Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this, the honourable member for Gellibrand has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. If it suits the House, I will state the question in the form that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.

Katie Allen (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to support the Online Safety (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2021 not only as the member for Higgins but as a concerned mother and former paediatrician. The last decade has seen the internet become an increasingly crucial centrepiece in all of our lives. It's brought us together for work, to learn and to connect more than ever. In this light, it is now critical, more than ever, that we work together to ensure the internet is as safe as possible so that everyone can enjoy the benefits of being connected without fear of the sometimes real risks of online connectivity.

The internet generally and social media specifically are forms of communication that have been in transition. In some ways the net can be seen as the Wild West, with lots of opportunities—but with opportunities come unregulated challenges. The job of government is to get the balance right in legislation, and that includes putting online safety at the heart of decision-making but enabling opportunities so the world can flourish from the benefits of these online opportunities. This bill seeks to combat the evolving use of the internet in facilitating abusive social interactions, including the distribution of intimate images and cyberabuse, by amending offences in the Criminal Code which are specifically intended to prevent, deter and sanction—as well as educate and draw attention to the criminality of—this conduct.

Many of us here in this chamber have heard stories about this, either from the news or our constituents, or may even have been affected ourselves. Some of us have fallen victim to some of these horrendous acts. As a parent, I look to the next generation, who are so incredibly reliant on digital connectivity for all things, from social life to study to work. But now it's reached right through the community—everyone from every generation—with more than 90 per cent of Australians connecting every day. When abuse through these services happens, it can seem inescapable for many. Unfortunately, some victims of these heinous crimes take their own life. This is not acceptable. We must do better. And that's what we're doing with this bill. It's not just for the generations here today but for future generations, those that come after us. The Morrison government is determined that the standards and the rule of law that we enjoy in our every day lives, as we walk around our communities, should also apply online. This is not just reasonable and sensible; it's practical. We need to pass this government's Online Safety Bill to ensure this can become a reality.

The bill will strengthen the ability of the eSafety Commissioner to keep Australians safe when things go wrong online. I would like to take a moment to talk about the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant. As the eSafety Commissioner, she is head of the world's first esafety regulatory agency, and she is committed to keeping our citizens safe online. This is very important. This is a world first. No other country, to my knowledge, has legislated an esafety commissioner. Ms Inman Grant spent two decades working in senior public policy and safety roles in the tech industry, at Microsoft, Twitter and Adobe. She's worked in the US Congress and was Global Director for Safety, Privacy Policy and Outreach at Microsoft for many years. She's also global chair of the Child Dignity Alliance's Technical Working Group and a board member of the WePROTECT Global Alliance. This is a woman who really knows her stuff. This bill will provide new powers to the eSafety Commissioner to address emerging harms and hold industry to account for the safety of their products and services.

The Morrison government is also acting on its commitment to increase penalties for the use of a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence, from three years up to five years. This will surely help deter many of these acts to begin with. The new Online Safety Bill will establish in law a set of basic online safety expectations for industry. This will help ensure it is transparent and easy to comprehend. In light of the excellent skills and experience of the eSafety Commissioner, these are very relevant changes. Along with these basic expectations, it will also require mandatory transparency reporting. This will empower the eSafety Commissioner to require online services to provide specific information about online harms, such as their response to material depicting abhorrent, violent conduct or even volumetric attacks, which is where organised digital groups seek to overwhelm a victim with abuse. Further, it will see a strengthened cyberbullying scheme for Australian children, along with a new cyberabuse scheme, which will see the removal of the serious forms of online abuse from the internet, backed up by civil penalties. There will also be new requirements for image based abuse content to be removed within 24 hours, and penalties for noncompliance.

Yesterday marks two years since a shocking event occurred. Australians will not forget—simply cannot forget—what happened in the space of 36 minutes on 15 March 2019, when Brenton Tarrant, a far Right extremist, fatally shot 51 innocent people across two mosques in Christchurch. This was the deadliest terrorist attack in New Zealand's history. What was unique about this horrific terrorist attack was that it was live streamed on Facebook, highlighting the Achilles heel of such platforms when faced with the viral dissemination of extremely violent content. One can't unsee those images. The legislation before us will empower the eSafety Commissioner with a new rapid website-blocking power. This power can be used to block material depicting abhorrent violent conduct, in real time, during an online crisis.

