House debates

Tuesday, 16 March 2021

Bills

Online Safety Bill 2021, Online Safety (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2021; Second Reading

4:17 pm

Photo of Llew O'BrienLlew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | | Hansard source

Before the debate is resumed on the bill, I remind the House that it has been agreed that a general debate will be allowed covering the bill and the Online Safety (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2021. The original question was that this bill now be read a second time. To this the honourable member for Gellibrand has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The question now is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.

4:18 pm

Photo of George ChristensenGeorge Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | | Hansard source

It gives me pleasure to speak on this bill, the Online Safety Bill, which is about establishing a set of basic online safety expectations for the online industry. It's about keeping kids safe online and regulating content that's harmful, illegal and abusive and that leads to a world of pain for both children and adults.

This bill addresses cyberbullying, not just of children but also of adults—we could talk about that as online harassment rather than as cyberbullying. It'll give greater powers to the eSafety Commissioner to issue removal notices of harmful content that's on platforms. It'll require big tech to step up to the plate and do more about getting defamatory and harmful material off their platforms—rather than censoring political debate, which seems to be the space that they want to play in. When the Googles, Facebooks and Twitters of the world don't take responsibility for the harmful, unlawful and defamatory content that is on their platforms, that's when we intervene. That's when we have the eSafety Commissioner empowered to act immediately to block images and videos of violent and distressing events. It's when we have the eSafety Commissioner intervening to ensure that defamatory, harmful and other unlawful content is removed. And that is what's going to happen as part of this Online Safety Bill.

I'll just say that I met an outfit by the name of Family Zone, a company that has developed some technology here in Australia which is all about helping parents better manage social media and online usage for their children and for their families. They put some stats together which show why this bill is so important. These are stats that are going to shock some people. They are certainly going to shock some parents. Sixty-nine per cent of boys and 23 per cent of girls have viewed X-rated material on the internet by the age of 13. Sixty-four per cent of teenagers in this country access X-rated material at least once a week. Children's first exposure to this X-rated material is between the ages of eight and 10—eight and 10! We had protests happening in the streets yesterday—and I won't get into that argument—but let me just point out this little nugget of truth: 88 per cent of this explicit content that these kids are being subjected to contains violence against women. Forty-two per cent of teenagers report being bullied on a platform like Instagram, which Facebook runs. The rates of online bullying have actually doubled in a decade.

Children are being exposed to graphic and disturbing content online, and that has serious consequences for the future. It deforms children when it comes to developing relationships and understanding self-worth. Self-worth is important, because suicide is the leading cause of death of young people in Australia. And online bullying is just getting worse. The bullying doesn't stop now when the kids leave school; it's 24/7. Kids use social media for some form of peer validation. They seek approval from their friends, from their fellow students, because, sadly, what matters to most teenagers is what their friends think about them, and, when you've got almost half of all teenagers being bullied on some platform like Instagram, which is quite popular amongst young people, I can tell you: it's not a place, then, for validation; it's not a place for approval. These negative comments and scathing remarks—some of them illegal—about people's appearance, their personality or their sex life, or allegations of it, can have huge impacts on their self-confidence. They can completely alter the trajectory of a person's life. And, in the worst cases, they can lead to suicide.

Big tech companies need to take more responsibility to prevent this kind of online bullying and to support parents in choosing what their children are exposed to. I talked to Mr Tim Levy from this Australian company, Family Zone. He's got some insight into the anticompetitive behaviour that actually stops parents from being able to exercise control over social media with their children. He's got some views and some information on Google, Apple and Microsoft and how they respond as to online safety. Apple deliberately undermined parental control software that they'd developed, removing them from their App Store in 2018. Apple removed them! Why? Google's policy is to allow children, from the age of 13, to remove parental consent! That is just so wrong! These big tech companies, Google, Apple and Microsoft, do provide better safety measures for businesses—that's true.

But what about parents? What about families? They leave them high and dry. Business app developers on Apple devices can access high-performing network extensions for content filtering. Here are just some examples of what business app developers can do with Apple devices that parental control apps cannot do because that's how they've designed it. Businesses can stop users from accessing inappropriate apps like dating apps. They can stop users from installing browsers that access the dark web on a business platform. They can hide access to social media apps during, for instance, school hours—schools, actually, are allowed to do that. Businesses and schools can restrict the use of the camera or screen capture. Businesses can block X-rated iTunes content. Businesses can disable messaging apps. Try to do that as a parent, and you can't.

