Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

On Saturday night I attended the Radio Neshat Persian Awards. It was a celebration and commemoration of Iranian Australian excellence across the Australian community, in community service, science, technology, cinema, entrepreneurship and many other areas. Of course, it coincided with the first strikes in Iran, so it was an exceedingly strange evening. While it was a celebration of the contribution that Iranian Australians have made—and rightly so—there was much anxiety. Many of the people in the room, from the diaspora community here, had friends and family in Iran. They were concerned for them, but, at the same time, they were also hopeful that this might be a significant shift and the beginning of the end of the violent Islamic Republic regime, which has been so oppressive to them and their families. Many of them had lost family members over the 47 years of resistance.

I think it's important for all of us to show solidarity to the Iranian diaspora, who have suffered for so long and been so brave in many respects. The regime has put the jackboot on the neck of Iranians for decades. It's reported that in January some 36,000 Iranian protesters, who were standing up for freedom and democracy, were massacred—slaughtered by their own government. The people here in Australia deserve and require our solidarity and our support, and that's what we gave them on Saturday night.

Also locally, I had the pleasure of hosting the Minister for Communications, Anika Wells, in my electorate. We went to Pascoe Vale Girls College to speak with a classroom of year 7, 8 and 9 students, who were obviously impacted by the social media ban. I wanted to hear these students' experience and how the government's ban has affected them. We had a Q&A with the girls, and it was quite remarkable. They had such pertinent and important questions to ask, and a discussion around the digital duty of care ensued. One of the points that was made—quite rightly, I think—was the importance of that duty of care, particularly for girls, and we talked about how they can report to the eSafety Commissioner if they've experienced any abuse or harmful content online.

The eSafety Commissioner has reported that over seven in 10 young Australians have seen content online that they shouldn't have been exposed to. That is why the digital duty of care was recommended as part of the independent statutory review of the Online Safety Act 2021. It places the onus on digital platforms to proactively keep Australians safe by preventing online harms and taking reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harms on their platforms and services. With this ban, our government has ensured that 4.7 million social media accounts have been deactivated for those who are under 16, and that is a good thing for those young people—to go out into the world and have other experiences.

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