Katie Allen (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister inform the House how the Morrison government is on the side of Australian families by acting to shut down online child exploitation?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Higgins for that question. We are on the side of Australians, as the member for Higgins is. I congratulate her on her first speech in this place. We're on the side of Australians on a whole range of issues. We're on the side of Australians who want to keep more of what they earn. We're on the side of Australians in rural and regional Australia who wanted their drought fund and who wanted to ensure that their roads are safer. Our $100 billion worth of infrastructure is an investment in a whole range of projects, including keeping our rural and regional roads safer.

We're standing up to those big tech companies who have such an important role to play in keeping our children safe online and combating sexual predators online. Right now, our Minister for Home Affairs, who is absent from the House today—he's being represented by the Attorney-General in this place—is overseas in the UK working with our partner agencies overseas to crack down on child exploitation. We have the Combatting Child Sexual Exploitation Legislation Amendment Bill 2019, which has been introduced into this place, which takes action, backed up by increased resources for the AFP and others, on keeping our children safe. We also have to ensure that we take on the big internet companies and make sure that the internet is not weaponised for sexual predators any more than it's weaponised by terrorists. At the recent G20 event in Osaka, the G20 members agreed to take this issue on, on Australia's recommendation. And that work continues here in this country as a result of acting on our taskforce report, as it does working with other jurisdictions to make sure we crack down on them.

Our government is committed to the Australian people and taking on the issues that they are focused on. They are focused on trying to keep their children safe, whether it's online or in the physical world. They do want to keep more of what they earn. They do want to have access to a stronger economy and to more affordable medicines. They do want to get the best deal out of their energy companies and make sure that this parliament keeps those energy companies to account with the legislation that will come before this House that the Labor Party opposes. They want their workplaces to be kept on their side, to not be disrupted by militant unionists and to not have their workers' entitlement funds siphoned off by unions and taken off to any which other form of expense they would have it.

Politics today—and I believe it always has—is not about getting people to be on your side; it's about a government that demonstrates that it's on the side of the Australian people each and every time. That's what our government is doing. Nobody knows where the Labor Party stands anymore and whose side they're on other than militant unions.