Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

Nine years ago I came into politics because I wanted to make a difference to my community. I felt passionately about a lot of things, and the protection of children was one of them. In 2020, when I was the chair of the Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs, I conducted a report which looked into the dangers of online wagering and online pornography for children under 18 years of age. We provided this report, and this report came out in February 2020. Our government provided a response in 2021, and nothing has been done since. I know there has been a change of government, but what we are seeing—we've all heard the phrase, 'you shouldn't be able to do online what you can't do in the real world', and that is very true. You can't, as a 16-year-old or 14-year-old or even an eight-year-old, walk into a newsagents and by a Penthouse or a Playboy or get access to pornography in the real world, yet you can do it online. You can go onto your computer or your iPad and just tick a box to say you are 18 years of age. The report finds that the likes of Pornhub are preying on our children—as young as eight—because they want a captive audience through their teenage years and into their adulthood.

The most vile—and we're not just talking about the pornography of yesteryear of full-frontal nudity, we're talking about hardcore, violent, misogynistic pornography that is very demeaning of women.

So I want to send out a challenge to this new Labor government: pick up these recommendations. The report is called Protecting the age of innocence. The report was also delivered by the likes of the member for Macquarie and the member for Macarthur. It was a bipartisan recommendation to introduce age verification for online pornography and online wagering. A child can't walk into a TAB and put a bet on the horses, nor should they be able to do it online. This is really simple stuff. There's a lot of talk about social media. I sat on that inquiry as well. It's really important stuff, absolutely. But let's revisit this report, Protecting the edge of innocence. Our children only get one chance to be kids, and we need to provide the tools to parents to help them.

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