role of Shane, turned up. Carly's mother, Sonya, was horrified that her daughter had become so close to a stranger so much older than she was, and warned him to stay away from her daughter. But Newman was relentless in his pursuit of his victim. Undeterred, he continued to communicate and deceive Carly with mobile telephone calls, text messages, emails and other internet traffic, convincing her that she would get to meet her beloved Brandon in person. He eventually lured her to a meeting on 19 February 2007, at Horseshoe Bay in South Australia. There, he brutally assaulted Carly and left her to die.

It took police 11 days to track Newman down. When they found him on the day of his arrest, he was logged onto his computer as Brandon Kane, chatting to another 14-year-old girl in Western Australia. Police also found a stash of child pornography on his computer and discovered he had already pursued many other young girls overseas. Newman was found guilty of Carly's murder and is now serving a life sentence with 29 years non-parole. It is hard to believe but, up until this fateful meeting with Carly, none of Newman's conduct online was illegal under our current laws. Newman was able to manipulate, lie and deceive Carly online and there was nothing the law could do to protect Carly or to give law enforcement agencies, had they known, the ability to intervene. This is because under our current laws you need to show a 'sexual purpose' or intent. In none of Brandon's communications with Carly did he express a sexual purpose with her.

The aim of this bill is to make it an offence for a person over 18 years of age to lie about their age online to a child under 16 years for the purposes of facilitating a physical meeting. This bill also makes it an offence for an adult to misrepresent their age in online communications with a minor with an intent of committing another offence. These two items close an important loophole in the law. There is no reason for an adult to knowingly misrepresent their age to someone they believe is under 16, particularly if they believe doing so will make it easier to meet or to commit another offence. This bill also contains specific provisions to clarify how this offence can be prosecuted and defended.

My colleague, Senator Xenophon, attempted to address this serious issue with earlier versions of the bill. This version of the bill will ensure that there are no unintended consequences of enforcing the law. Instead this bill creates offences specifically aimed at the circumstances—a person lying to a minor about their age to facilitate a meeting or to make themselves seem more approachable—that need to be addressed. This bill uses the age of 16 to define a minor, as it is consistent with the age of sexual consent in the majority of Australian jurisdictions.

The internet is impossible to pin down. It is constantly evolving and growing. The pace of technological growth means children are almost always much more comfortable with their online communication than their parents are. What we still see as new and different is as essential to them as breathing. We know there is an ever-increasing online presence of Australian youth and therefore a concomitant threat from online predators. New forms of communication mean we need new laws to protect our children. As a parliament we cannot stand idly by while Australia's criminal law is lagging behind technological advances. If we do so, innocent children will pay the price for our inaction. Research conducted by the Office of the Children's eSafety Commissioner showed that teenagers spend 33 hours per week online outside of school, which makes it clear that young people live in a world of constant connection enabled by the ease of access, widespread adoption of social media and mobility of online content. The rapid expansion of digital technology and increased access to the internet has transformed the lives of children globally. With opportunities for learning, communicating and socialising, very real and ever increasing risks for children online have similarly expanded.

In 2014 the Australian Federal Police received approximately 4,500 referrals of child exploitation material and in 2015 that figure rose to a staggering 11,000 referrals. These increases are deeply concerning to all Australians.

While the exploitation of children is not a new phenomenon, the online environment and the pace of the digital age has intensified the problem to record levels and created more dangers and vulnerability for children. In cyberspace, we cannot stand by their side as they explore the world. We cannot always set rules and curfews, because our kids can be sitting safe in their rooms even while they are in danger.

This bill is an attempt to address some of the techniques used by online predators, so that we can put an additional safeguard in place for our children. Current laws are too narrow, and we do not have anything to directly address the situation where an adult lies about their age to a child online for the purpose of encouraging the child to meet them in person. Existing laws require prosecutors to prove that adults had groomed children online—that these adults had a 'sexual purpose'.

During the 2015 inquiry into the previous version of the bill Susan McLean, a cybersafety expert with over 20 years experience working for Victoria Police, acknowledged that in her experience there had been situations in which police were unable to act because the behaviour of suspects fell short of proving the element of sexual intent in the existing offences, and that this inability to act represented a deficiency in the law. The bill aims to cure that deficiency and provide law enforcement agencies with the ability to investigate and prosecute alleged offenders in the preparatory stages of their grooming activities. This will prevent children from being placed in a position of danger. I have no doubt that giving police the power to intervene at an earlier stage will save children from abuse. Indeed, the Attorney-General's Department, in its submission to an earlier inquiry into the bill, conceded that:

It is possible that by requiring an intention to encourage a physical meeting only, this offence may be easier to investigate and prosecute than existing grooming and procuring offences which require evidence of sexual intent, allowing law enforcement agencies to intervene during the preparatory stage of an offence before proof of sexual or other illicit intention is apparent.

We also know that through the internet online predators can gain access to children faster and in higher volumes, using an arsenal of easily accessible online methods at the click of a mouse or the touch of a button, including chat rooms, email, online games, social networking sites and private messaging apps, to find, groom and lure victims. Ruben Rodriguez, former director of the US National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, has said predators will go after children who tend to express agreement in chat rooms but do not say a lot—because they know these children are vulnerable. They are children who perhaps really value attention, understanding and friendship. When a predator finds such a child they invite them into a private area of the chat room to get to know them better. Next in the grooming sequence comes private chat via instant messaging services and then email and phone conversations, often on mobile phones, and finally a face-to-face meeting. According to Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton—in his former role as AFP Deputy Commissioner—the length of time it takes for an experienced predator to groom a child online is becoming shorter, with as little as two weeks between the first contact and a physical meeting.

We must act now to protect our children online. The public momentum for change sought to be implemented by this bill has gathered pace, with over 90,000 signatures received on the change.org petition in support of the bill. The comments received by change.org include: 'I, like Carly, was the victim of online grooming while I was a minor by a man who misrepresented his age by three decades. He then harassed me tirelessly and for several years haunted my every move. I feel very strongly for this to be passed as law. Don't let another victim fall to online predators.' Another post stated: 'At age 13 my friends of the same age often met up with people they had talked to in public chat rooms. They were just middle-class girls from nice families and had very protective parents. It is more common than people think. People always think they know where their children are and what they are doing. But they don't. This could happen to anyone and it will happen many more times.' And finally: 'Carly's mum visited my school. I have been a victim of grooming in the past and Sonya said that I was now safe. When she visited I was the same age as Carly. Sonya is an inspiration to me and I wish for the government to make this law happen.' A police officer with over 26 years experience posted that they believe this law may act as a deterrent to the monsters who are out there.

Education and increasing public awareness are an essential part of any preventive approach to protecting children in the online space. It is reassuring that parents are increasingly crossing the generational divide and taking a vested interest in the technology being used by children, teaching them strategies for staying safe online with the information and education provided by the Carly Ryan Foundation. As a community, we need to stay one step ahead of online perpetrators intent on causing harm to our children. The Carly Ryan Foundation is at the forefront of technological ways to counter online harm to children. The foundation has partnered with digital engagement specialists KOJO and, with the support of the government of South Australia and Google, they have developed Thread—an app to help users deal with unsafe situations online, away from home and everywhere in between. The Thread app combines the benefits of contemporary technology with clever design and personal devices.

In stressful situations, Thread provides an immediate connection between a user's location, trusted contacts and emergency services. At its core, Thread is PIN-protected, and allows users to check in with their location to show they are okay, start discussions with trusted contacts about online or offline dangers and, in the event of an emergency, send their location while dialling triple 0. I also applaud government efforts in raising awareness through the Office of the Children's eSafety Commissioner. However, education and awareness alone are not enough to protect our children online.

This bill, the Criminal Code Amendment (Misrepresentation of Age to a Minor) Bill 2016, provides an additional and crucial line of defence in combating online predatory behaviour. We have consulted constructively with the government, the opposition and others regarding this bill, and we have listened to their concerns. We thank them for hearing us out. We welcome the opportunity to continue these discussions to achieve in law the intent of the bill, which many parties agree is laudable.

Sonya Ryan, Carly's mother, who is here today, has been pushing for these changes in the law since her daughter's death almost a decade ago. Sonya, who was nominated as South Australia's Australian of the Year in 2013, has dedicated her life to raising awareness of online dangers among young people, through the Carly Ryan Foundation. The foundation is a leader in online safety education. I acknowledge Sonya today as an outstanding and highly respected South Australian. Sonya has channelled her grief into a positive crusade to protect our children and prevent crime. Anyone who has listened to Sonya recount Carly's story at one of the thousands of education seminars she has personally provided to schools and communities across Australia is under no doubt that the law must change. If her actions stop just one young person from becoming a victim, then it is worth it. That is something we should all keep at the forefront of our minds when we are debating this bill.

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Centenary of ANZAC) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Criminal Code Amendment (Misrepresentation of Age to a Minor) Bill 2016 on behalf of the opposition. It is nearly 10 years since 15-year-old Carly Ryan was tragically murdered by a 47-year-old man who lied about his identity, including his age, in order to groom underage girls. Carly met her murderer online. Like millions of young Australians, Carly was an avid internet user, and in 2006 at the age of 14 started chatting with someone she thought was a 20-year-old musician named Brandon Kane. Tragically, Brandon Kane was not a real person but one of many alternative identities of Gary Newman, an online sexual predator who had a complex web of online alter egos that he used to groom underage girls. Carly was the first Australian girl to be murdered by an online predator. I will not go into the details of Carly's tragic murder, beyond saying that Newman lied about his age to Carly to gain her trust, and then abused her trust and outgoing nature in the most sickening way. As a parent, there would be nothing worse than losing your beautiful child, let alone in this horrific way.