Enhanced information-gathering powers for the eSafety Commissioner will also help unmask the identities behind anonymous online accounts being used to abuse, bully or humiliate others. This part of the powers I'm sure many Australians and, I suspect, many in this House—particularly public figures—will be celebrating. These online trollings from fake or anonymous accounts can cause untold damage. They really do lower the tone of conversations that can be very empowering in an online space. For far too long and too often many victims of online abuse have been hurled at from behind troll accounts. This act is a warning to all trolls: the tables have been turned; the eSafety Commissioner is coming for you.

TV and radio presenter Erin Molan was forced to take police action after an online troll bombarded her with a series of vile messages threatening the life of her unborn daughter. I would like to acknowledge Erin and to thank her for sharing her story so publicly and bringing this story to light so that we can understand how terrible some of this trolling can be. Erin Molan is a leading voice for this legislative change and recently said:

This historical, legislative and social milestone is setting a standard that the rest of the world should—and I think will—follow.

It is true that our Australian regulations and legislation are being looked to by the rest of the world, and we know this from the point that Mathias Cormann has been recently elected as Secretary-General of the OECD on a platform which included digital taxation, based on the fact that we have a very good record of work in this important area.

The Online Safety Bill provides a flexible, comprehensive framework that requires platforms to prioritise the safety of Australians and empowers the eSafety Commissioner to assist them when things go wrong online. This bill is one vital step to delivering overall safety online. But it is also true that we, as individuals, need to actively take steps to make the internet a safe and enjoyable space for every user. Together, we can and should work towards a better internet. It is democratised knowledge; it has made the world a better place for many to live. I commend this bill to the House. But we all need to work together with regard to online safety.

Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As those who have spoken before me have stated, the Online Safety Bill 2021 seeks to create a new online safety framework for Australians. It is 'a modern, fit-for-purpose regulatory framework that builds on the strengths of the existing legislative scheme for online safety'. Many of the aspects of this bill should be supported. They tackle some very serious—I would venture to say, criminal—activities online and some very serious and damaging behaviours online.

For the most part, the bill consolidates various online safety laws into one bill and tidies up those laws, but there are a couple of novel elements to the bill. One element is the articulation of a core set of basic online safety expectations, to promote and improve online safety for Australians—certainly something that is very welcomed and supported by those on this side. The other element is the creation of a new complaints based removal notice scheme for cyberabuse being perpetrated against an Australian adult—an adult cyberabuse scheme. I want to talk, in the time I have left, a little on that particular aspect and some concerns that have been raised about it, as well as some concerns that have been raised around the handling of the bill.

While remaining largely supportive of the intent of the bill and largely supportive of the need for this bill, the criticisms of the bill have been focused on the process and some of the substance issues—things like the functions, powers and oversight of the eSafety Commissioner. I concur with the member for Higgins that the current eSafety Commissioner is a woman of extraordinary talents and brings extraordinary experience to the role. However, that does not preclude an eSafety Commissioner from having the kinds of checks and balances that other people with those kinds of powers should be and are subjected to. There are also concerns about the clarity and breadth of the basic online safety expectations, services in scope of the online content regulation schemes, the clarity and the proportionality of the blocking scheme, the appropriate basis for the online content scheme, reduced response time, and, importantly, the rushed public consultation for this bill, following an exposure draft which was released in December 2020. Only 376 submissions were able to be received, because of the short time of the consultation process.

But coming back to the adult cyberabuse scheme, which is one of the novel parts of this bill, as I said before—that scheme would enable the eSafety Commissioner to make a determination about what is offensive and have that material removed within a short time frame. Concerns have already been raised about the subjective nature of this determination and the lack of, as I mentioned earlier, checks and balances on determinations, and they're valid concerns about how these determinations and how this particular aspect of the bill would be used.