The technology is actually there. Australian companies are developing it to offer protections to families, but the big tech giants—the tech tyrants—are actually stopping families accessing those apps, and stopping those apps providing that service to parents. These are big multinational profit-driven tech companies, conglomerates, big corporations. They're not really focused on what's good for the community. They're not focused on what's good for children. What they're focused on is their bottom line. Their goal is to drive as much engagement into their platforms as possible, to get the eyeballs on the screen regardless of the consequences. As a result, you've got children being exposed to the very real dangers of the online world, and parents unable to protect them. Imagine being the parent of a child who's taken their own life because of abuse that they received through an online platform which had done nothing to stop that abuse, even though they could have. Imagine being powerless to protect your child, knowing that a tech company could have taken responsibility—or allowed you to take the responsibility, but didn't—to protect your child. As much as anything, this is about taking responsibility. This bill means that if tech companies won't, or don't, take responsibility then the eSafety Commissioner can, and can force them to take action.

I mentioned the Christchurch massacre in this place earlier today. The big tech companies allowed 17 minutes of that horrid, horrid event to be streamed live online. The atrocities were broadcast for the world to see and, as a result, multiple copies of that video were re-uploaded, re-uploaded, re-uploaded and shared on various social media platforms. Imagine being the family of one of those victims, losing your loved one in such a horrific way, and then having to watch, or hear that other people have viewed, the final moments of your loved ones played out online. It would be excruciating. And through this bill, the eSafety Commissioner will have the ability to remove content like this.

What are big tech focused on at the moment rather than this? You know what they're doing? They're censoring political discussion. That's their big thing. They're censoring lawful, law-abiding, completely safe political discussion because they don't like it, it doesn't fit in with their editorial guidelines that they call 'community standards'. That's what they're focused on. These big tech platforms that parade themselves as being the parties for free speech and the new way that we can have free expression all around the world, they go and silence the leader of the free world. If they can do that, they can do it to anyone. And they are doing it to anyone. Australians every day of the week wake up to see the little note on Facebook and other platforms saying, 'Your post has been removed,' 'You have been banned for seven days,' or 'You have been banned for 30 days.' It's ridiculous stuff. It's not for harmful speech; they're not targeting that. They're targeting political discourse that they don't like. It is very, very dangerous because these big tech social media platforms are now the new public square. So they don't take responsibility for the dangers that affect kids and the dangers that affect people in our community; what they do is they actually censor political discussion. It is just so disturbing. This is a danger to our democracy—an absolute and utter danger to our democracy.

In short, Google, Apple and Microsoft are preferring commercial interests and political censorship over the rights of parents and the expectations of the community that children should be safe online—that everyone should be safe online. Parents believe that this government—the Morrison Liberal-National government—has policies in place that are protecting their children. Our current regime allows Google, Apple and Microsoft, as I said, to prefer businesses. These platforms control what their employees can see, but they don't allow that to happen for families. I think there's public expectation that the new Online Safety Act should allow companies to provide Australians with tools that they can use to keep their children safe. As Tim Levy put it to me, big tech has taken away the fundamental right of parents to parent in the digital world, but, with some small changes, which the minister could utilise as a result of this Online Safety Bill, we can fix that. We can ensure that this government is doing everything possible to help parents protect their kids. The government can make it mandatory for tech companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft to support parental control software providers with the same level of features given to business app developers. Next, tech platforms need to ensure their maturity level structure with parental control providers, so that parents can make choices about what content their children should be exposed to.

I'm advised, as I've alluded to, that this legislation allows the minister, through legislative instrument, to tailor additional expectations for larger, established platforms. Right here and now, I am calling on the minister to do that as soon as this bill is passed for the sake of parents and families across this country. Give families the same right to put in controls over the content that's being broadcast into their homes as you give to businesses. Right now that can't be done. I've got to tell you that, if I hear that this bill doesn't allow that, I will want to see amendments to this bill come before this House so that we can bring that in. But I do believe, from what I've been told, that this bill will give the minister the right to target outfits like Facebook, Instagram, Google and Twitter to ensure that they are not bringing in anti-competitive conduct and to ensure that the Apples of the world aren't stopping apps which give parents the ability to control what is broadcast through those devices. This is the kind of thing we need. So, on 15 March, I wrote to the Minister for Home Affairs asking him to look into this technology that has been developed in Australia that can help protect children and to ensure that this can be promoted. I'm going to be writing to Minister Fletcher as well to make him aware of this tech and to ensure that anti-competitive conduct is not engaged in to stop parents from accessing this new technology.