Since Carly's tragic murder, her mother, Sonya Ryan, has advocated for the act of an adult lying about their age to a person under the age of 16 to be criminalised. I acknowledge the tireless effort of Sonya Ryan and of her Carly Ryan Foundation to pursue improved legal protections for children in our community. I have not for a second doubted that the work and the intentions of the Carly Ryan Foundation are sincere and aimed solely at protecting girls and boys like Carly. The Carly Ryan Foundation, run by Sonya, has become an effective advocacy organisation for cyber safety, and has online fact sheets and counselling services to reduce the harm of online bullying and predatory behaviour. Sonya Ryan is a great Australian, fighting for the protection of Australian children. That is to be commended. I know she is in the chamber today and I welcome her to this place.

Labor understands that keeping children safe online is a real concern for countless Australian families. The advent of online technology platforms has changed the world of policing and, tragically, has changed the way that predators target vulnerable children. Many parents do not understand how to access or monitor the internet usage of their children, making it much harder for parents to protect their children from the attention of creeps and criminals.

Labor understands the online world is the preferred place of paedophiles to groom children. The internet, while not a lawless realm, is one that often operates outside traditional social structures and provides opportunities for those who would choose to misrepresent their life and identity to impressionable children in a way that the pre-internet age did not. Subsequently, laws relating to this kind of misrepresentation need to evolve to meet the challenges of the internet age. The protection of children should be the top priority of any government. As a parliament we must consider how to best protect the millions of Australian children who use the internet every day. It is clear that there are people out there who choose to misrepresent their identity, including their age, to manipulate young Australians. We must do everything that we can to protect our children from these people.

There are many laws that seek to protect young people online, but we know that these laws sometimes do not do what they need to do to protect children like Carly Ryan. The law failed Carly, and that is a tragedy. It is worth our examination on how we can do better. I would like to acknowledge the work that Senator Xenophon and Senator Kakoschke-Moore have done to achieve this goal. Like all of us here, they are working to ensure that Australia is a better, safer place, particularly for Australian children and future generations.

I can assure Sonya Ryan that Labor has the same interests at heart. There is nothing more important than protecting our children. It is the most basic and primal instinct to do whatever must be done to protect your family. Labor will consult with Senator Xenophon, Senator Kakoschke-Moore and others and work with the law enforcement agencies to determine what laws are required to meet the challenge of online predatory behaviour.

This bill, Criminal Code Amendment (Misrepresentation of Age to a Minor) Bill 2016, seeks to amend the Criminal Code Act 1995 to make it an offence for a person who is over 18 years of age to misrepresent their age to a person they reasonably believe to be under 16 years of age for the purpose of encouraging a physical meeting or with intent of committing an offence. The current version of the bill—introduced by Senator Kakoschke-Moore on Wednesday, 12 October 2016—is the fourth iteration of this bill. The three previous iterations of the bill were introduced by Senator Xenophon. It is clear by the long history of this bill that Senator Xenophon and his team are firmly dedicated to achieving justice for Carly Ryan and are committed to ensuring that such tragic circumstances be prevented in the future.

The Criminal Code Amendment (Misrepresentation of Age to a Minor) Bill 2010 was introduced in February 2010. It was the subject of a report by the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee tabled in June 2010, which recommended that the Senate should not pass the bill. The bill then lapsed at the end of the 42nd Parliament in September 2010. The Criminal Code Amendment (Misrepresentation of Age to a Minor) Bill 2013 was then introduced in February 2013 and was the subject of an inquiry by the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, with a report tabled in June 2013. The inquiry recommended that the Senate not pass the bill. This bill then lapsed at the end of the 43rd Parliament in November 2013. The bill was then reintroduced in December 2013 in a substantially similar form to the first version of the 2013 bill. The main difference between that bill and this bill deals with intentional misrepresentation of age to persons less than 16 years of age, rather than 18 years of age in the first version of the bill. This change was made because 16 years is consistent with the age of sexual consent in the majority of Australian states and territories.

This bill was the subject of an inquiry by the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, with the report tabled in August 2015. The inquiry recommended:

… that further consultation is conducted on the Bill prior to its consideration by the Senate.

This current bill, which is identical to the third version of the bill, is currently the subject of the debate. The second reading speech introducing the bill, as Senator Kakoschke-Moore stated, said that new forms of communications mean we need new laws to protect our children. Research conducted by the eSafety commissioner showed that teenagers spent 33 hours per week online outside of school. In cyberspace, we cannot stand beside them as they explore the world. We cannot always set rules and curfews, because our kids can be sitting safe in their rooms even when they are in danger.

This bill is an attempt to address some of the techniques used by online predators, so that we can put additional safeguards in place for our children. Labor supports the intention of the bill, namely to protect minors from online predators. We believe that this bill is a worthy attempt, and that is why Labor is engaging in consultation with Senator Kakoschke-Moore and Senator Xenophon. The safety of young people online is an issue of utmost importance, and requires a careful and considered policy response.

The object of the bill is to protect minors from predatory online behaviour by adults. The bill proposes amendments to the Criminal Code which create offences relating to the use of a carriage service with the intention of misrepresenting age. Proposed new section 474.40 would create two offences for a person over the age of 18—the sender—to intentionally misrepresent their age, using a carriage service, to a person who is or who the sender believes to be under 16 years of age—the recipient—for the purposes of encouraging the recipient to physically meet with the sender or another person, or with the intention of committing an offence other than the offences proposed under the new section. Both offences would be punishable by a term of imprisonment: five years where the intent was to encourage a physical meeting; eight years where the intent was to commit an offence.

In its most recent report on this bill, the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee acknowledged:

… that some stakeholders to the inquiry raised concerns in relation to the Bill, particularly that it may not be necessary in view of existing offences in the Criminal Code Act 1995 and that the offence provisions in the Bill may be too broad. In light of these concerns, the committee considers that further consultation should be undertaken in relation to the Bill to determine whether it is the best available means of meeting the policy intent underpinning the Bill.

The majority of submitters and witnesses to the committee's inquiry into the bill were supportive of the intention behind it, but were not supportive of the approach taken and raised concerns about the formulation of the bill. In particular, many were of the view that the bill is unnecessary in light of existing offences in the Criminal Code that address the targeting of minors by sexual predators online—namely, the offences of procurement, grooming, and using a telecommunications network to commit a serious offence. However, the current offences relating to grooming and procurement both require an element of sexual intent on the part of the adult in order for the offences to be made out.

Sonya Ryan, the director of the Carly Ryan Foundation, has argued that removing the requirement to prove sexual intent is necessary to counter more sophisticated strategies that are now being used by online predators. Further, Susan McLean, a cybersafety expert with more than 20 years' experience working for Victoria Police, agreed that in her experience 'there have been situations in which police were unable to act because the behaviour of the suspects fell short of improving the element of sexual intent in the existing offences'. However, the Australian Federal Police did not share this concern, and said that there is already potential for law enforcement to initiate operations to disrupt potential offenders, even before sexual intent has been shown.

There were also concerns raised about the breadth of the bill's scope and the danger that it could unintentionally catch behaviour that should not be deemed criminal. The Attorney-General's Department, for instance, raised concerns that an 18½-year-old could misrepresent their age to a 16-year-old in an attempt to gain an invite to a birthday party. I think we can all agree that we would not want to see this kind of behaviour criminalised. It is a challenge, in broadening the Criminal Code in this way to remove the need for police to prove sexual intent before intervening in a potential online predator case, to ensure that unintended consequences like this are not created. We encourage further consideration as to how this might be achieved.

We need to ensure that our laws are best suited to protecting minors from online predators and that the police have the powers to investigate and respond without creating unintended consequences. We are confident that a position can be reached on this bill which ensures that minors are protected from online predators while also ensuring that our response to this issue is the most appropriate response.

We have a number of concerns with the bill as it stands, but we are confident that they can be worked through. As recommended by the most recent committee report on this bill, we are engaging in consultation on the bill in the hope that we can find an appropriate means of achieving the objective of the bill. We have been in discussion with the Nick Xenophon Team, and we are looking for ways to work cooperatively to see how its aims can best be achieved. This consultation process needs to focus on whether there are actually any gaps within the current procurement and grooming offences that already exist to protect minors from online predators and on how these gaps might best be addressed. It is important that we leave no stone unturned in the never-ending battle to keep our children safe. Carly's death has exposed a loophole in the law, and we should look at how we can close it. Labor looks forward to continuing to work productively with the Nick Xenophon Team on this bill.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like all in this chamber and, I am sure, all Australians, I was deeply saddened by the case of Carly Ryan. The safety of young people online is vital, and the government shares the community's concern about their safety. I appreciate the efforts in the Criminal Code Amendment (Misrepresentation of Age to a Minor) Bill 2016 and previous iterations of the bill to address some of the issues. As Senator Farrell mentioned, this is the third version of this bill, which seeks to prohibit an adult misrepresenting their age to a minor to arrange a meeting. Previous versions of the bill have been subject to two Senate inquiries, the latter of which was an inquiry by a committee which I chair, and I will refer to the results of that inquiry a little more fully later on. The current bill addresses some of the concerns raised by my committee in its hearings and also raised by the government in its submission to that inquiry.

So I welcome the changes that Senator Xenophon has introduced in this bill, and I appreciate his willingness to overcome some of the concerns which have been raised with the bill. However, having said that, I say that the version of the bill before us today still needs further work. The proposed offences may have unintended consequences and risk criminalising conduct not warranting such sanction. The government is in discussions with Senator Xenophon on how the bill might be amended to address these matters, and I understand that Senator Brandis is meeting with Senator Xenophon later today to see if these issues can be addressed.

Currently there are strong existing Commonwealth laws to protect children from adults seeking sexual relationships or seeking to cause them harm online. Child sex related offences carry penalties of between 12 and 15 years imprisonment. Some say that perhaps that is not even long enough. These are horrendous crimes. The grooming offence is in section 474.27 and that captures any communications that make it easier to procure a child to engage in sexual activity with the sender. This enables prosecution prior to any physical contact. Section 474.14 makes it an offence to communicate online with the intention of committing any other kind of serious offence. This offence is punishable by a penalty applicable to serious offences—for example, life imprisonment for an intention to commit murder.

