Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is often said that the internet has changed everything. If we look at today's mobile phones and social media, I think the number of improvements they have made to our lives is almost immeasurable. I think of my mobile phone sitting here at my desk—about what I could use that to do today that I could not do when I was going to school. It is not only a telephone; it is a device to send and receive emails and to send and receive text messages. It is as good-quality a camera as one I think I could ever have bought when I was younger. It is also a voice recorder. It records and plays movies. I can use it to research the news around the world. I can look up information, look up a textbook. It also gives me the power to take and send photographs. I think back to several generations ago, and my parents or grandparents did not actually know what their forefathers looked like. They never had an image of them unless they were someone who was famous—royalty or a famous explorer—and had a portrait painted. Today's generation will always have hundreds if not thousands or tens of thousands of photos of themselves that they can pass down through the generations. These are some of the many wonderful things that the internet, our modern communications and our social media have bought: the ability to contact friends and family around the world at a low cost.

But there is a dark side of this new technology, and the dark side is through cyberbullying. I am sure that many of us here, as members of parliament—especially when we have stood on a particular issue that is politically divisive—have received messages, including text messages or email correspondence, that have been most hostile and aggressive, something that we would never have imagined several years ago. It appears that, when you are online, the fact that you can be slightly anonymous allows you to pick up the aggression and hostility in your communications and express that through. Often I have found that, with people who have sent me, I would say, very nasty and abusive text messages, when I actually get to meet them face to face I think, 'How did such a person write something that was so hostile?' It is obviously that ability to be anonymous online that has somehow encouraged and created this current environment, where people make much more aggressive and hostile abuse of other people. That is why such legislation as we are bringing here today, the Enhancing Online Safety for Children Bill 2014 and the Enhancing Online Safety for Children (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2014, is important.

While legislation like this is important to get the legislative steps in place to deal with this new phenomenon, we need to also encourage our children to be resilient and explain to them that they will almost undoubtedly through their lives be on the receiving end of some type of hostile message through Facebook or Twitter. The message we should be telling kids is a version of a line that my parents told me. We should be telling them that, although sticks and stones may break your bones, Facebook or tweets will never hurt you. That is the resilient message we need to get through to our kids, as well as this legislation. It is important because in today's society, with today's communications, it is a completely different world with the world of cyberbullying.

What the Enhancing Online Safety for Children Bill 2014 does is to establish the Children's e-Safety Commissioner as an independent statutory office within the Australian Communications and Media Authority. The commission will take a national leadership role on online safety for children. A key function of the commissioner is to administer a complaints system for cyberbullying material targeting an Australian child. The commission will have two sets of powers it can use in responding to a complaint, under a two-tiered scheme. There will be the power to issue a notice to a large social media service requiring it to remove the material. If the social media service has volunteered to participate in tier 1, the notice will not be legally binding. However, a repeated failure by the large social media provider to respond to such a notice exposes it to the risk of being moved to a tier 2 complaint. If a large social media service is in tier 2, it is legally required to respond to the notice. Secondly, the commissioner has the power to issue a notice to the person who posted the material requiring the person to remove the material, refrain from posting material or apologise for posting the material.

Other functions of the commissioner will include promoting online safety for children; coordinating relevant activities of the Commonwealth departments, authorities and agencies; supporting, conducting, accrediting and evaluating educational and community awareness programs; making grants; and advising the minister. The commissioner will also have the function of administering the Online Content Scheme set out in schedules 5 to 7 of the Broadcasting Services Act, which was previously administered by ACMA and is being transferred to the commissioner without amendment.

While we commend the bill to the House, I would also like to raise the issue of child safety in another particular area, and that is the issue of child marriage. It is estimated that there are about 250 young Australian girls that are engaged in a forced marriage under the age of 16. We saw one example of that in previous weeks reported in our courts. A 27-year-old man used his telecommunication device, his telephone, to bombard a 12-year-old girl with hundreds of text messages. He ultimately married that young 12-year-old girl. The young 12-year-old girl became pregnant and miscarried. This is a most horrific and shocking case that is happening in the cities of Australia today. So we in this parliament, when we are talking about online safety and protecting our children, need to make very clear and concise and completely unambiguous comments that such conduct against children is completely unacceptable in Australia today.

With that, I will leave my comments there. I commend the bill to the House. All members of parliament from both sides must work to ensure our children can grow up in a safe, protective environment.

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