I remember that, in my first term here, we had a very heated debate in this House about section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. There was fervent debate on the other side, with free-speech warriors claiming that 18C needed to be removed. The member for Higgins, who spoke earlier—I know that she wasn't a member at the time—might like to go back and have a look at some of the Hansard on that debate, because it was members on her side who stated in their debate that offence was not given; offence was taken. It was members on her side who argued quite loudly for the right of people to offend, under the guise of the freedom of speech. I would urge those people—those free-speech warriors—on the other side to look very carefully at the detail of this bill and to look very carefully at the provisions of this bill and to consider how it might impact on free speech and how some of those provisions in the bill might be used.

The other concern I have is that this provision in the bill is about adult cyberbullying. I have spent a lot of my career working in the spaces of antiracism, and, for some time, I worked in anti-bullying and anti-harassment policy as well. I can tell you that one of the greatest grievances of people who work in that field is that racism often gets subsumed into bullying and it's often dealt with as bullying. That has quite a serious side effect, has a serious consequence, because it means that racism never gets called out as racism. Instead, it's called bullying. But when bullying and the harassment is of a racial nature, it is racism. End of story—full stop. It is racism, and it needs to be called out as racism.

Imagine a scenario where somebody is trolling with racist remarks and gets called out for it, gets called a racist, and the person, the troll, takes offence to that and reports it and instead of the racist remark being removed, the remarks that are calling out racism get removed instead. That is a very likely scenario—as we currently have it. It's a very likely scenario that somebody who is trolling another individual with racist commentary and gets called out for that racist commentary can claim that they are being bullied and harassed and take action against the person who has called them out. It is a very likely scenario.

I will remind those on the other side what it looks like to be the subject of racist trolling online, although I'm sure that I don't have to remind some of those on the other side. I know that there are people on the other side who have been trolled online for their political views, for their race or for a number of other things. I've had people comment that I should be hung from a tree, that people should put a bullet in the bag and that they should take me out to the town square and shoot me or behead me. Imagine if, in a scenario like that, I were to call them out as racist and respond with remarks that they are racist, and I then became subject to the adult cyberbullying scheme and I were shut down. That is a very real possibility.

That said, it is absolutely true that we need a scheme like this that would allow and require platforms to block the kind of terrible content that we saw with the live streaming of the Christchurch terrorist attack. I thank those who have spoken in this place and in the Federation Chamber on the second anniversary of the Christchurch terrorist attack. It is quite timely that this bill comes in line with that anniversary.

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security is currently undertaking an inquiry into violent extremist groups in Australia, and the terms of reference include online content. But I want to make this point: much of the recruiting and influence of violent extremist groups happens in the dark spaces of the internet, on the dark web. Very little of it happens on the surface web. It's just the tip of the iceberg that we see on the surface web. I want to make sure that this scheme captures the kind of online racism that we see on the surface web. People can be racist trolls and not be members of or affiliated with violent extremist far-Right organisations. We cannot let that behaviour slip through the net if we're going to have a comprehensive framework for dealing with these behaviours online.

I just remind the House that, before I entered parliament, much of my research was on online behaviours, and I also did some research on the most appropriate way of dealing with online offensive material, looking at whether or not the whack-a-mole approach of removing material as it appeared was the best approach and also at the kinds of online behaviours that precede radicalisation and violent acts, such as the behaviours that were observed post the act of the Christchurch terrorist but perhaps should have been observed prior to the act. Many of those behaviours happen in the dark spaces. So I really would like to see further work done on this bill, and particularly on the scheme, to ensure that the adult cyberbullying part of this bill, the adult cyberbullying scheme, also recognises racism as part of it, racial harassment as part of it and hate speech as part of it, and clearly defines them and has clear and defined processes for the reporting and the removal of this kind of material online.