Since Carly's tragic death some years ago, there have been amendments introduced to try to address that and other issues. In 2010, the child sex related offences in the Criminal Code were reviewed and amended to ensure that they are comprehensive and deal with all contemporary forms of offending. For example, the grooming offences were amended to remove the requirement on online communication containing material that is indecent in recognition of the fact that grooming exchanges often involve platonic and so-called innocent exchanges. The government has introduced a number of significant initiatives to empower parents and children to explore the online world safely. In 2009, the Australian Federal Police established the ThinkUKnow program that provides cyber safety education to parents, carers and teachers. ThinkUKnow presentations are delivered to parents, carers and teachers by trained law enforcement and industry volunteers in schools and organisations across Australia. In 2015-16, the program delivered more than one presentation each day of the year—a total of 386—to more than 10,000 parents, carers and teachers. This is work by the Federal Police to try to make everyone aware of the dangers involved with some online exploitation. Presentations by the AFP cover online grooming, sexting, privacy, inappropriate online behaviours, identity theft and fraud, and general online safety.

In 2015, the Australian government passed the Enhancing Online Safety for Children Act, which led to the establishment of the Office of the Children's eSafety Commissioner. Over a period of time, many senators have had briefings from the commissioner. This office provides online safety education and advice for Australian children and young people and operates a complaints service for young people who experience serious cyberbullying. The Australian government consulted a wide range of online safety experts in the development of this legislation and it continues to host meetings of the Online Safety Consultative Working Group, which is chaired by the Children's eSafety Commissioner. The Australian government has provided some $10 million in funding to implement its enhancing online safety for children policy, including $7½ million to allow schools to access accredited online safety programs, $2.4 million to establish and operate the Office of the Children's eSafety Commissioner and $100,000 to support Australian based research and information campaigns on online safety.

I am pleased to report that in its first year of operation the eSafety Commissioner resolved 186 serious cyberbullying complaints. The commissioner educated more than 130,000 people via the virtual classrooms and face-to-face presentations. The commissioner conducted over 11,000 investigations into illegal and offensive online content and worked with international partners to remove more than 7,400 URLs of child sexual abuse material. The commissioner also certified 22 online safety program providers, with 108 presenters delivering programs in schools. The commission also handled over 2,900 email and telephone inquiries for help, and established the iParent site to provide online safety advice to parents and carers, and the eSafetyWomen site to help women manage technology risks, as part of the Australian government's Women's Safety Package to Stop the Violence.

I will mention shortly some highlights from the statistics in the last quarterly report of the new Children's eSafety Commissioner. In doing so, I am hopeful that anyone who might be listening to this debate, any parents or carers, might be aware—perhaps this debate might emphasise it to them—of the existence of the eSafety commissioner, who should be contacted whenever parents or carers have any concern about the online safety of children.

In the last quarterly report, for the period July-September 2016, the eSafety office noted that it had dealt with 70 serious cyberbullying complaints, a 75 per cent increase compared with the same period last year. I am hopeful that that statistic means that more people know about the eSafety office and so they have reported more. I hope it does not mean that there has been a 75 per cent increase in cyberbullying across the board. One would hope that it is the former explanation and that, as the work of the eSafety office and the commissioner become better known, people are prepared to make complaints or to make contact with the eSafety office to get assistance.

For the last quarter the commission also conducted research which showed that close to one in five teens experienced some form of cyberbullying in the 12 months to June 2016. It found that teenagers spend on average 33 hours per week online outside of school. That is a rather amazing, and perhaps even concerning, statistic. The eSafety commissioner's office also trained more than 600 frontline professionals across every state and territory to help women who were experiencing tech-facilitated abuse.

I want to get to the bill before us, but in the form of the previous bill that came before this parliament and which was considered by the committee. Several submitters and witnesses to our last inquiry expressed the view that the proposed offences in the bill are unnecessary in the light of existing offences in the Criminal Code that address the targeting of minors by sexual predators online, namely, as I mentioned before: section 474.26, which is the offence of procurement; section 474.27, which is the offence of grooming; and section 474.14, which is the offence of using a telecommunications network with the intention to commit a serious offence. The Attorney-General's Department made a submission to that inquiry stating that the Criminal Code already criminalises online communications with children where there is evidence of an intention to engage in sexual activity with a child or otherwise cause harm to the child. In its submission to that inquiry, the ACT government highlighted that, for example, the existing grooming offence does not require proof that the communication be indecent, and so would appear to capture a communication in which the adult misrepresents their age.

Furthermore, Sonya Ryan, who Senator Farrell mentioned in his contribution just before me and who is the director of the Carly Ryan Foundation, argued that there were issues to be involved. She said in her evidence, 'The problem is that a predator will take quite a bit of time to groom a child without showing any sexual intent. That is what we have found through the work which we are doing. By the time the child agrees to meet the predator face to face, he or she no longer thinks that that person is a stranger.' What they were seeking, they said in their submission, 'was to add to this law to address the common denominator in the way the online predators behave. They all set up false online profiles, and most reduce their age online to present as a peer to the child with the intention to meet that child.' The idea of this law is to prevent the sexual act happening to a child, therefore preventing a potential trauma to a child which obviously can cause lifelong problems to a young person.

Another cybersafety expert giving evidence to the committee had 20 years experience with Victoria Police and said that there have been situations in which the police were unable to act, because the behaviour of suspects fell short of proving the element of sexual intent in the existing offence. Several submitters to that inquiry argued that the proposed offenders in that bill—particularly the proposed section 474.40, in relation to encouraging a physical meeting, are drafted too broadly. The overriding concern expressed was that the proposed offence in the bill would wrongly criminalise behaviour that is not inherently criminal. The New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties made certain submissions in relation to that.

The Attorney-General's Department in its submission to the inquiry restated its position that the breadth of the activity covered by the proposed offences goes beyond the accepted limits of criminal responsibility and represents a departure from the existing Commonwealth criminal law.

The recommendation of our committee—and there were other elements, and anyone interested in this debate who has not already done so might usefully have a look at the committee's report into the previous legislation—was that 'the safety of young people online is an issue of the utmost importance and one that requires careful and considered policy responses.' The committee supported the intent of the bill in aiming to protect minors from online predators. The committee did note, however, that some minor amendments had been made to the bill compared with the previous version of the bill, which the committee examined and reported on in June 2013. The committee did acknowledge, however, that some stakeholders to the inquiry raised concerns in relation to the bill, particularly that it may not be necessary in view of existing offences under the Criminal Code and that the offences provision in the bill may be too broad. In light of those concerns, the committee considered that further consultation should be undertaken in relation to the bill to determine whether it is the best available means of meeting the policy intent underlying the bill. The committee accordingly recommended to the Senate that further consultation be conducted on the bill prior to its consideration by the Senate.

All credit to Senator Xenophon. There were further considerations. Senator Xenophon in this bill before us today actually addressed some of the issues that were raised in the committee's report and in the evidence to the committee. However, there is still a concern in the government. As I said right at the beginning, everybody agrees that everything should be done to prevent the tragic circumstances that befell Carly Ryan, but it has to be done properly. To that end, as I think I mentioned before and as perhaps Senator Xenophon also mentioned, there are further consultations happening this afternoon to try to get the right balance on this bill so that it does everything possible to protect minors from online predators but at the same time takes note of the normal civil liberties and the presumption of innocence that are the hallmarks of the legal system in a democracy like Australia's. I am hopeful that this bill, whilst perhaps not being passed in its present form, will be negotiated to a state where it can receive support from all the chamber. I note that the Labor Party, who spoke just before me, have a similar position in that they want to do everything possible to protect minors from online predators and look after the safety of children. But it does need some refinement and I am hopeful that that will happen.

At the moment I would caution that the bill perhaps should not be passed in this sitting of the parliament. But we should keep talking about it, to get the right balance so that some further laws can be implemented to protect young people, in particular online.

Derryn Hinch (Victoria, Derryn Hinch's Justice Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I stand to support the Criminal Code Amendment (Misrepresentation of Age to a Minor) Bill 2016. Sadly, the grooming of minors for child sexual abuse purposes is nothing new. A June 2000 report on Project Axis by the Queensland Crime Commission and the Queensland Police Service contained detailed accounts of the offline grooming of minors for sexual contact. Of course, we have now had the explosion of the internet. We have WhatsApp, Snapchat, Skype and chat rooms. As Senator Macdonald said, teenagers spend more than 30 hours online every week. The basic technique adopted by online predators, who disguise their ages and identities, is to just hang around in those public internet chat rooms and look out for children who seem to be vulnerable, easily exploited and often ignorant. In the case of Carly Ryan, her online boyfriend was not actually a 20-year-old American musician; he was a 47-year-old scumbag from Victoria. It is easy for these online groomers to mask their real identities to hide who they are, hide their gender and hide their age. They can get in there and do and say whatever they like. They can become any persona they would like to be.

I want to quote Rachel O'Connor from the Cyberspace Research Unit at the University of Central Lancashire. She says that basically the picture now emerging is one where the online predator forms a relationship with the minor, a process that typically involves deception. She says the level of duplicity engaged in by the adult means it is very difficult for a child to detect that, firstly, they—the child—are not actually talking to another child, having a conversation with another child. The online predator will throw in questions to assess the likelihood of his activities being detected by the child's parents or older siblings. That, of course, is hard. When the use of computers started to blossom and the internet started to get so prevalent, one of my pieces of advice to talkback callers on radio was always to leave their kids' bedroom door unlocked or, better still, put their computer out in the lounge room—put it out where the parents could see what their children were watching online, see who they were dialling up, see who they were talking to. But it is not that easy any more, because with all the phone apps that kids have access to—that everybody has access to—you cannot always tell what your child is doing. And you do not always know, mentally and physically and electronically, where your child is.