Once again, it's a shame that we have to be here putting forward a bill about online safety. These big tech platforms need to get a grip on what they are doing. They need to stop the abuse of young children in particular, they need to stop defamatory and unlawful content being on their platforms and they need to forget about political censorship where they're censoring lawful speech in this country that happens to be on their platforms. They have got such a perverse focus at the moment, and it needs to end. I'm calling big tech to account on this. That's why I support this bill.

4:33 pm

Photo of Adam BandtAdam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | | Hansard source

This week in Canberra, we've been reminded just how significant are the problems of violence that we've got to tackle in the real world. Of course, the Prime Minister hasn't even had the courtesy to go out and meet the thousands of women who came to this place to march and demand justice and change. But we're also reminded this week that, just as there are areas in the real world that we need to change—and it's predominantly men who need to change their behaviour—there are changes required in the online world. The online world is not exempt, and, in fact, in many instances, because of the speed at which things can happen online, approaches are needed there as well. We joined in the condemnation of the streaming of the terrorist massacre in Christchurch, for example. That streaming was something that was abhorrent and should not have occurred.

Similarly, as previous speakers have mentioned, the issue of cyberbullying is something that requires tackling as well. In many instances it overlaps with what has historically been known as bullying, and in other instances there are specific ways that cyberbullying takes place. Of course, we see again that, because of the speed with which digital images can be transmitted and the capacity to do so, the non-consensual sharing of intimate images is something that has caused significant grief to so many people, including so many women.

So I think you would find, across this parliament, not one person who says there are no problems in the online world. You will not find one person across this parliament who says there are no problems of violence or exploitation that need tackling, in the same way we do with respect to the offline world. But what is of great concern in those very significant areas that need to be addressed—including the protection of children, which is a critical duty for all of us—is that, when the standards that one might apply with respect to the protection of children—the limiting, for example, of what children may see—slip over and start to be applied to what informed, consenting adults are able to do, it raises issues, and we must tread carefully. We must tread incredibly carefully, because if we don't we could find ourselves, as the parliament, saying to informed, consenting adults, 'We are now going to allow government to determine what you can read and do and participate in online.' That is why it is very critical that we get the balance right—because a lot is at stake if we get it wrong. It will inhibit the freedoms and the rights of people in this country, of adults in this country, to participate and read online in the way that they choose.

When there are 370 public submissions on the exposure draft of a bill, with significant amendments proposed, and the government come in here 10 days later with a bill that has zero amendments to address those significant concerns, and then they rush this bill through this place after an inquiry process lasting less than two weeks, where many of those same concerns were raised, it raises the presumption—in this case, the right presumption—that the government have not got the balance right and are engaged in huge overreach here. I suspect that everyone in this parliament would support the important aims of protecting children, addressing the non-consensual sharing of images, and dealing with the rise in hate speech and hate crimes and their perpetration through online media. You would find support for that if you took a measured approach to finding a way of dealing with that that did not infringe on other people's rights. But that is not what the government has done. Instead, we have a bill—the Online Safety Bill 2021—that gives an unelected official significant power to determine what people can read online in this country.

I make no comments about the particular person who at the moment occupies the role of eSafety Commissioner. I'm not commenting on that particular person at all. I'm talking about the principle of whether it is right that very broad, generalised and undefined standards—things like 'basic online safety expectations', which is the phrase used in this bill, and broad brushstrokes about definitions of things like 'harmful'—should be delegated to an unelected official who then has the power, armed with that, to determine what is allowed to remain online or not. Under this bill, that unelected official will have the power to take down material that they think does not comply with these very broadly defined standards and to require that internet service providers and others who are hosting online content comply.

This is a very broad, proactive power to go out, search, find and order that things be taken down. When such broad powers are given to someone who is an unelected official, what you will find is that people in the industry will start censoring themselves for fear of being subject to one of these orders. They are going to start taking down things that might not contravene the law, just for fear of being subject to an order according to some very broadly defined principles. In this respect, Electronic Frontiers Australia made a submission to the Senate inquiry, and they are right when they say:

This is a breathtaking amount of power to be handed to a single person, regardless of the level of oversight. The severe lack of checks and balances over the exercise of power granted by the Bill only compounds the danger. Granting extraterritorial jurisdiction over all Internet content to an unelected person appointed by the government of the day is an astounding proposition in a country that holds itself out as a liberal democracy.