That said, I join my Labor colleagues in supporting the intent of the bill. I join my Labor colleagues, particularly the member for Gellibrand and the shadow minister, who is sitting here today, in supporting the intent of the bill and the good things that the bill will do in removing really, really harmful content. But also, in adding to the debate today, I add my concerns about the bill—about the way that the bill was handled, about the lack of consultation in the handling of the bill and about the further steps that the bill needs to take to ensure that it actually does provide safety. All of us are entitled to feel safe, whether it's in our homes, whether it's in our workplaces, whether it's in our streets and whether it's online.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

According to research from the eSafety Commissioner, last year, 44 per cent of Australian teenagers had a negative online experience in the six months to September 2020. I want to briefly acknowledge the work that's been done in this space by the member for Forrest, who's just walked into the chamber. She's been an undying advocate for this area. It's been great to work alongside her as a bit of a tag team in this space, because there's a lot of work to be done. Well done for everything you've done.

Tragically, we saw a 129 per cent increase in child sexual abuse material reports over the March to September period last year. But it's not just children and young people who have serious negative experiences online; in fact, for adults, the issue is even more prevalent. The eSafety Commissioner found that 67 per cent of Australian adults had a negative experience online in the 12 months to August 2019, including repeated unwanted messages, unwanted pornography or violent content, scams, viruses, hate speech, abuse and threats. Vulnerable Australians, including those with a disability, are more likely than others to have these sorts of terrible experiences. But perhaps most disturbingly as many as a quarter of those who have had an a negative online experience experienced mental or emotional distress as a result.

In one indicator of the size of this problem, online harassment and cyberabuse is estimated to have cost our economy up to $3.7 billion to date just in medical costs and lost incomes for Australians. So for those out there who may be listening and thinking, 'Why is a Liberal government getting involved in this space?' even if you just put aside the fact that this is the right thing to do for the moment, there is an economic cost to Australians.

For people who are struggling with bullying, depression and social isolation, the online world can leave them no respite from their suffering. In 2021 the internet has no off button. Mobile phones and constant connectivity can mean that the bullying never stops. We see this, unfortunately, in politics. We see this in our own communities. Comments can be anonymous—they can be brutal—and the isolation can be unrelenting. At its worst, vulnerable people can end up being encouraged to take their own lives. Let me say that again: vulnerable people can be, and in fact are, encouraged to take their own lives.

We talk so much in this place. The discussions in recent days have been about all of the issues that women are experiencing in this country, but let's just go back a step for a moment. If I treat the member for Lyons with the respect that he deserves, I'm hoping that he will return that. If these last few weeks teach us anything, it's that we are in positions of leadership in this place and we should be treating each other with greater respect than we do.

With eating disorders, a different, though no less dark, side of the internet is on display. I've seen this personally. There are a plethora of websites and forums in which sufferers and enablers share information on how to lose weight in a very unhealthy manner, putting other peoples' lives at risk. These sites offer those suffering from eating disorders tips and tricks. They discourage treatment and normalise what we now know as a serious mental health disorder.

We must do more to protect vulnerable people, and particularly we must do more to protect children online. To deal with these ever-increasing social challenges, ultimately we will need action from the online media companies which facilitate abuse and illegal sharing to better moderate their platforms. Like many regions around the country, my electorate of Fisher includes nearly 10,000 young people aged between 18 and 24 who are particularly at risk, as well as thousands more students at 13 secondary schools who are regrettably increasingly facing cyberabuse of all kinds. I have, therefore, and based on my own family's experience, taken a very strong interest in this issue.

I'm now very familiar with dealing directly with the world's biggest digital and social media companies on their approach to cybersafety. Since my election I've been pursuing change in this area and, in particular, the reduction of cyberbullying and the protection of those online with serious mental health concerns, including eating disorders. With the support of the then Prime Minister, the eSafety Commissioner and the then National Cyber Security Adviser, Alastair MacGibbon, in January 2018, just after Dolly Everett took her own life, I had the opportunity to meet with the DIGI Group, a group of global online businesses, to speak to them about the ideas for change that I believe could make an important difference. This group includes representatives of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Yahoo and others. Though our conversations then and in the years that followed have been constructive, some of these companies have made slow progress in improving safety. The message from industry time and time again has been the same: if we want to see real change in keeping Australians safe online then we need to legislate and force these businesses to act.

