Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

This bill, the Criminal Code Amendment (Deepfake Sexual Material) Bill 2024, will ban the non-consensual sharing of deepfake pornography, and it is essential because of a consequence of the time and the nature of technology in the era we live in and the acceleration of that technology. The new law will make it a criminal offence to share deepfake porn of someone without their consent. It seems bizarrely unnecessary that such a law would be needed if any common decency applied, but here we are.

Digitally created or altered sexually explicit material is a damaging form of abuse. It's most often used against women and girls, but it can be weaponised against anyone. The explosion and proliferation of artificial intelligence technology has made this bill urgent. It is a high-priority reform area for the government and is part of a suite of reforms to tackle online harms. I'm glad to see more urgent action, and I would like to see more urgent action, of course. But for all the many benefits of technology there are many negatives as well—scams, deepfakes, social media. I commend the government on the establishment of the social media committee. There are broad ideas and many ideas; we just heard some. But we have to get some societal consensus, and ideally some consensus across the parliament, on exactly what needs to be done. I know many members are passionate about it. The previous speaker is a friend of mine, but I think we need to be careful, in our passion, not to cast aspersions on each other's motives. Every member of this place wants to see children protected, but we need, in regulating and legislating, to make sure that things are practical, are workable and will actually make a difference to the problem. I may continue my remarks with another tie!

Debate interrupted.

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