It is worth noting that there is almost no way of challenging the decisions that this person makes. In almost every other sphere of our society, of the laws we pass, if an official does something, especially when it's something as significant as saying, 'You are not allowed to read this thing online,' there's a capacity to appeal and to review such decisions. But here that's almost non-existent.

As others start to pre-empt this outcome and restrict content, and as the chilling effect of this legislation flows through to areas that it was not intended to flow through to, a lot of these take-down approaches are going to be automated. It's not going to be an individual person sitting there clicking and browsing and looking at everything; it will be automated. What we know is that computers and algorithms are not always that good at distinguishing a violent image that people would find abhorrent from, say, an image of a police officer kneeling on a black man's neck, and so images that are designed to hold power to account will also find themselves the subject of potential censorship under this legislation. That poses significant risks to groups like the Black Lives Matter movement but also to anyone who is fighting for change and who wants to use the internet as a platform for broadcasting abuses of power. They could find themselves falling foul of an unelected official's sense of what is appropriate. Then, when the official—or algorithm—takes it down, there is nowhere to go; they're censored. When similar legislation was passed in the United States, sex workers who had shifted their legal activity online during the pandemic found themselves caught in a situation where, although the work they did was legal, they could not pursue it online, because of restrictions of this type. That has been the experience overseas.

There are a wide range of groups that are going to be affected by this legislation. To the extent that we are talking about safety, it's worth remembering what Digital Rights Watch said during the very short inquiry that was allowed. They made the point that, when sex workers are forced offline, they are often pushed into unsafe working environments, which creates direct harm. So this bill has the capacity to do harm, which is part of the reason it should not be rushed through. We oppose the government rushing this thing through when so many people have raised so many concerns about it. Domestic Violence Victoria made the point in the consultation on the exposure draft that the complaints process and the lack of a review of it as part of this legislation, in their words, 'provides opportunities for vexatious and malicious use of technology by perpetrators to further perpetrate family violence'.

Then there's the prospect that, as currently drafted, the bill could provide to the commissioner the power to limit, restrict or undermine encrypted services and communications, as well as information-gathering and investigative powers. The extension of this to encrypted services suggests that the government is going well beyond what it says on the tin, because it's not about what people can see if they happen to be surfing the internet; it is now about going into private messages that no-one could say a child could see or is able to see. They're talking about accessing potentially encrypted services.

It's astounding that a government that is running away from any independent inquiry into its own actions—when it comes to questions of alleged violence—is saying, 'Oh no, we expect to have access to other people's secret and private communications, and we'll do it under the guise of this bill and we'll do it via an unelected official, and there will be limited rights of recourse.' Of course, they have form on this, because this is the approach that was taken with respect to the assistance and access act, something that we opposed as well.

There are two things we need to do in this country. The first thing we need is for the government to withdraw this bill and come back with a redraft that deals with the issues that you would find acceptance of across the whole of parliament—about how we deal with non-consensual sharing of images, how we deal with cyberbullying, how we deal with those images of hate crimes that get broadcast online. Go back and come up with something that deals with those key issues. But don't let it overreach and step into dealing with people who are committing no crime, who have never been accused of committing a crime and who are going about their lawful activity online. Don't let it dictate what they can or can't do online, because that is what this government is doing—rushing a bill through that will allow for the censorship and regulation of content from people who have done nothing wrong and who are participating online. All of a sudden, an unelected official is going to tell you what you can and can't see.

The second thing that we need to do in this country is institute some basic privacy and digital rights that are leading standards, something on a par with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. If we had some basic digital rights enshrined in this country, then you could have a sensible debate about things like what the government is proposing, because people would know that their rights were protected. But at the moment we can't know that. Why does the government want to go beyond the stated intent and name of the bill and start regulating, in an unacceptable way, what adults are able to do online? It is part of creeping moves to exercise greater power over our freedoms and responsibilities, and that's why in its current form, unless it's withdrawn and redrafted, the bill cannot be supported.

Photo of Ross VastaRoss Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

Order! The question is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.