Unfortunately, we've seen in recent weeks more clearly than ever the attitude of some of these major technology companies and their reluctance to act on important social issues when they're not forced to do so. Facebook is the platform where, the eSafety Commissioner reports, the most Australians have negative experiences. Only weeks ago, Facebook responded to entirely valid concerns about the benefits it was receiving without payment from the publishing of professional news content on its platform by depriving Australian users of a key part of its service. Instead of dealing constructively with Australians and their democratically elected government, Facebook attempted to bully and coerce Australians into what they wanted. If we ever needed proof that we require a strong regulator in this environment, to make sure that these companies do the right thing, we now have it. We simply cannot rely on the good intentions of these companies; we must have a strong cop on the beat ready to step in and force change when it is needed, and we need stronger expectations on the platforms that reflect Australians' expectations.

The bills before the House today, the Online Safety Bill 2021 and the Online Safety (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2021, will go a long way towards ensuring that a strong regulator is in place on an ongoing basis, and that it has all the powers it needs. It is the latest measure in this coalition government's unmatched track record of action on online safety. It was, after all, the coalition that established the Children's eSafety Commissioner in July 2015. This government expanded its role to encompass e-safety information and support for all Australians. As far as I'm aware, it remains the only organisation in the world that does this; we were world leaders.

To date, this government has delivered more than $70 million for the work of the eSafety Commissioner, Ms Julie Inman Grant, who I've done a lot of work with in the last five years. She has done a tremendous job in using those funds and exercising the powers that she has to make Australians safer online. Just in 2019-20 the commissioner received 14,500 reports about prohibited online content and identified more than 13,000 separate URLs which were sufficiently serious to warrant referral to law enforcement. In 82 per cent of cases, the commissioner was successful in having material removed at her request. However, she also issued 16 notices to Australian and overseas services to remove abhorrent violent material. In one year the commissioner received almost 700 complaints about serious cyberbullying targeting Australian children and referred almost 3,000 people to the Kids Helpline.

However, the online world is constantly changing and our regulatory framework must adapt to keep up. New technologies and new ways of using that technology have shifted the threat landscape, while the role of materials and services hosted online are becoming more recognised. In short, as I've often said and as this government says, the standards we apply to behaviour in the online world must be the same as those we apply in the real world. If something is unacceptable in real life, it should be unacceptable online.

The 2018 independent review of the Enhancing Online Safety Act, led by Ms Briggs, laid out a clear path for how to improve our regulations. The bills before the House enact those recommendations, and I'll speak just about a few. First of all, the bills expand the range of situations in which the eSafety Commissioner can exercise her powers. They extend this government's already world-leading cyberabuse take-down scheme from content relating to children to that involving all Australian adults. Under these bills, where an online platform has failed to take down abusive material, the eSafety Commissioner will have the power to issue take-down notices not only to the platform itself but to the end user, where identifiable. These bills also expand the range of online providers to which the eSafety Commissioner can issue a notice to take down. Although social media is critical in the struggle against online abuse, other platforms, including search engines, online games, websites and messaging services, are seeing increasing cyberbullying. It's even happening now with online banking. With these bills, we empower the eSafety Commissioner to take the fight into these new battlegrounds.

As well as broadening the commissioner's powers, the bills deliver tougher measures to deal with the most serious breaches. One of the most prevalent and harmful forms of online abuse is the non-consensual sharing of intimate images. I'm glad some kids up there in the student gallery have joined us. You might want to listen to this part. It needs to be dealt with quickly and comprehensively, and this bill halves the amount of time allowed to platforms before they must remove such material once a notice is issued by the eSafety Commissioner. Those who don't comply face a civil penalty of up to $111,000.

When it comes to material described as class 1—that is, material involving the most abhorrent violence and abuse—this bill would give the eSafety Commissioner the power to have it removed from search engines within 24 hours and even to have apps deleted, where those apps are facilitating access. Where events of an abhorrent nature are ongoing, this bill would give the eSafety Commissioner the unprecedented but important power to have websites that have been used to share live images of these events temporarily blocked by all internet service providers in this country.

