Fiona Martin (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts. Will the minister outline to the House how the Morrison government is delivering on its plan to keep Australians, and in particular women and children, safe online?

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Reid for her question, and of course I acknowledge her deep professional expertise in this matter as a very experienced child psychologist. The Morrison government is very strongly committed to keeping Australians safe online. We've had a particular focus on keeping women and children safe online. In 2020, using the internet is a normal part of childhood, even for very young children. In fact, the evidence shows that 81 per cent of children have become users of the internet by the age of four. And, sadly, the threats to women's safety in the physical world are equally prevalent in the online world. One of many sobering statistics is that nearly half of all women aged 18 to 24 have experienced online abuse or harassment.

The Morrison government, our Liberal-National government, has a strong track record in this area. We established the world's first children's eSafety Commissioner in 2015. Since being established, that body's remit has been steadily expanded to include adult online safety as well as children's online safety It now administers a specific regime to deal with the unauthorised sharing of intimate images, backed by measures to have those images taken down, and it administers a regime to deal with abhorrent, violent material online.

There are key measures to deal with women's online safety as part of the Fourth Action Plan of the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children, including $4 million for specialised online safety support for women with intellectual disabilities and women of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent.

We're not stopping there. At the 2019 election we committed to further strengthen safety measures for Australians who are going online. That includes reducing from 48 to 24 hours the time within which social media platforms must take down material found to be cyberbullying. It includes extending the protection of the eSafety Commissioner to all online places where children interact, including gaming platforms. It includes establishing a new adult cyberabuse scheme. Of course, it has a higher threshold than the scheme for children, recognising that adults are more resilient and recognising free speech issues appropriately, but it will give new protections to adults and particularly to women who, sadly, are disproportionately targeted by online abuse and it will give them the capacity to seek to have this material taken off the internet.

The internet is an extraordinary social and economic resource—a powerful force for good—but, for it to stay a force for good, we need to make sure the internet is safe, and that is what the Morrison government is very focused on.