4:49 pm

Photo of Julian SimmondsJulian Simmonds (Ryan, Liberal National Party) Share this | | Hansard source

by leave—This bill is worth supporting, because, as I was saying before, Australians will no longer accept that they can be defamed and bullied and harassed online in an anonymous way. Ideally, we want to see these big tech companies legislated like the publishers that they are, so that the rules that exist in the real world exist in the online world and it's very clear to people that you can't make these anonymous comments online in a way that harasses and bullies and defames, and that, if platforms allow that kind of anonymous contact, those platforms have to take responsibility when it leads to defamation or causes concern.

The previous speaker, the member for the Greens, just demonstrated everything that is wrong with his side of politics and with his political party. Those opposite say they support Australians having the same rights online, and here they have a bill in front of them that allows adults to take the power back from these big tech companies who have for so long said, 'If you want increased connectivity in a digital world, you have to accept that you lose your privacy, you have to accept the risk of defamation, you have to just cop every anonymous comment that comes your way.' What the government is showing with this bill is that it is responding to Australians who are sick of it, who are saying: 'Enough is enough! No, I don't have to accept that. No, I want there to be the same rules online and in the real world. If somebody publishes something in the real world, in the newspaper, I can sue them for defamation, and I'd like to be able to take action in the online world as well.' It just goes to show that, while those opposite will talk a big game about saying that it's bipartisan, that families and children are protected from online abuse, they don't actually support the measures to enable that protection to occur when they're in front of them. The Greens won't support this bill. In the same way, we put forward mandatory sentences and longer sentences for those who commit the most horrible, heinous acts of child exploitation, and Labor refused to support them. They do this country a great disservice when they don't support the measures that actually allow us to address this kind of exploitation of all people, but particularly of children, online.

It's this government that has established an eSafety Commissioner, a world first. It has allowed us to be a leading example of what it means to keep our citizens safe online. I'm pleased to say that I've had the chance to catch up with the eSafety Commissioner many times and talk to her about the work that she does. She's incredibly passionate about it, and I commend her. Speakers from Labor and the Greens would paint the eSafety Commissioner as some heartless bureaucrat siting there and wanting to play censor, but it couldn't be more the opposite. The eSafety Commissioner is an incredibly passionate woman who is dedicating her life to trying to make sure that we can prevent some of this online harm. She's not sitting there as a censor—quite the opposite; she is responding to complaints from people. People come to her and say: 'There are sexual images of my child online. Can you help me take them down?' They say: 'There is somebody saying something anonymously that is defamatory of me. I'm suffering. My mental health is suffering. I think it's bullying. Can you help me take it down?' That's what this legislation enables. The eSafety Commissioner doesn't sit there, trawling through every comment. She's not following the Greens Facebook page, for example, and deciding what political comments they can make. That's just a ridiculous argument from the member for Melbourne. She is sitting there and taking the complaints from everyday, ordinary Australians who want to take back some control when it comes to online content that is mentioning them and involving them.

This legislation gives enhanced information powers to the eSafety Commissioner to unmask anonymous identities that are being used to bully and abuse and humiliate and harass online, and to work with tech companies to ensure that that kind of stuff is taken down. That's what it is going to take to keep Australians safe. Australians know this kind of anonymous content is wrong. We are empowering the eSafety Commissioner to address the emerging harms and respond more quickly to the worst of the worst content online, no matter where it is hosted. The mandatory transparency reporting requirements outlined in this bill allow the eSafety Commissioner to require online services to provide specific information about online harms, such as their response to material depicting abhorrent violent conduct or attacks organised by digital lynch mobs that seek to overwhelm a victim with a torrent of abuse—what an ordinary person would call trolling. It's abhorrent. It is simply wearing somebody down by sheer weight of defamatory, anonymous comments, and it has to stop in this country. I'm so proud that it's this government that's doing that.

Importantly for industry, this bill establishes in law a set of basic online safety expectations. I think these are absolutely in line with Australian community expectations. Australians want to be protected online and, indeed, to be able to pursue damages in the way that they can for traditional media types like TV and print. It is about accountability in our online world. We're not talking about removing freedom of speech; we are talking about serious online harm. As I said, we're talking about families taking back the power to take action.