To me, perhaps the bill's most important provision, however, begins to correct a cultural issue which I believe lies at the heart of the challenge posed by online bullying and harassment, and that is the question of anonymity. Studies have proved that the feeling of anonymity facilitates abhorrent behaviour on the part of people who would never consider it if their names and their faces could be seen. Behind a shield of anonymity, malicious actors feel invulnerable and, in all too many cases, they have been. I believe this cannot be allowed to continue. We must hold individuals accountable for their actions online, just as we hold them accountable in the offline world, and, to do that, we must be able to identify who they are, and this bill will do just that. I commend it to the House.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on the Online Safety Bill 2021 and the Online Safety (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2021. Members may recall that in recent weeks I've been making numerous calls for action to be taken against the foreign based website Etsy, which had on its platform abhorrent products promoting child sexual abuse, putting these products for sale alongside things like Father's Day gifts. I'm certainly on the side of cracking down on rogue internet operators who fail to uphold community standards.

Labor does support measures to consolidate, update and enhance online safety laws for Australians, and the bills do seek to create a new online safety framework for Australians—'a modern, fit-for-purpose regulatory framework that builds on the strengths of the existing legislative scheme for online safety'. For many years, Australians have been protected by laws to support online safety, and it is important these laws are kept up to date. To a large degree, the bills represent regulatory housekeeping by consolidating various online safety laws into one bill, with some updates, in response to Lynelle Briggs's independent review of online safety laws, which reported to the government in October 2018. So the government's had this for a while and has not acted with the speed with which it should have. Labor does support the aim of consolidating online safety laws into a new framework and new elements of the bill, including the creation of a new complaints-based removal notice scheme for cyberabuse being perpetrated against an Australian adult and the articulation of a core set of basic online safety expectations to improve and promote online safety for Australians.

Although the government has been spruiking this new Online Safety Bill as if it already exists—and it has been spruiking it for almost two years—it's just now that it's introducing a bill that addresses a recommendation of the Briggs review for a single, up-to-date online safety act. Unfortunately, even after all the time the government's had, it still doesn't have this bill quite ready to go. Labor are supporting it because we're taking the view that something's better than nothing, but this bill really is half cooked, and the government should have done a better job. It's a very important piece of public policy, and the government's just come at it almost as an afterthought. When asked about key operational aspects of this bill, such as for the novel adult cyberabuse scheme, even the eSafety Commissioner referred to it as a 'sausage' that is still being made, and that was as recently as last week. Last week, the eSafety Commissioner said the sausage is still being made. It's really not good enough.

Given the significant passage of time since the Briggs review reported, it is disappointing that the government has proved incapable of conducting a process that satisfies stakeholders in terms of both process and substance. A wide range of stakeholders still have valid concerns with this bill which the government has failed to address. Submissions to the Senate inquiry into the bill raised concerns about several matters that they argued have not been addressed and which some considered long overdue for reform, such as the functions, powers and oversight of the eSafety Commissioner, the clarity and breadth of the basic online safety expectations, and the public consultation processes associated with the bills, amongst other things.

I personally have some concerns about things like mission creep. We start out with good intentions on these things, and I do back this bill. As I say, it's not ideal but it's better than nothing. But I am concerned that, given the holes in this bill and the patent fact that it's going to need pretty quick revision pretty soon, there is a risk of mission creep, where what starts off with good intentions ends up being something a little bit more insidious. I have a background as a journalist. I would hate to think that the provisions of this bill would end up in any way impacting on the ability of journalists to report freely and openly in this country. Journalism, by necessity, often presents the public with confronting images. For example, who can forget that terrible image of George Floyd being kneed in the neck until he was dead? It's not beyond the scope of reason to think that somebody may well complain to an eSafety Commissioner in the future that that sort of imagery is abhorrently violent and should be caught up in the scope of this bill and taken down. I have very high regard for the current eSafety Commissioner, but she won't always be there. Who knows who will hold that position in the future? Who knows what qualifications they will bring and what ideological or political baggage they might have trailing behind them when they are given fairly extraordinary powers under this bill?