Years ago in the United States, there used to be a public television station which, every night, showed somebody with a very authoritative voice who would come on and would say: 'It is 10 o'clock. Do you know where your children are?' Now, with the peripatetic world that we live in and kids having the freedoms that they have, a lot of times you do not know where your children are at 10 o'clock. And even if they are in your home: if they are in their bedroom and they are supposedly asleep—they are not. They are in there, behind closed doors, they have their phone or their computer, and they are online. And they are talking to people around the world.

They are talking to people who include adult males—perverts—who browse like sharks through the chat rooms. These men enter private chat rooms, and they look for kids who may be genuinely talking to other children. But then they pose as a child and they lure those children in. And suddenly, you see them convince a child that, 'look, I am 17, you are 14, send me a picture'. And then they send their picture—like in the case of Newman and the pictures he sent: he was not a 20-year-old musician, he was a 47-year-old sleazebag. So they send a picture, they take another picture from somewhere on Google and they say: 'This is me, send me a picture of you.' And the vulnerable, innocent children—they do. They send those pictures off. And the sleazebag starts to build a platform; they start to build a relationship. And they can do it easily, because they become very clever. Like any paedophile, stealth and secrecy are their secret weapons: 'Don't tell your parents, this is just between you and me.' And then they get the identity—they go into other areas, they look at the child's Facebook page, they look at who the child is friends with, they see the comments the child is making to other people on public pages—and kids do not realise that what you put out there now is out there forever. And so they find out that, 'oh, you are vulnerable, you like kittens'. So they invent a kitten. 'Oh, I have got a cat too; I have got a kitten as well.' And they talk about that. And usually—and in this case here, that is what made it even harder for criminal action to be taken—they do not reveal the sexual content. They do not reveal what is really on their mind—until they get the meeting. That is the bingo shot. You talk the kids along, you push them along, until you finally say: 'Hey let's meet for a coffee or a soft drink; let's go to McDonald's.' And that is them in.

That is why this bill, the Criminal Code Amendment (Misrepresentation of Age to a Minor) Bill 2016, is important. It is so you do not have that physical contact. I mean, a 47-year-old man who is chatting online to a 15-year-old girl, who then says, 'Let's catch up for a coffee'—he is not there for a hamburger. And in this case, it ends tragically, with a little girl dying: half beaten to death, her mouth choking on sand, and then drowned. Because a 47-year-old pretended he was a 20 year-old musician, and she fell in love—she did. There is no protection against that. And that is why we need it. What makes it even worse is the speed of the internet. Senator Kakoschke-Moore mentioned Graham Ashton, who was the AFP Assistant Commissioner and is now the Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police. Graham Ashton says about online grooming that you would think—not being in that world—that they would be methodical, and that it would take weeks and weeks and months and months to do it. Commissioner Ashton says it can be two weeks. From the first line being thrown into the internet waters, the fish is caught—it can be as soon as two weeks later—and they have a physical meeting.

One of the problems we have is that the courts, the magistrates, the judges and the politicians have not caught up with the real world. They have not caught up with what is really happening out there in the real world of the internet; in the world of online activities and online crime. And I can give you proof of it. I bet that today, somewhere in Australia, there is a magistrate who has before him a male with child pornography found on his computer—they have probably found 30,000 or 40,000 images, plus videos; some of them from kids who have been lured from chat rooms, some of them stuff he has bought—and the magistrate has sat there and listened to a barrister who has said: 'Your Honour, it was only for his personal edification; he did not sell it to anybody.' And he walks—on a suspended sentence or a good behaviour bond. That is because magistrates and judges refuse to come into the real world and understand that, if somebody has foul images of child sexuality on his computer, some child was exploited to get there; for him to get that image some child was mistreated, abused and in some cases even killed. My running mate for the Senate was a Victorian policeman named Stuart Grimley. He was on the sexual offences squad. These police officers end up running the risk of getting post traumatic stress disorder because they have to look at all these images again and again. The bill today is about people like Newman. He was found to have all these foul images in his possession. These are the sorts of people they are trying to stop.

Senator Xenophon and Senator Kakoschke-Moore, you have both worked so hard for so long in the Xenophon office and in your own time to try and get this bill up. There was in the past the disappointment of having a bill that had holes in it. That bill went to a committee. You went away and looked at what was wrong with it and you have come back with a better version, a different version, a version that should be passed here.

Online porn and these crimes are something we have to grasp. We are not across it all. We have to read what the experts have to say. Look at some of the examples that have come up. Listen to kids. Listen to people who have experienced it. Here is one. Rochelle Cooper, from South Australia, says: 'I was groomed by an internet predator. I'm just lucky I didn't end up in the same position. Although I was physically, sexually and mentally abused, I managed to escape. As Carly was, I was 13 years old when I was groomed.' Here is another one, from Madeline Atkinson. She says: 'As a victim of losing one of my sisters this way, I need to see much harsher punishments to get some form of justice and understanding as to how someone could do something to a young, vulnerable child. You can never heal from this.' And Tina Lombardo, from New South Wales, said: 'My daughter was groomed by an online predator for three years. After that, he convinced her to live with him, just after she turned 16. When she realised how he had manipulated her, she attempted suicide. He had done this with two other girls before my daughter—possibly more. The grooming laws need to change.'

In the case of Newman, with his son in tow he lured Carly to that bench, sexually abused her, bashed her to death, drowned her to make sure she was dead and then just left her there. He then returned to his home. When police tracked him down—because they suddenly realised who Brandon and Shane really were—he was on his computer chatting up a 14-year-old girl, who I think was in Perth. So he had murdered one girl and he was now back at the computer doing the same thing. And before Carly there were others—who escaped.

As you know, I am trying to push for a national public register of convicted sex offenders. Sadly, Carly would probably not have been protected by that because, as I understand it, Newman did not have a criminal record. I may be corrected on that; it obviously was not his first crime. For other cases where men have been convicted at least with a public register of convicted sex offenders if parents spot somebody they will be able to go online, look up his photograph and check him out—check his name to see if he has previous convictions. In Western Australia, with their softer version of 'Sarah's law', parents can do that. But I go back to what I said originally. In this day and age, in this incredible world of internet speeds and chat rooms, parents cannot know, and often are ignorant of, what is there. I support you fully, Senator Kakoschke-Moore, and I support this bill. It is always corny to say that somebody did not die in vain, but the Carly Ryan Foundation has worked so hard to get us to this point, to get us so far down the track, that I appeal to the Senate to pass this law not only in the name of Carly Ryan but in the names of other victims of sexual offences against children—offences which are some of the most epidemic, even pandemic, things in existence.

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Kakoschke-Moore for bringing on the Criminal Code Amendment (Misrepresentation of Age to a Minor) Bill 2016 for debate, giving the Senate the opportunity to debate this incredibly important issue.

I want to say at the outset that the Australia Greens are very sympathetic to the intent of this legislation, which is to protect children from people who would prey on them, including to protect them from sexual predators. I also thank Senator Kakoschke-Moore and Senator Xenophon for engaging with the Australian Greens in providing me with a very detailed personal briefing on the legislation. We really do appreciate that and acknowledge the intent of that briefing, which was to constructively engage with all senators and all parties on this legislation. It demonstrates the very sincere intent which lies behind this bill.

I also want to acknowledge the tragic case in South Australia of Carly Ryan. Senator Kakoschke-Moore and others have referred to it in detail in their contributions, but I want to express on behalf of the Greens our deepest sympathies to Carly's family and friends and our admiration for Carly's mum and others, who have not simply lain down and accepted what happened to Carly but used it to spur themselves to fight to minimise the possibility of what happened to Carly happening to other children in our country. That is an entirely admirable role that they are playing in our public conversation and, at the moment, in our parliamentary conversation.

There is no doubt that those of us in this place—and I am one of them—who have friends who are parents or carers of children are aware of the amount of time that kids spend online these days and, frankly, the impossibility of parents or carers being able to adequately monitor the entirety of any child's online conversations and online interactions. As Senator Hinch said in his contribution, the rise in the popularity of mobile devices and various apps, which exist and will no doubt continue to be created into the future, means that our children's online communications are impossible to monitor. It makes it difficult as parents or carers to fulfil the responsibility that we all have to the children in our care to do everything that we can do to protect them from harm.

We understand that this bill seeks to amend the Criminal Code Act 1995 to create a criminal offence for a person over 18 years of age to intentionally misrepresent their age to a person they reasonably believe to be under 16 years of age in online communications for the purposes of encouraging a physical meeting or with the intention of committing an offence. We are also aware of the history of this legislation—the various iterations that it has gone through. We believe this is the fourth version of this bill, tabled previously by Senator Xenophon and now by Senator Kakoschke-Moore. The fact that it has been amended four times is, again, a reflection of the sincere intent behind this bill from Senator Xenophon and Senator Kakoschke-Moore. It reflects their genuine desire to learn from the various responses to this legislation, including in committees of this House, to try to address these concerns in a way that preserves the intent and the integrity of this legislation, and to also respond to concerns raised around potential unintended consequences that this legislation may have.

We have been diligent in assessing various committee reports and acknowledge that the previous committee report in 2013 has, again, resulted in this legislation being changed and updated. We have also had a look at the provisions currently in the Criminal Code, including the prohibitions on using a carriage service to procure persons under 16 years of age, using a carriage service to groom persons under 16 years of age, and using a carriage service to transmit indecent communication to person under 16 years of age. As I said, this bill proposes that a person who misrepresents their age, which currently of itself is not illegal, as a preliminary to having a meeting with someone, which is also currently not illegal, should be guilty of an offence. We have gone through the various submissions to previous inquiries. We have noted a range of submissions, including from the Law Society of South Australia which submitted:

Part of the problem with the offence provision is that it seeks to criminalise behaviour which is not inherently criminal.