Let's face it: these are criminal acts we are talking about, not censorship of political material, as the member for Melbourne said. These are criminal acts. This has been a long-term election commitment for us. This bill will increase penalties for the malicious use of a carriage service to menace, harass and cause offence, from three to five years. What do the Greens find so reprehensible in somebody being punished according to community standards when they bully, harass and cause offence? We hear a lot of nice words from the member for Melbourne about wanting to stand up for people and see justice in the world and all the rest, but, when it actually comes down to the crunch of supporting the powers that enable that to occur, we find him and the Labor Party missing in action, but not this government. This government has established the eSafety Commissioner. This government is now, through this bill, giving the commissioner better powers to enable all Australians to take back their lives online and defend their own freedom and reputation online. I absolutely think it's worth supporting, and I applaud it.

4:56 pm

Photo of Nicolle FlintNicolle Flint (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I sincerely hope that there is no-one in this place who does not agree, especially after the month that we have had, that every single Australian needs to be safe and to feel safe at home, in their workplace and when they're out in public. When they're out in public, that's not just a physical presence; it's also an online presence. That is precisely what this bill, the Online Safety Bill 2021, is trying to do: keep people safe when they're online and keep them free of bullying, of intimidation, of harassment, and of sexist, misogynist or downright criminal remarks. I am incredibly proud that our government has introduced this bill, and I sincerely hope we will see its quick passage.

We know that the presence of people online and the manners in which people can interact online have grown exponentially in the past decade. There are so many good things that have come out of the World Wide Web and all the different apps and ways that we can communicate now, including social media, but there's also a terribly large amount of awful and unacceptable behaviour that has been allowed to grow and prosper in these online environments. Unfortunately, I, like many others in this place, have firsthand experience of instances of online abuse, and members of my community and their children have experienced it. We all have to work to stop it, to publicly condemn it and to make sure that people can get very quick and efficient recourse against perpetrators online.

Before I get to my personal experience and then talk about the bill, I just want to acknowledge the leadership of the Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts; of my colleague Nola Marino, the member for Forrest, who has done so much work to keep children safe online, including with the eSafety Commissioner; and also of the member for Mallee and the member for Newcastle, who have established the Parliamentary Friends of Making Social Media Safe. The member for Mallee in particular has been subjected to the most appalling abuse online, and I know that that's taken a very high toll on her, her husband, her family and her local community, for whom the member for Mallee has done such wonderful work in her profession and as a volunteer. I welcome comments, for example, from a senior cabinet minister, the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, who says that we all need to call out the vile hate speech that exists on social media. I remember that about two years ago Janet Albrechtsen, writing in The Australian, said that all of us must work out how to disagree better, whether in person or online.

To reflect on my personal experience, it was, unfortunately, in and around the 2019 election. It can probably be demonstrated most obviously and clearly by the activities of the man who the South Australia Police finally charged for stalking me. They issued him with a stalking order. His behaviour was physical, but what I haven't really spoken about before is his online behaviour, which reiterated everything that he was doing in person to me to intimidate and harass me and make me feel incredibly unsafe going about my job.

It started in December 2018, and it continued right up until the police turned up on his doorstep and issued him with that stalking order, which was about two weeks before the May 2019 election. He posted hundreds—possibly over 1,000—posts directly about me: posts of me out in the community; posts at community events; posts of events that he could not have possibly known about, because they were not advertised publicly; posts that criticised me and my policies and the way that I look; posts that, in the end, were becoming quite derogatory and very sexist. And it was impossible to have that stopped. That's what this bill will do. That's why it is so important, especially for people in the public sphere, that we will have a mechanism so that we can stop this sort of dangerous behaviour. And it wasn't just him; it was all the supporters that he was attracting: people whose names I saw associated with GetUp, with the Labor Party and with the unions. They were all posting in support of him.

So it was the cumulative effect of his physical presence following me around with this large camera, not stopping when I asked him to stop, not stopping when the AFP turned up, and, then, finally stopping when the SA Police issued him with a stalking order. But he was posting all of that online with the commentary and with the intimidation, and this creepy old man was following me around, turning up when I don't even know that he was there, and then commenting on these photos that he's taken of me, when I was so busy doing my job that I wasn't even conscious that he had been present at some of these things. I was thinking: 'What on earth is going to happen next? Am I really safe?' Honestly, I did not feel safe.

On top of that, with the last campaign it was the thousands of Facebook posts—mainly Facebook, but also Twitter. Serial offenders were just attacking me—nasty, nasty attacks. You block them and you ban them, but then more of them pop up. It is clearly an organised, concerted effort by GetUp, Labor and the unions—the same names pop up time and time again—to have a real go at me. Again, this is the sort of thing that will be able to be dealt with thanks to this bill—and quickly dealt with. We now have a mechanism to help keep people safe.

