House debates

Tuesday, 16 March 2021

Bills

Online Safety Bill 2021, Online Safety (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2021; Second Reading

12:56 pm

Photo of Andrew WallaceAndrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share 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.

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