The Law Society of South Australia goes on to say:

The intent is to criminalise a preparatory step in the process of committing a crime. However, in attempting to do so, it will capture many situations it does not intend to.

Senator Xenophon has stated:

… the proposed legislation would close an important legal 'loophole', as there is no reason for an adult to knowingly misrepresent their age to someone they believe to be under 18 years of age.

The Greens want to be very clear that, of course, there are situations, including the situation that this bill intends to address, where an adult would misrepresent their age to a young person online for extremely nefarious purposes, including to groom that young person for the purposes of committing harm, including potentially sexual harm, on the child, but we still retain concerns that this bill may have unintended consequences. I will not go into all of the unintended consequences that we have concerns about, but what I do want to say is that we stand absolutely ready to continue to engage with Senator Kakoschke-Moore and the Nick Xenophon Team on this proposed legislation in the hope that our concerns can be addressed in a further iteration of this bill.

The prevention of online grooming of children is a massive challenge for our community and our society and therefore must be seen as a massive challenge for this parliament. We need to make sure we work rigorously and, I believe, collaboratively on this issue, because I have no doubt that every member of this place and the other place would regard the online grooming of children as abhorrent, disgusting and something that we need to work on together to make sure we can prevent to the very greatest extent possible.

The Australian Federal Police have stated:

Online grooming is when an adult makes online contact with someone under the age of 16 with the intention of engaging in sexual abuse. The offence is committed in the communication phase so no physical contact need ever occur for police to step in, investigate and arrest offenders. It is a very serious offence, but is not the most common challenge faced by children and young people online.

The AFP recommends that all children and young people know how to manage any approach online by someone who may seek to groom them:

At times, young people may feel as though they are in control of a situation and are just “playing around” without realising how quickly the balance of power shifts and they are being controlled by the offender. It is never too late to report suspicions of online grooming, but the sooner it is identified, the less harm may occur.

I think the lesson for us all here is that while there may well be an appropriate legislative response to this problem, that should never be the entirety of our response as a community to this challenge. It is incumbent on all of us as parents, carers, or concerned members of this parliament and of our community to make sure that children are aware of the dangers of people misrepresenting their circumstances online with the intent to groom or to cause harm—to make sure that children know they can come to the adults in their life if they have concerns that someone is misrepresenting themselves online to them, and that there are opportunities and remedies available to them. We all have a responsibility to play as community leaders and, in the circumstance of many of us, as parents or carers of children.

Having said that, we stand ready to continue to engage with the Nick Xenophon Team on the provisions of this bill, because we believe it certainly is possible that concerns which have been expressed around unintended consequences can be addressed through further iterations of this legislation. As I said, we stand ready to work constructively to identify whether there are gaps in protections offered in statute for children from online predators and, if so, how those gaps can be filled.

Again, I thank Senator Kakoschke-Moore for giving us the opportunity to debate this really important issue in the Senate today. The Australian Greens and I, as portfolio-holder in this area for the Greens, look forward to continuing to work with her and the senators on the Nick Xenophon Team on this really important issue.

Stirling Griff (SA, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to echo the comments made by my colleague Senator Kakoschke-Moore and to do my part in convincing all of you here today to support this most important bill, the Criminal Code Amendment (Misrepresentation of Age to a Minor) Bill 2016.

This bill is tinged with a great deal of sadness, not only because it relates to the death of a beautiful young girl who was tragically taken from this world well before her time but also because, some nine years after Carly's death, our laws around online predators continue to fail our young. Today, more than ever before, young people are completely immersed in an online world fraught with danger. Never has it been easier for those who want to sexually exploit children to make contact with potential victims around the world, share images of their abuse and, frighteningly, encourage others to commit similar crimes. According to the United Nations there are a staggering 750,000 child sex predators online searching for prey at any one time.

Just think about that for a moment: 750,000 sex predators looking for prey since the time I rose to speak. This should frighten every one of us in this room—it frightens me—and it should drive all of us into action to stamp out these vile people. UNICEF estimates there are more than four million websites featuring minors, including many of the target children aged under two years, and more than 200 new pornographic images circulated every single day. In 2014, the Australian Federal Police reported a 54 per cent rise in reports of online child exploitation, with some 5,617 cases involving Australians. This number is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg.

As highlighted by my colleague Senator Kakoschke-Moore, the length of time it takes for a predator to groom a child on the internet is becoming shorter and shorter. One of the most worrying trends is the speed with which predators can groom young people online and that grooming turns into contact offending.

Carly's case is but one example. Garry Francis Newman sat behind his keyboard and set out to convince a young and impressionable 14-year-old girl that he was not in fact a 47-year-old predator but a young talented musician who had her best interest at heart. A man who was in love with her and wanted to be with her. We cannot blame Carly for believing this lie. We cannot blame Carly for falling in love. She had absolutely no way of knowing that the person she thought was 18-year-old Brandon Kane was, in fact, a harmful paedophile who set out to abuse, assault and ultimately murder her. Carly did what millions of kids around the world do for hours on end every single day, she used social media to meet new people and make new friends.

Children and teenagers are accessing the internet at increasing rates. This is both a blessing and a curse. The internet has opened the door to the world and provided young people with infinite information and opportunities to learn. It really is an exciting time to be growing up with amazing potential to create, connect and communicate. But at the same time online predators are becoming more sophisticated in the way they groom our children. More and more are prowling social media and web chat rooms to communicate with children solely for sexual purposes. With over 82 per cent of teenagers and 95 per cent of eight- to 11-year-olds going online each month, we all must do everything we can to prevent them from being exposed to keyboard predators—their and our future relies on it.

There is a lot of great work already going on in schools and at home to educate children about how to use the internet safely and identify predators, but much more is needed. We have also seen the likes of Google and Microsoft introduce new technologies to help protect our children from illicit and harmful content. As a result of these tech changes, Google has seen an eightfold reduction in people searching for material of this kind on the web. Google and Microsoft can now, through shared technologies like PhotoDNA and video hashing, find and remove more images and videos of child abuse wherever they appear on the internet. Children and their parents are also actively encouraged to flag any incident they feel puts their child at risk.

The internet has no bounds and its reach extends far beyond the Australian borders. Protecting children from online sexual predators is very much a worldwide issue and one that has been taken seriously by many countries around the globe. WebProtect is just one example of an international alliance committed to ending online child sexual exploitation. World leaders from over 70 countries have come together to establish and develop coordinated national responses to eradicate the problem. They say this is a global priority and one which must be addressed immediately if we are to protect our children from abuse. Former UK Prime Minister David Cameron rightly said:

… this is another major international crime of our age … There are networks spanning the world, children abused to order.

  …   …   …

This is a global crime, so it needs global action.

The Web Protect work is vital in helping to eradicate online child abuse, but there is also a lot of work to be done on our own doorstep. That is why this legislation is so important. We have to make sure that loopholes are closed and, most importantly, our law enforcement agencies have the powers to intervene much earlier when they suspect a child is being groomed online. That is also why the work of the Carly Ryan Foundation is critical. Since Carly's death, her mother, Sonya, has campaigned tirelessly for changes to our legislation and she dedicated herself to the promotion of online safety in order to prevent the same thing that happened to her daughter from happening to other vulnerable children. In 2010 she established the Carly Ryan Foundation. The foundation aims to raise awareness, particularly amongst young people, about the dangers of online communications as well as addressing the physical, emotional, sexual and psychological impacts of online crime, and of course, fostering a positive online experience for children.

Since its inception, the foundation, which I might add is run entirely by volunteers, has visited and supported over 5,000 schools, colleges and regional areas across Australia. In addition to educating students, teachers and parents alike, the foundation has also managed to instigate investigations into real cases referred to it by parents across Australia—real cases where parents fear their child is at risk of online predators. By way of an example, just recently the foundation was contacted by the parents of a 13-year-old girl who, like Carly, thought she was engaging in online chats with a teenage boy. It appears, however, that the situation was much more sinister than this young girl could have ever imagined. With the help of Sonya and the foundation, the matter was referred to the Sexual Crimes Investigation Branch for investigation. This example demonstrates what many families are experiencing. Parents and caregivers are struggling to keep up with modern technology, social media and mobile smartphone applications. Our young have no such difficulty, and therein lies the danger. Fortunately, a key role of the foundation is to educate minors and adults alike about the dangers of seemingly innocent online applications and forums, and I assure you that there are dozens to choose from.

The online space is always inventing new and innovative ways to socialise, with a plethora of new apps and sites that also make it easier for online predators to find and groom children. You have probably never heard of many of the social apps that are available, but I will now highlight some that are commonly used by predators so you are aware of the insidious nature of the predator network. Kik Messenger is a seemingly child-friendly anonymous app that lets children text for free, allowing communication with strangers who share their Kik usernames. Because it is an app, the text will not show up on your child's phone messaging service and parents had not charged for them. Kik gives predators direct access to children. The app has recently been investigated for links to the murder of a US teenager. Burn Note is a messaging app that erases messages after a set period of time. It allows children to communicate covertly. You do not have to have the app to receive a Burn Note. Whisper is an anonymous social confessional app that allows users to post whatever is on their minds, paired with an image. Whispers are often sexual in nature. People do not normally confess sunshine and rainbows. Yik Yak is a free social networking app that lets users post brief Twitter-like comments to the 500 geographically nearest Yik Yak users. Alarmingly, Yik Yak reveals your location every time you open the app and your GPS continues to update your location. This app has it all: cyberbullying, explicit sexual content and unintended location sharing. Omegle is a chat site that puts two strangers together in their choice of a text chat or a video chat room. Your child can get paired up with a stranger on Omegle—that is the whole premise of the app—and there is no registration required. Omegle is filled with people searching for sexual chats.

The Carly Ryan Foundation plays a crucial role in teaching mums and dads about the dangers these sorts of apps present. It has also partnered with digital engagement specialist KOJO and, with the support of the South Australian government and Google, developed Thread, a free personal safety app to help users with unsafe situations. Thread provides an immediate connection between a user's location, trusted contacts and emergency services. The app enables users to check-in their location to show that they are okay, to start discussions with trusted contacts about online or offline dangers and, in the event of an emergency, send their location while contacting triple 0.

Through the work of the foundation, Sonya has been appointed a member of the Online Safety Consultative Working Group with the Children's eSafety Commissioner, Andree Wright. The working group was established to provide advice to government on cybersafety issues, including measures aimed at protecting Australian children from cybersafety risks such as bullying, exposure to illegal content and privacy breaches. Sonya is also a member of the expert advisory committee that provides advice to the minister for education in South Australia on sexting, which is very much a rapidly growing issue for governments and law enforcement bodies alike.

It is important to place on the public record the concerted effort that Sonya and the Carly Ryan Foundation have made in combating this social evil. The fact that close to 100,000 people have signed the change.org online petition calling on the government to implement these changes is testament to the importance of this work. Given that the foundation relies heavily on donations, I implore all in this chamber to support the foundation's good work by way of a donation. I know this would certainly go a long way towards helping Sonya continue to do what she does to keep all of our children safe.

Personally, and as a father of four—and, particularly, a father of two daughters—I cannot begin to comprehend what Sonya Ryan has had to endure. It is without question every parent's worst nightmare. I implore all of you in this place to put yourself in Sonya's shoes just for a moment. Imagine what it would be like if an online predator was contacting your child, or a child that you know. Imagine the moment when you realise that predator has managed to infiltrate your home, your living room, your child's bedroom to take away their innocence. Worse still, imagine what it would be like to receive the news that your son or daughter, or a child that you love dearly, has died at the hands of a monster like Garry Newman.

This bill is not just about honouring Carly's death; it is about ensuring that no other child suffers at the hands of a child predator the way that Carly did. Sonya Ryan has learned in the most difficult and tragic way the dangers that our children are exposed to each and every time they go online. Instead of retreating from the real world, which I am certain many of us would have done if we were put in her shoes, she has made it her life's work to ensure as far as possible that her horror story is not repeated and that children are protected from the dangers of the online world.

It is now our turn to help Sonya in her fight and to do what we can to further strengthen our laws and to deter and punish these individuals who knowingly, wilfully and deviously pursue our children. If this bill prevents even one more child from being exploited at the hands of a predator then it is well and truly worth your support. In the words of Sonya Ryan, 'I do not want Carly's legacy to be one of fear.'

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has been extremely worthwhile listening to the various contributions to the debate on the Criminal Code Amendment (Misrepresentation of Age to a Minor ) Bill 2016 this morning. It is very clear from those contributions that every single speaker and no doubt every single member of this chamber is 100 per cent committed to child protection and doing everything that they possibly can to keep children safe, whether it be from predators online or in a physical sense or in any form whatsoever. I want to make very clear at the beginning of my contribution that I and Labor certainly believe that the intent of this bill is laudable. There are probably few things that as elected representatives we can do which are as significant as ensuring that we have laws in place that do protect every child no matter their circumstances and that prevent them from having truly horrible things occur, which either destroy their lives or take their lives, as was the case with Carly. Her life was taken from her, which is about the worst thing you can possibly imagine happening to her and her family.

I am aware that this is the fourth time that this bill has been put forward by Senator Xenophon and his team, and it is clear that it is a cause that he and the rest of his team are very dedicated to. I want to recognise their extremely sincere intentions in bringing this bill forward to this chamber again. I also want to recognise that they have done so on the back of some really commendable lobbying efforts from people who were directly affected by this terrible incident and from many others who have a deep interest in child protection. So, again, I want to recognise the very sincere objectives that lie behind this piece of legislation. I will say a little bit more about some of the people who were affected by these events later in my contribution.

This bill seeks to amend the Criminal Code 1995 to make it an offence for a person over 18 years of age to misrepresent their age to someone under 16 years of age for the purpose of procuring a meeting. Obviously, we know enough about the actions of sexual predators on children to know that often their predatory actions do not just occur in one stage, that often there is a very long lead-up time in which they seek to groom a child. They make contact with them, lull them into a false sense of security and try to befriend them. It is only after that long lead-up time that the really truly criminal actions ultimately take place.

This law does go further than existing laws that are designed to protect our children from online predators by removing the need for police forces to prove sexual intent before intervening to stop a predator from making contact with a child. The intention behind these amendments is to enable police to intervene at an earlier stage in that grooming process than they are currently able to do to stop an online predator. At first, when I saw that those were the objectives behind this legislation, I, like probably many other senators, thought that this sounds like the right thing to do. If we can intervene earlier to catch sexual predators and prevent them from making contact with minors then obviously that is going to stop events like those that occurred to Carly from occurring to other people. But, as with most legislation, it does take more than a cursory look to see how it is going to operate in practice, which I will deal with in my contribution. Labor does have some concern about how this law would operate in practice. We are keen to keep talking with other parties about how some of those concerns might be overcome. These amendments are a significant broadening of the existing law and they carry with them a maximum jail sentence of five years.

This bill has become known as Carly's Law in honour of Carly Ryan, a 15-year-old girl who was tragically lured to her death in 2007 by an online predator. A number of other speakers in this debate have provided significant detail on the events surrounding Carly's tragic death. I will not repeat that myself—I recognise that a number of people have done so already—other than to say that Carly's case is undoubtedly a tragic one. Over a course of nearly two years she was courted by a man online whom she believed to be an 18-year-old musician from Melbourne named Brandon Kane. He was in fact a much older man—nearing 50, I believe—Gary Francis Newman, who eventually, over a period of time and over repeated use of online contact, managed to lure Carly to a secluded beach where he sexually assaulted her and murdered her.

There is no doubt that the law failed Carly. I again want to recognise that her mother, Sonya, has dedicated her life since Carly's death to law reform in this area. I am not sure if Sonya is currently in the gallery, but I understand that she was present earlier today. I think she might be with us know. I do want to recognise very sincerely, Sonya, the efforts that you and your many supporters have put into trying to stop this kind of thing happening to other children in the future.

Like many other people in this chamber, I am a parent. I have two young children: a nine-year-old and a six-year-old. They are really only beginning to enter the online world and already I am having concerns about what they are watching, what they are going to experience and people making contact with them who we do not know and who they do not know. In preparing to give this speech, I was very much reflecting on my personal circumstances. Sonya, I cannot imagine the grief that your family has had to go through since Carly's tragic death. Again, I do very sincerely want to commend you for the work that you and your supporters have put in to prevent those kinds of things from happening to my children and others like mine.

The Carly Ryan Foundation, which is run by Sonya, has become a highly effective advocacy organisation for cybersafety and has only fact sheets and counselling services to reduce the harm of online bullying and predatory behaviour. As I said, I am a parent myself and I am sure there are many others in this situation as well. We do worry about the safety of our children online. Every Saturday morning my nine-year-old son is allowed to get up early and hop on the iPad. He watches YouTube videos and all sorts of other things. You are never quite sure what it is they are coming into contact with. I know many other parents share that concern about what their children are being exposed to and who might be contacting them. We know that all parents want to do everything they can to stop their children being put in danger by people with bad intentions online.

I have brought to this speech my experiences and feelings as a parent, but in my brief time as a state member of parliament in Queensland I organised cybersafety workshops for parents in my electorate. I remember being surprised by how well attended they were. They were on a weekday evening, which is probably not the most convenient time for many working parents, but every time that I or other members of parliament put those workshops on we were guaranteed a very strong attendance rate from local parents. Again, that reflected both the level of concern that I think a lot of parents have about this issue and the lack of knowledge that many parents have about how to combat bad things happening online to their children. I know that many of the parents who attended those workshops that I staged certainly came away with a lot more information. I have no doubt that the work of the Carly Ryan Foundation, led by her mother, has also really increased the level of education and knowledge that many parents have about what they can do to keep their children safe online.

As a Labor representative, I also want to say that we care very deeply about protecting our children from online predators. The advent of online technologies and platforms has fundamentally changed the world of policing. Tragically and quite creepily, this has also changed the way that predators target vulnerable children. As I have already said, increasingly sexual predators are not necessarily using a one-off, random attack in which to find victims. That of course does happen as well and needs to be dealt with as well. But, more and more, we are seeing these kinds of people undertaking very prolonged steps involving multiple contacts with children, particularly online, before they have the opportunity to exploit children in this most evil way.

Many parents, as I have already said, see the task of keeping their children safe online as extremely difficult—understandably so. The online world is endless and it is unknowable, with threats that are seemingly invisible. As I have said, I freely admit that I am not the world's most technologically advanced person. I do not think I as a middle-aged man am alone there. Many of us do not fully comprehend how online systems work and how we can best take steps to keep our own children safe when they are operating in the online world. The online world is sometimes a realm that seems beyond the reach of the law, but fortunately it is not. There are things we can do in a legal sense to help keep our children safe online.

Labor have been concerned about child safety online for a long time now, both in opposition, as we currently are, and in government. When we were in government, Labor expanded child protection operations in the Australian Federal Police to assist in protecting children and in investigating online child sexual exploitation. We implemented a range of cybersafety education activities, and we formed the Youth Advisory Group on Cybersafety. I think all of them were excellent initiatives. I am not trying to be partisan about that. I am sure that this government has done many very worthwhile things in this space as well. But those were a number of excellent initiatives that were undertaken by the last federal Labor government to try to strengthen some of the protections that exist for children, particularly online.

Again reflecting on my personal background, having worked in the Queensland state government for a number of years, I know that similarly a number of initiatives were undertaken by that government to enhance protection of children online along with dramatically increasing the funding that was provided to child protection agencies to keep children safe from those who would seek to abuse them.