That brings me to another individual. I wish that this legislation had been in place when they did their dirty handiwork, because it was, and remains, deeply troubling, especially the online response to their appalling post in the first place. It was about two weeks after the 2019 election, so it must have been either late May or early June when I went on the ABC TV program Q+A. When I appeared, Mike Carlton, a former journalist, live-tweeted:

Never have I admired Jimmy Barnes so much as tonight. How does he not leap from his seat and strangle the Liberal shill on his right?

I have the tweet here. This is from about a year ago. I don't know if it's been retweeted and liked since. Suggesting that Jimmy Barnes showed great restraint by not leaping up and strangling me was liked 1,125 times, and it was retweeted 206 times. The Q+A hashtag was on that tweet. What did the ABC do? Absolutely nothing. It was bad enough that his tweet used very dangerous and highly sexist language, but, as we know—and jurisdictions around Australia have now recognised this—non-fatal strangulation is a serious offence. This has been recognised by pretty much every jurisdiction around the nation. It is widely recognised as an action that is perpetrated, almost exclusively, by men against women. And that was the language he used. The comments were also made during a Q+A episode where Jimmy Barnes recounted one of the most horrific acts of domestic violence that I've ever heard, whereby his brother-in-law wrapped his sister's hair around a barbed wire fence and proceeded to beat her almost to death on their wedding night. That was the context in which Mike Carlton said that it was amazing that Jimmy Barnes didn't leap out of his chair and strangle me.

But Mr Carlton's denigration of conservative women, Liberal women, women on the Right—whatever you want to call us—is not limited to me. He has attacked Rita Panahi, who is a very strong woman. She writes for the Herald Sun and she has a Sky News show. This is a direct quote from one of his tweets:

I'm not sure what a Rita Panahi is. It sounds like one of those lolly pink, sticky sweet Indian rice puddings.

For the record, Rita's not actually Indian. Not only did he denigrate her in a racial sense, but he also denigrated her as a woman. He has also attacked Daisy Cousens, a gorgeous, outspoken, highly intelligent young woman who has a great presence online and appears regularly on Sky News. Again, these are direct quotes from Mike Carlton's tweets:

Dunno who or what is this Daisy Cousens. But she can't write and she's as thick as cow shit—

Excuse my language, I know that's very unparliamentary—

I don't think even the RWFWs take Crazy Daisy seriously.

In tweets—I have them all—he has also called Judith Sloan, the highly intelligent, leading economist who writes regularly for The Australian, 'fatheaded', 'dimwitted' and 'Miss Piggy'. This is disgraceful behaviour. It is unacceptable. It has no place in this nation. Finally, with this bill, we might be able to stop people like this. Currently, it's very hard to do so. I know because I've tried.

But wait, there's more. Tweeting about Sharri Markson—I'm so grateful to Sharri for attempting to hold him to account over many years for his appalling behaviour—Mike Carlton wrote:

I'm reliably told that the weapons-grade halfwit and murdocracy toady @SharriMarkson has been going nutso about me all day. She's blocked me, of course, but I'd be very grateful if some of you might send her my best thanks and wishes.

To which I replied—and I rarely bother replying to horrible trolls, especially to people like Mike Carlton:

I rarely lower myself to respond to people like you, but Twitter should ban you for your disgusting attacks on women like me & @SharriMarkson & so many others. Twitter must reform their system & we must reform our Oz Hons system so some good comes from your dangerous behaviour.

To which Mr Carlton replied:

What a pathetic little twerp you are: a Liberal party hack of no notable attainment and no evident future. I do not abuse women and it is defamatory to say I do. Stop whining. As Harry Truman famously said, if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen.

This is unacceptable. This is what I hope this bill will stop. If it doesn't, I'll be lobbying to strengthen it even further. But I have great faith that it will. All Australians should treat each other with respect, whether it's online or in person. It's one of the beautiful things about our country. It's a safe, free, respectful society and a strong democracy, but we have to protect that. I believe that this bill will. I'm very grateful to the minister for communications for introducing it and for listening to people like me very carefully. I am very grateful that this bill will enhance and expand the existing legislative framework so that harm that is visited upon people through online media can be proactively and swiftly defused, in the first instance, or dealt with by the law, in the latter instance. This is a world-leading initiative, and it follows on from other excellent work that we have done in this area.

