Anika Wells (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sport) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Hughes for the question—the best member for Hughes in 30 years. The Albanese government is taking world-leading action to reduce online harms experienced by young Australians, including passing historic legislation to delay access to social media until the age of 16. Today, I announce the next step in that mission: to restrict access to nudification and undetectable online stalking tools. There is a place for AI and legitimate tracking technology in Australia. But the problem facing Australians is that technology has no moral compass. Its capacity for good or for bad depends on who is using it. The rockets that launched the Apollo missions to the moon were the same rockets designed to deliver a nuclear weapon. While AI has the power to move Australia forward, there is no place in our country for apps and technologies that are used solely to abuse, humiliate and harm people, especially our children.

One child in every classroom in Australia has been the victim of deepfake abuse. Four out of five reported cases involve young girls. In one Melbourne case, investigators found 50 female students at a single high school were the victims of sexually explicit deepfakes. And the scale of harm is escalating, with reports to eSafety from people under the age of 18 doubling in the past 18 months. Today, I heard from a mum, Emma, whose daughter, Tilly, had a fake naked photo shared by schoolkids on the bus. Between 10 past three and 6 pm, Emma's mum estimates that almost 3,000 kids had seen this fake naked photo, and, that night, Tilly attempted to take her own life. These harms are too great and too urgent for us not to act. While there are federal and state laws against the publishing and distributing of sexualised non-consensual deepfakes and AI generated child sexual abuse material, slimy predators are slipping through the cracks. The current landscape relies too heavily on victims reporting these issues once the harm has occurred. We have to move the burden of reporting from the shoulders of victims and stop the harm at the source. We have to hold big tech accountable for the technology they are delivering. These apps are only designed to abuse, to bully, to humiliate and to harass, and we are determined to restrict them because, while the image might be fake, the abuse is real.

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