Labor have been in discussion for some time with the Nick Xenophon Team about this bill. We are certainly looking for ways to work cooperatively to see how the aims of that party and the people who sponsored this bill can best be achieved. We recognise that we need to be ever vigilant about online threats and ensure that our laws keep up as those threats evolve. As I said, technology does evolve. Different platforms are being created every day. I heard Senator Griff referring to a number of different social media platforms, many of which I had not heard of, so I can only imagine how many others there are out there that, when they fall into the wrong hands, can be extremely badly exploited such that ultimately children are the victims.

Having said that, Labor have a number of concerns with the bill as it currently stands. However, we are confident that those issues can be worked through in further negotiations. I understand that Senate committees have reviewed this bill previously, and the reports of those Senate committees have raised concerns about the breadth of the scope of this bill and the danger that it could unintentionally catch behaviour that should not be deemed as criminal. I have no doubt whatsoever that the motivation behind this bill is completely sincere and is directed at ensuring children are kept safe from sexual predators. But I think we need to make sure that the law really does achieve those aims and does not necessarily catch other people that it was never designed to catch in the first place. When you legislate there is always the risk of unintended consequences, and we want to be really sure that this bill does not go further than it needs to go in order to achieve what are extremely worthwhile aims. The most recent Senate report on this bill, which I think was handed down in August last year by the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, urged that further consultation be undertaken.

One aspect that Labor does have concerns about, building on concerns that were raised in the inquiry into this bill, concerns the amendment which, in broad terms, removes the need to prove sexual intent in contact that is made with a child in the circumstances we are looking at. I know that in the inquiry the Attorney-General's Department raised concerns that, for instance, an 18½-year-old could misrepresent their age to a 16-year-old in an attempt to gain an invite to a birthday party. We know that kind of thing happens all the time. It is probably not the intention of this bill to catch and criminalise that kind of activity, but we do have concerns that in the bill's current form that would be a risk. We are very keen to talk further about those kinds of risks, to see whether we can focus this bill a little bit more and prevent those things being caught up. I think we can all agree that that is not necessarily the kind of behaviour that we want to see criminalised. There might be very good reasons for keeping 18½-year-olds away from parties involving 16-year-olds, but I do not think that is the intention of this bill, which is undoubtedly to prevent older sexual predators—older in the sense of people who are 18 and above—from making contact with minors. That is the kind of thing that we want to work through a little more as this bill is being considered.

Senators on the committee also raised the concern that there is the potential that someone with an intellectual impairment, who may not fully understand the consequences of their action and who may not have evil intent, might unwittingly finding themselves foul of the law. I think also that that kind of thing is the intention behind this bill, but we need to make sure that the drafting is such that people in that situation are not also caught up.

More consultation is needed with the Australian Federal Police and the Attorney-General's Department in order to determine where they believe more powers would be helpful and in what ways those powers can be given without creating any undesirable outcomes. I was not involved in the inquiry into that bill—it was before my time—but I understand that the Federal Police had some concerns and doubts about whether this legislation was necessarily the right way to address the problem that we are trying to solve.

It is a challenge to ensure that, in broadening the Criminal Code in this way to remove the need for police to prove sexual intent before intervening in a potential online predator case, unintended consequences like this are not created. The other thing we need always to do when we bring in new legislation is have a really hard look at existing legislation to see whether existing offences and existing legislation, while they might not be defined specifically as new legislation, effectively achieve what we are trying to achieve. I would be very interested in having a good look at whether existing legislation, particularly in the area of grooming children, might achieve this. It might require a little bit of tweaking, but I think we need also to have a good look at that as part of our consideration of this legislation.

Having said that we have those concerns, we think that many of them can be overcome with consultation. I know that that consultation is ongoing between different political parties and between different government agencies at the moment. I am very hopeful that, once that consultation occurs, we can come to the right outcome.

In conclusion, it is absolutely important that we leave no stone unturned in the never-ending battle to keep our children safe. If Carly's death has exposed a loophole in the law then we absolutely should look at how we can close it and make sure that that kind of thing does not happen to other children in the future. As I said earlier in my speech, we can have no greater duty as adults, or indeed as parliamentarians, than the duty to keep our children safe. We acknowledge that the online world has made that duty harder to uphold. We on the Labor side will do all we can to help address that. Labor looks forward to working productively with the Nick Xenophon Team and other interested parties to make sure that we can have the very best legislation that we can.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to acknowledge the highly deserving and important intent of this legislation before us today. This bill, the Criminal Code Amendment (Misrepresentation of Age to a Minor) Bill 2016, seeks to make it an offence for people over 18 to misrepresent their age to someone under 16 for the purposes of procuring a meeting with them. It removes the need for police to prove sexual intent before intervening to stop a predator making contact with a child. I think this is a very important principle, and I know so from my own personal experience.

It is hoped that police will be able to intervene at an earlier stage to stop an online predator earlier than they are currently able to do. I note that in the case of Carly's circumstances, the predator who targeted her had multiple identities reaching out to children. In that sense, you can already see what an abhorrent set of activities there is there, but you would not necessarily be able to prove any sexual intent behind it. I do not know if perhaps there may have been, but it strikes me that there is plenty of other evidence to demonstrate the intent of the predator in this case without needing to prove that it is sexual. And while I do not know the details of the case, I can see that kind of example is useful for the purposes of considering the law. It is significant in that it broadens the existing law to enable police to intervene in that way, and that it carries a jail sentence of five years.

This bill, also known as 'Carly's law', is a very important tribute to Carly Ryan, who, as a 15-year-old, was lured to her death by a predator. And it reminds me that Carly's murder, at the time when it was first reported, brought back what was a significant memory for me as a child—that was, potentially becoming a victim of a paedophile. I was 12 years old, on holiday in Adelaide, when a man came up to me and asked me for my name and address to enter a competition. I thought it was a bit odd that he wrote it on a piece of paper and not on a printed form. Nearly 12 months later, I received a phone call at home in Perth. It was the same man's voice on the phone—it was creepy, and at the time I could remember thinking, 'This doesn't seem quite right'—telling me that I had won the competition and he needed to come and give me my prize. I said, quite politely, no; I was too far away. I was at home in Perth and I was relieved that I was far away. But it really reinforces to me this idea that prolonged multiple contact is the kind of thing that a predator in this circumstance would be seeking, and that he had hung onto those details for some 12 months before making that phone call to me.

I knew it was not right, but I was embarrassed at having naively given my details away and I told no-one—not even my parents. So it is shocking to me how many women, and some men, in my own circles have been victims of sexual assaults in their adolescence—many from predators within their own family or social circles, and some from outside predators. Given that quite innocent experience I had as a child, where that possibility of intent was directed towards me, it does not surprise me that it can and does happen. That was more than 30 years ago, and it is terrifying to me to consider how the internet in today's day and age can be used by people to create false identities or circumstances to lure adolescent children to them. That is the kind of example that was apparent in the incident that happened to me as a child, that a false identity in some circumstances can be used to lure a child into a net with very harmful intent, so I understand why parents worry constantly about the safety of their children online.

I as a parent want to be able to do all that I can to stop children being put in danger by people with bad intentions online. We know that we need to encourage parents to know what their children are doing online and elsewhere, and I really do endorse all of the education and strategies that parents, children and communities need to put in place. The government has done a lot of work on that, as I know Carly's mother, Sonya, has. As my own childhood shows and, indeed, as Senator Kakoschke-Moore said in her own speech, parents simply cannot know all of the time what their children are doing.

Carly's case is indeed a tragic one, and I find it is completely abhorrent the way the man who murdered her misrepresented his identity for that evil intention. I really would like to acknowledge Carly's mother, Sonya, for her dedication to law reform in this area. I know she is in the chamber and I would like to welcome her to this place. Your foundation has become a very effective advocacy organisation for cybersafety. Indeed, without that advocacy we would not be debating this bill here today.

As a parent, I can certainly understand how difficult the task is for parents in keeping their children safe online. I know, as someone who is engaged in social media on a daily basis, that I am not keeping up with the way young people use that technology in all cases today. So I want to thank you in particular for the work you do, Sonya, in providing online fact sheets and counselling to reduce the harm of online bullying and predatory behaviour. I really want to encourage the community to use those resources. I and we in Labor and, I am sure, all parliamentarians here care very deeply about protecting our children from abuse, exploitation and, indeed, even more horrific circumstances.

Our concern for child safety online has been apparent for some time in both government and opposition. We did some important things in government that included expanding operations within the AFP to assist in detecting and investigating online child exploitation, and I want to pay tribute to those in the AFP who do that difficult work. I know it includes things like needing to watch many hours of graphic imagery to work out if it is portraying children participating in exploitative acts, and that is difficult work for people to be engaged in. So I really want to pay tribute to officers of the AFP and in our state police forces that work to protect our children.

We have worked on a range of cybersafety education activities and indeed have formed the Youth Advisory Group on Cybersafety, because actually we cannot keep young people safe without asking young people themselves about how to do that. It is not possible to keep up with the current culture of how young people use technology without really engaging with young people themselves. I would like to commend the Nick Xenophon Team for their work on this bill. We are looking for ways to work with you to see how its aims can best be achieved, and it is a privilege to be able to do that.

I think it is really important that we are vigilant in this place about online threats and wider threats in our community to ensure that our laws keep up as those threats to our children evolve. I do acknowledge there are some concerns with this bill, as Senator Watt and Senator Farrell expressed, but I express my confidence that these can be worked out. Those concerns included how we do not want to unintentionally catch innocent behaviour that should not be deemed as criminal in the scope of this bill, and that is why the Senate report from last year argued for more consultation. We know that the Attorney-General's Department raised examples about how someone could innocently misrepresent their age in an attempt to get an invite to a birthday party, and we would not want to see that kind of activity criminalised, as misguided as it might be.

Senators on the committee also raised concerns about people with cognitive impairments unwittingly finding themselves falling foul of the law through their naivety. We also need to be careful to protect people with cognitive impairments who are older than 18. In this case, this law only applies to misrepresenting your age to children, to those under 16, but indeed there can be vulnerable citizens older than 18 who can be exposed to sexual exploitation because they have cognitive impairments or a naive attitude. It is quite gobsmacking to see the amount of online predatory behaviour that takes place when it comes to financial and a whole range of other exploitation.