So I do have those concerns. I don't think those concerns are unwarranted, and I hope that, once this goes up to the Senate as part of that review process, it's taken on board a little bit more. We need to make sure that journalism and particularly the public interest are not caught up by bad-faith actors, people who make vexatious complaints to an eSafety Commissioner for either religious or ideological reasons or simply because they want content that they happen not to agree with taken down. So we need some more work done there.

Other significant matters of concern include how the bill interacts with the frameworks of safeguards put in place by the telecommunications assistance and access regime, as well as matters that interact with freedom of speech. That goes to some of the matters I've just raised. Finding the balance between free speech and protections against certain kinds of speech is a complex endeavour. It's not easy. We all like to think that we live in a free society with free speech. We don't have free speech mandated in our Constitution, unlike in the US, but we like to think that we have freedom of speech in this country. But it comes with obligations and responsibilities, and finding that sweet spot is a difficult endeavour.

We are concerned that this bill represents a significant increase in the eSafety Commissioner's discretion to remove material, without commensurate checks and balances. This is a key concern of mine: an unelected official is being given extraordinary powers over public information. As I say, this is being done with good intent—I don't question the government's intention on this—but an unelected bureaucrat is being given extraordinary powers, and I really think we need to look very closely at how that person is appointed, what qualifications they bring and also what oversight this parliament has. I am not a fan, personally—I can't speak for the Labor Party on this—of the executive having sole discretion over this. A minister having the hire and fire power over an eSafety Commissioner does not sit well with me. Finding that balance is important.

Whilst we are supportive of a scheme for adult cyberabuse, it's very curious that a government that has made repeated attempts to repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act on the grounds that it unduly restricts free speech, despite the availability of defences in section 18D, is now seeking to rush through a half-cooked bill that empowers the eSafety Commissioner with discretion to determine matters of speech in relation to adult cyberbullying without greater checks and balances or operational clarity. They've had this for two years. It's almost like they've just let it sit there and percolate, doing nothing, and now they're rushing it through the parliament not having done the checks and balances properly.

This government talks a big game about its expectations of social media platforms, but, to date, it has failed to do its job by updating Australia's online safety laws. While the government is right to expect digital platforms to offer more in terms of transparency—and I'm not a fan of the way those digital giants do their job; they need to do better—so too must the government be prepared to provide transparency around decision-making, particularly on matters that engage with human rights.

In their additional comments to the Senate inquiry, Labor senators recommended that the government consider further amendments to clarify the bill in terms of its scope and to strengthen due process, appeals, oversight and transparency requirements given the important free speech and digital rights consideration that it engages. Online safety is of increasing importance to all Australians as we spend more time online—it's just everywhere in our home lives and in business—and I urge the government to take the short amount of time it takes to get it right. You've had two years. I don't know why you're rushing it through now without taking account of the many complaints and many concerns that have been raised through the Senate process. Get it right the first time. Don't rush this through and then have to cobble it back together again with amendments over the next year, as you are doing with other bills. I think the biosecurity one comes to mind. You made a mess of that, and now the biosecurity amendment bill is coming back into the parliament. Get it right the first time.

Labor supports online safety and we do support these bills. The safety of Australians online, particularly children, is of paramount importance, so Labor will work constructively with the government to iron out concerns with these bills in time for debate in the Senate. But, in the meantime, Labor will not oppose these bills. We just implore the government: do better.

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

It's a great pleasure to rise today and speak on this bill, the Online Safety Bill 2021, and to support it very enthusiastically and wholeheartedly. This is obviously a passion of mine. I'm a young dad and, like a lot of families in my electorate of Ryan, I'm passionate about making sure that our kids are not only safe when they're online but also supported in the real world from the harmful effects that can come from negative behaviour online.

