Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I begin by thanking the member for Boothby for her moving speech, because what she brings to this discussion—which is one of law—is the human experience of the awful abuse that she has experienced. Don't make any mistake about it: among those in this place, it is not just the member for Boothby who's experienced awful abuse. Many members know the same experience. Tragically, it's the price for putting yourself up there and wanting to make your country a better place.

This bill, the Online Safety Bill 2021, starts from a very basic proposition: conduct that is unacceptable offline should not somehow be licensed online. I'm one of the first people to say that this area of law is a very complicated and difficult one, because, the more opaque the law, the more flexibility we give, the more we empower regulators and censors to be able to decide what can be published and what cannot. But what we know is that, where there is incessant intent and malice in the conduct and what is published, it has a direct impact on people and their mental health and wellbeing and, critically, on young and vulnerable minds that aren't fully developed.

Sadly, the member for Boothby has outlined the despicable conduct she's experienced at the hands of online trolls, GetUp and, sadly, activists for the Australian Labor Party, among others. Sadly, we see this conduct every day on social media. I'm not suggesting that people on the other side of this chamber haven't experienced abuse themselves. I have no doubt that members opposite me in the chamber right now have experienced despicable conduct from online trolls—absolutely despicable conduct—on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender and the like. I know that's been experienced by members on this side, too.

But, truthfully, this bill isn't just about us. In fact, it's definitely not about us. It's about the Australian people—about all of us—and the conduct that's experienced by young Australians, particularly where social media is part of their native environment. They are put in a position where people target them deliberately and maliciously in content to harass, to bully and to engage in violent abuse and cyberbullying, which can even have fatal consequences. And it needs to stop.

The foundation on which it needs to stop is not from law. It's from the soft law of expectation, where people are held in the good standing of others and they moderate their behaviour. One of the biggest challenges we face online is, of course, where there is anonymous conduct where people feel that they can conduct themselves in a licensed environment in anonymity, and you see this every day. I'm not complaining—it's just the nature of these things, unfortunately—but there's been a fake tweet put out today in my name alleging that I wished ill on the protest marchers yesterday outside this place. Actually, if you look at what I said in this place, I was supporting the spirit of the marches—in particular, gender equality—but that doesn't stop unlicensed, deceptive, misleading and dishonest liars and frauds putting out malicious content and then it being repeated by their useful idiots in the Twittersphere and then on Facebook and other social media platforms. Again, I'm not the only one who's ever experienced this. I'm sure even the member for Melbourne, with whom I have many disagreements, has experienced that, as I'm sure the member for Chisholm and every member for every other electorate has experienced it. That's just tragically part of, as I said at the start, the consequence.

This bill is not trying to say free and public debate should be stopped at all but is saying that, to the extent that we can through law, there is a responsibility in how you conduct yourself online, that basic safety expectations be put in place and that industry be held as accountable as people for their conduct, particularly where they're the vehicle for publishing the material online and particularly—and this is a consequence of the Christchurch terrorist attacks, horrific attacks which were despicably used as a form of political attack today in the form of a question at question time—to stop abhorrent violent communication and conduct and volumetric attacks being part of online discourse that is normalised.

We want to stop cyberbullying, and that's why we have included in the legislation a strengthened cyberbullying scheme for Australian children. There is no environment in which we would accept bullying of children—not in the schoolyard, amongst their peers or in other settings—and we're certainly not going to accept it online. We need to make sure there are proper processes for notification and identification and for there to be appropriate penalties where bullying occurs. But critically, so often with younger Australians who are digital natives, there is a pathway where they may use technology in their adolescent minds for content of a sexual nature. They may become victims of attacks such as revenge porn, where content is used against people's will and is then used as the basis to target, bully and attack them. That sort of content is the most despicable content, particularly when it may have been taken in privacy, and should never be used as a basis for targeting and bullying others.

I don't think anyone's under any illusion that the challenges we face from an evolving online platform make it harder to legislate and to regulate what goes on. In many cases, it would be bad if the state had the power to regulate what goes on. But there are lines that we all accept: there is no place for harassment in society; there is no place for bullying in society; there is no place for violence, online or offline, in society; and there is certainly no place in society for where people are taken to the point where they feel safe and then they lose their own dignity because they have been targeted in a malicious way by either individuals or digital lynch mobs because those individuals or mobs think they can get away with it.

We as a government are doing what I hope that most members in this place would support, which is to support Australians to have a basic standard of safety. I've had some people who have raised with me concerns around some aspects of this legislation, particularly around the empowerment of what content may breach thresholds or lines, particularly around offensive conduct. But I've made it clear and made an effort to go and look at the specific details and how they would interact, and the specific measures, which ordinarily would raise concern on my part, are targeted principally at stopping revenge porn. I don't know anybody in this place—and I would hope there is nobody beyond this place—who thinks that revenge porn is acceptable or would tolerate such conduct or think that it should be legal. The threshold we apply when we want to limit people's conduct in the public square, online or offline, is to assume that all conduct is legal unless we explicitly make it illegal. This bill seeks to make it explicitly illegal, and rightly so. This legislation has an important part. When the mums and dads, dads and dads, mums and mums and everybody in between and everybody else in society look at the safety of their children in this country, they can know that, whatever happens offline or online, the Morrison government has their back. We understand the concerns and the fears for safety that exist within the community, and we understand that, if you're engaging in ordinary, lawful conduct, you shouldn't become the target of harassment, abuse or online bullying. That's how you have a society that prospers and flourishes, in which people can go about their lives wanting to be able to contribute rather than fearing the worst. And, in many ways, what this law does is harmonise the offline and the online.

We're going to need to keep targeting, and tinkering with, these laws because the challenges and the nefarious uses of social media platforms by other Australians and by people from overseas towards Australians and the reverse are not going to change. People seek to exploit avenues, and sometimes it's done through the innocence of adolescence. We've got to set a new standard. That's why this law is important, but it is not the end. It is not even the beginning, because it starts with the responsibility of the individual and of parents to assist their children in understanding their conduct as part of a value stream of how they should conduct themselves in a free society. But it is an important step, and it's a step that Australians can have confidence in, understanding that we can serve the values that underpin the strength of our nation around protecting people's freedom in all senses—freedom to express themselves in a public square, as well as their freedom online to be able to express themselves without facing bullying, intimidation or harassment of an offline or online kind. It won't fix everything, but it's another tool in the toolbox to, hopefully, conserve the best of our nature.

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