So I look forward to more consultation with the AFP and the Attorney-General's Department to look at what powers should be helpful and how those powers can be created without creating any undesirable outcomes. It is a challenge, in broadening the Criminal Code in this way to remove the need for police to prove sexual intent before intervening in a potential online predator case, to ensure that unintended consequences are not created, but I think it is an important principle. I believe that we need to look at removing that need to prove sexual intent. If I think back to the circumstances of my own childhood, where I was clearly being targeted by someone with some kind of intent, clearly that contact was highly inappropriate. But, as to whether it would have been possible to prove some kind of sexual intent, I would not necessarily think you would be able to prove such intent in those cases. So the capacity for legal intervention despite not proving sexual intent is critically important.

I note that this bill has been put forward a number of times by Nick Xenophon, and I commend the Nick Xenophon Team for having dedication to this important cause. I am really pleased with the fact that we are working through the issues and making progress to seeing the bill's principles implemented. We on this side of the chamber believe that the challenges in this bill can be overcome so that it can be implemented with some further consultation. So it is terrific that we can see that consultation between political parties and agencies is now occurring.

For me as the assistant shadow minister for families and communities—which includes responsibility for child protection—it really is an honour to be participating in this debate, and I look forward to engaging with other senators who have an interest in this area, such as Senator Hinch, about our duty as parliamentarians to keep our nation's children safe. We acknowledge that the online world has made that harder to uphold, and I want us to look at what we can do to help.

I think about this as a mother. I was innocently watching Peppa Pig with my two-year-old toddler, only to find that some people like to turn Peppa Pig into inappropriately sexually explicit material which is somehow interspersed with the kind of content that children might be accessing. I do not really care what people's fetishes are—if they want to dress up as Peppa Pig or whatever—but we do need to be able to protect our children from exposure to this kind of content. I was shocked and appalled to find that my toddler was exposed to this; they are amazing in how quickly and easily they can flick through apps and find the content that they want to look for. So I will be vigilant in supervising his use of YouTube as a result of that.

So the online world really does expose our children to an array of content and, indeed, interaction with individuals that really does give parents cause for concern. We know that the answer to that is engaging with parents, as Sonya highlights, and educating ourselves, but it also lays a great onus on us as lawmakers and as governments: for administrators of agencies like the AFP, Child Protection and our courts to do their part of that job, and for us to provide them with the right laws to do so. Parents cannot be everywhere at all times. We do need to empower them and to encourage them to work with their children to keep them safe online. But as my own experience as a child shows, I did not tell my parents when I had been put into a risky situation—I did not disclose that to them.

In closing, I want to say that I very much look forward to working productively with other members of this place to see this bill progress.

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to start where the previous speaker finished, and that is that I would like to commend the Nick Xenophon Team for the work they have done in this incredibly important space. This is a very important issue and something that I, and I know many others in this chamber, feel very strongly about.

As a relatively new member of the Australian Senate and not being familiar with the work of previous parliaments with regard to this particular legislation—the Criminal Code Amendment (Misrepresentation of Age to a Minor) Bill 2016—I have had to go away to do a bit of research. Apart from the media reporting that I observed on this particular case, I did have to review the details a little more to make sure I understood exactly what we are dealing with here. I have to say that it is one of the most distressing things I have read. I can see very clearly why we have the motivation by the Nick Xenophon Team to do what they are doing here, prosecuting this case as they have for so long now. Again, I commend Senator Kakoschke-Moore, Senator Griff had also Senator Xenophon on their work.

As a father myself, with three young boys who are quite young in years—one, five and eight—and as my wife runs a child-care centre which looks after about 130 kids and is also a former child protection worker, we cannot deny the importance of the issues we are dealing with here. It is about the care and protection of our vulnerable young—those who in many cases cannot stand up for themselves and those who are lured into situations where they are not fully aware of what is going to happen. I fear for the future. As I said, my children are quite young. Senator Pratt was talking before about her child watching Peppa Pig, I presume on some sort of online platform like YouTube. I too, have encountered this situation where my children are happily watching some form of program appropriate for children and then suddenly something comes up on the screen which is highly inappropriate. I think that demonstrates the changing nature of the world we live in with regard to the technology that our children have access to.

I remember when I was a child and learning how to write that I started with a pencil and then got a biro licence. But as soon as kids can read and write these days they are on iPads and iPhones and things like that. There is no protection. That goes to the point that Senator Pratt and others have made, that you cannot observe all of their conduct. You cannot observe the contacts they are making in the world and who they are communicating with. That is why this is such a scary thing. As I said, from the experience of my wife as a former child protection worker and from some of the stories that I read in the media I cannot emphasise enough how important this is.

I do not think that anyone in this chamber—anyone with a beating heart—could deny the importance of this issue. I know we may all differ from time to time in our views on certain issues, but I detect very much support on all sides for the principle of what we are trying to achieve here, and that is to protect our young. As legislators we need to make sure that we do it properly, that the laws we make are the best laws possible for the people we are seeking to protect. In that, we need to proceed with caution; we need to ensure, as has been described by previous speakers, that we do not have unintended consequences. I will come to those a little later on, with reference to the committee reports that have been tabled previously on the previous versions of this legislation.

What I do take heart from is the fact that the government is in continuing discussions with the Nick Xenophon Team. I understand that there is a great deal of good will there, and I am very supportive of that work to make sure that whatever unintended consequences may well come in as a result of this legislation are ironed out and that we do have the strongest protections available for our young from predators in the online environment.

Just turning briefly, though, to the current legislative environment and the protections available under Australian law at present, brief research has shown me that the Criminal Code does contain a number of offences which have some coverage in this area and are aimed at protecting children online. It is important to point out, though, that currently the Commonwealth legislation does not directly criminalise misrepresenting one's age to a child online, although there are a number of existing offences in the Criminal Code which criminalise online communications with children where there is evidence of an intention to cause harm to a child. I think it is important for us to know where we are coming from in considering where we seek to go with the legislation we are debating today.

I have some specific examples. Under sections 474.26 and 474.27 of the Criminal Code, it is an offence for a person over the age of 18, the offender in this situation, to use a carriage service to communicate with a person they believe to be under the age of 16, the recipient, with the intention of procuring the recipient to engage in sexual activity or making it easier to procure the recipient to engage in sexual activity, which is known as 'grooming', with the sender or another person. These offences are punishable by a maximum penalty of 15 years imprisonment and 12 years imprisonment respectively.

Online communications with a child with the intention of committing any other kind of serious offence against them would be captured by existing offences to do with using a telecommunications network with the intention of committing serious Commonwealth, state or territory offences or offences against a foreign law. So there is a base in law for protection, to some degree, but I acknowledge that the applicability of this law in certain circumstances is not comprehensive enough—hence us having this debate today and, indeed, the discussions outside this place in good faith to ensure that we get good laws at the end of the day.

As has been noted by previous speakers, there were concerns with previous versions of the bill. I will just touch on a couple of unintended consequences. The one that stuck out to me most was the need to deal with people with a mental or cognitive impairment or incapacity. I am a member of the Senate community affairs committees. We have been doing extensive work in this area, ensuring that laws relating to the detention of people with a cognitive impairment are appropriate and that such people are not unfairly dealt with and incarcerated for periods of time—in some cases, indefinitely—because of the inflexibility of laws and their circumstances not been taken into account. Just noting that, I think it is important that we ensure that, moving forward from this debate, any work or negotiations that occur between government and the Nick Xenophon Team takes that into account. I refer to one paragraph in the committee report which refers to an individual who has a physical age of 25 but may be working on the capacity of an eight-year-old. That is something that needs to be taken into account. I just want to make sure that those laws that we seek to put in place are, at the end of the day, ones that do not have unintended consequences.

The platforms through which communications is undertaken these days never cease to amaze me. I missed the list Senator Griff mentioned before. Senator Watt made reference to it too. Only a few years ago the number of platforms by which you as a kid could communicate with your friends—which is generally what happened in chatrooms and things like that—were far more limited than they are today. As I say, my eight-year-old son has started communicating with me—thankfully, through his mother's Facebook account—on Facebook messenger. But it has made me think. He is only eight years old. When I was eight, I was not engaging in communications of such a nature with anyone. Reading the details of the case that was the catalyst for what we are doing here today just fills me with fear about how easy it is for these predators to get a foothold in someone's life and create destruction. So, with the dynamic and changing environment of the online world, which is different from year to year, we need to make sure we have the legislative tools that are appropriate to deal with them.

I do want to acknowledge, as Senator Pratt did, the good work of the AFP and other online agencies. We read from time to time of the excellent work of AFP officers in foiling attempts of people to interact with young people in ways they should not. It disgusts me that people do that, but sadly in this world there are people who do it. So I do want to acknowledge the work of our law enforcement agencies. As Senator Pratt said, we need to make sure that these laws give those agencies the tools they need to effectively deal with the situations they are faced with.

I think that is, again, why it is so incredibly important that these discussions that are taking place proceed in good faith and that we make sure that agencies like the AFP and the Attorney-General's Department have their say about what they think they need to work with. Indeed, we should be looking at other jurisdictions too. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. If there are other jurisdictions that do it well—they have laws that have prevented these sorts of things from happening—then we need to make sure that we are taking into account the experience of other jurisdictions.

The work to educate our younger people and our children to prevent these sorts of things from happening has also been mentioned. Early intervention is incredibly important. Senator Macdonald, a little earlier on, went through some of the programs that the Australian government supports. That is in addition to many of the programs that state and territory governments also run. If we can educate our young that they need to be vigilant and they need to be careful, that does go some way, but that does not detract from the need to ensure that our laws are stronger.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Duniam. The time for the debate has expired, and you will be in continuance.