Before I go on, I really wanted to pay tribute to the member for Forrest, who is in here watching—the wonderful Nola—because I'm a recent addition to this place and it has been a great honour of mine to come into this place and be able to take up this issue of online harm. The member for Forrest is one who I know—and there are others—has been taking up this particular fight for some time. I think that, long before the full negative effects of it were fully appreciated, the member for Forrest appreciated them and not only took them up in a virtue-signalling way but also took them up in a very practical way by working with her schools and taking it upon herself to actually educate young people about what is safe behaviour online. So, Member for Forrest, you should be congratulated for that.

Our kids are continuously spending more and more time online, and there are some very harmful environments online. I have to say technology continues to evolve faster than we are evolving in our understanding of it. Sitting on the Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs and looking at those recommendations into online gambling and access to online porn, it struck me that it's not just about messaging apps or Facebook or Instagram, which we all understand relatively well—me not as much as I should, because I'm not a tech-head. There are things like loot boxes in games. There are things like chat functions, which kids can use to chat to people. Kids can be playing these games, in front of their parents, in full view. A parent can think they're doing the right thing by watching over their kid, but they don't know who is on the other end of the earpiece or what they're speaking about. It's a very dangerous space for parents. I'm struck by the fact that it's a space in which parents can be incredibly diligent and feel like they're doing everything right but still get it wrong. That is a really dangerous space. They'll get it wrong because (1) it's a struggle for parents of any generation to keep up with the technology of a younger generation and (2) these predators are incredibly sophisticated and determined in the horrible things that they are trying to do. The point I'm trying to make, and where I'm going with this little monologue, is that this bill is important because it gives parents the tools to help their kids in a way that they couldn't before. As we have seen, the eSafety Commissioner has had significant success with younger people. It also gives parents and adults the opportunity to push back against some of the trolls and the abhorrent online behaviour that we see through social media and other technologies.

To understand the prevalence of the issue, I want to give this House a little bit of an understanding of what we're up against when we're talking about vulnerable people in our society and the harm that can come from technological abuse. Recently, the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation, known as the ACCCE—it's a tremendous facility hosted in my home town of Brisbane, and I'm incredibly supportive of it—completed a study into understanding community awareness, perceptions, attitudes and preventive behaviours. They found some remarkable things. Four out of five children aged four are using the internet, and 30 per cent of those children have access to their own device. Incredible! Again, this isn't about lax parenting, although, from my own experience with my child, I know I'd be very careful about providing a four-year-old with a device. Some parents think they are doing the right thing by giving their child an internet enabled device, opening up all sorts of educational and learning opportunities for that child. But with that opportunity comes an incredible responsibility and an incredible potential for harm. One in two children under the age of 12 have their own device. Despite this, only 52 per cent of parents talk to their children about online safety. By the age of 11, most children are using the internet unsupervised. This is incredibly concerning. At the age of 11, the cognitive abilities of these kids are limited. Their ability to make sensible, rational decisions and to understand the full scope of the decisions they're making when they enter into conversations that could be harmful to them is limited. They don't fully understand. That's alright. That's an opportunity for parents and our entire society. The saying is: 'It takes a village to raise a child.' We all have to throw our arms around these parents and kids to make sure that everybody understands the harm that can come from online technological abuse, whether it be to kids or to parents.

I take the point of the previous Labor speaker. It is a difficult issue. But, with due respect, when he says, 'It's hard to find the balance,' I'm not so sure it is. I think the balance is quite clear. We expect the same rules, laws and norms in the online world as we expect in the real world. Up until now, we have been willing to forego those protections in the online world because we felt that, to get the benefits of all this increased connectivity between people in a globalised world, we had to give up the protections that we have in the real world. That's just not the case. I don't think that Australians are willing to accept it anymore. I don't think that they will cop it anymore. What the government has shown, by moving against the technology companies when it comes to having them paying for news content, demonstrates our desire to make sure that the same rules apply in the online world as they do in the real world. Frankly, I think these technology companies should be held accountable as the publishers that they are. It's not acceptable to have anonymous content on these platforms. If these platforms do allow anonymous content then they have to take responsibility for what is said in that anonymous content.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour.