Julian Simmonds (Ryan, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

There are many reasons why it's an honour to be in parliament representing my electorate, but one of the driving forces for me, being a young dad, is to do all that I can in this place to help keep our kids safe. That's why I'm so proud to be part of the Morrison government, which is steadfast in its commitment to keeping our children safe from harm. As parents we know the importance of supervision. When we go to the local park, we of course keep an eye on our kids, don't we? We make sure they're safe from harm, away from strangers. If a stranger approaches them then we're able to step in and do something about it. But what happens online? We can't be with our kids at every key stroke, on every app, on every game, on every website. Of course there are safeguards we can put in place—parental controls and the like—but it seems that, every time we do, some of the most heinous criminals find a workaround in order to get to our kids. Child exploitation is unfortunately on the rise, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a scourge that is of the most heinous nature, and we must do everything in our power to stop it and to find these predators and lock them up. Recently, a local dad posted on our community Facebook group in the Ryan electorate that he'd reviewed the online chats of his young son, who he thought was playing games with friends online. To his shock, the chat wasn't about the game. In fact an online stranger was asking his son escalating grooming questions, starting with whether he liked boys or girls or both. These predators are using any means necessary, starting off with what would be considered normal questions and then escalating into examples like this.

We all have a role to play in online safety as parents, carers and online users ourselves, but government has a role to play as well. I'm proud that in 2018 the Morrison government established the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation, known as the ACCCE. In response to the increasing number and severity of reports of child exploitation, a $68.6 million commitment was made, and the ACCCE was started in my home town, Brisbane. The ACCCE, led by the AFP, brings together skills from across the public and private sectors, with people working together in one hub to protect our kids. The ACCCE provides a capability not held by any single federal or state agency in Australia. It provides a conduit for foreign law enforcement to tackle the borderless crime of creating and sharing heinous child abuse material. The ACCCE has been joined by some world renowned personnel, who are now working here in Australia. It has also been joined by community members, organisations and not-for-profits who are dedicated to this sector.

Last year I got to visit the ACCCE, which is, as I said, located in Brisbane, and speak with many of its dedicated officers and employees. The work done by each and every team member is absolutely incredible, and we owe them an enormous debt. They do some horrible and disturbing work, working through thousands of reported images of the most disturbing nature and intercepting messages across dark and clear nets in order to infiltrate networks of offenders producing and sharing content. These are AFP officers under cover in some of the darkest and nastiest places on the internet, pretending to be something they clearly are not, who then have to go home and talk with their own families, having seen some of this content. They're parents themselves. I cannot even come close to imagining the challenge that work would present, but they do it day in, day out. They do it without any expectation of recognition, and I always take the opportunity when I'm speaking in this place about this issue to say thank you, on behalf of the Australian parliament, to the officers who are doing this work.

ACCCE recently completed a study into understanding community awareness, perceptions, attitudes and preventative behaviours. Remarkably, the officers of the ACCCE found that four out of five children aged four are using the internet, and 30 per cent of those children have access to their own internet enabled device. One in two children under the age of 12 has their own device. Despite this, only 52 per cent of parents have spoken to their kids about online safety. By the age of 11 most children are using the internet unsupervised.

We have such a large amount of work to do in this space, and I'm so glad that, in Minister Andrews, we have a minister who's absolutely dedicated to protecting our kids in the same way that I am and every member of the government and, I would hope, the parliament is. That is why, as part of this year's budget, a significant amount of money has been dedicated to continuing the incredible work of the ACE and to helping educate and support parents in online safety. Minister Andrews, my question is: how is the Morrison government helping to further protect our kids from exploitation as a result of this recent budget?

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