As I remarked on at the start of this speech, technological developments have presented new ways for Australians to engage with one another, but they have also presented new risks and regulatory challenges. Indeed, as I'm sure members are all aware, the bill's explanatory memorandum lays out an incredibly disturbing list of types of online harm, including cyberbullying, abusive commentary, trolling, non-consensual sharing of intimate images, child grooming, cyberflashing, cyberstalking, technology facilitated abuse and the sharing of personal information without consent, otherwise known as doxxing. As I've just outlined, unfortunately, I have experienced some of this behaviour.

The broadening of the eSafety Commissioner's remit will bring ancillary service providers under the expanded regulatory umbrella—which I think is very important—as well as search engines and app stores, because we know there are so many different ways that individuals can distribute and disseminate abusive material and messages online.

I want to close by again acknowledging the leadership of the Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts in overseeing this groundbreaking work to modernise and expand the legislative and regulatory framework that provides the protections Australians should be able to enjoy. It just disappoints me that we haven't done this sooner—much, much sooner—but I'm incredibly proud that it is our government that is finally acting.

I also again want to acknowledge the member for Forrest, because I know that she was an early adopter of seeing the need to keep children safe online. I know she has spent many, many hours visiting schools in her electorate to talk about how to stay safe online and about the work of the eSafety Commissioner.

I want to acknowledge the eSafety Commissioner and the ones who have come previously, because they are the people who have helped us to get to this point. They are the people who have worked incredibly hard over the years to try to keep Australians safe. I am very pleased that the keyboard cretins who hide behind their computer screens at home and put up fake profiles will no longer be able to attack, in such hateful ways, people in public life, kids at school and members of the public. Nobody deserves this.

I commend this bill to the House and, in doing so, implore all Australians to please be respectful to one another.

5:11 pm

Photo of Tim WilsonTim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

I begin by thanking the member for Boothby for her moving speech, because what she brings to this discussion—which is one of law—is the human experience of the awful abuse that she has experienced. Don't make any mistake about it: among those in this place, it is not just the member for Boothby who's experienced awful abuse. Many members know the same experience. Tragically, it's the price for putting yourself up there and wanting to make your country a better place.

This bill, the Online Safety Bill 2021, starts from a very basic proposition: conduct that is unacceptable offline should not somehow be licensed online. I'm one of the first people to say that this area of law is a very complicated and difficult one, because, the more opaque the law, the more flexibility we give, the more we empower regulators and censors to be able to decide what can be published and what cannot. But what we know is that, where there is incessant intent and malice in the conduct and what is published, it has a direct impact on people and their mental health and wellbeing and, critically, on young and vulnerable minds that aren't fully developed.

Sadly, the member for Boothby has outlined the despicable conduct she's experienced at the hands of online trolls, GetUp and, sadly, activists for the Australian Labor Party, among others. Sadly, we see this conduct every day on social media. I'm not suggesting that people on the other side of this chamber haven't experienced abuse themselves. I have no doubt that members opposite me in the chamber right now have experienced despicable conduct from online trolls—absolutely despicable conduct—on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender and the like. I know that's been experienced by members on this side, too.

But, truthfully, this bill isn't just about us. In fact, it's definitely not about us. It's about the Australian people—about all of us—and the conduct that's experienced by young Australians, particularly where social media is part of their native environment. They are put in a position where people target them deliberately and maliciously in content to harass, to bully and to engage in violent abuse and cyberbullying, which can even have fatal consequences. And it needs to stop.

The foundation on which it needs to stop is not from law. It's from the soft law of expectation, where people are held in the good standing of others and they moderate their behaviour. One of the biggest challenges we face online is, of course, where there is anonymous conduct where people feel that they can conduct themselves in a licensed environment in anonymity, and you see this every day. I'm not complaining—it's just the nature of these things, unfortunately—but there's been a fake tweet put out today in my name alleging that I wished ill on the protest marchers yesterday outside this place. Actually, if you look at what I said in this place, I was supporting the spirit of the marches—in particular, gender equality—but that doesn't stop unlicensed, deceptive, misleading and dishonest liars and frauds putting out malicious content and then it being repeated by their useful idiots in the Twittersphere and then on Facebook and other social media platforms. Again, I'm not the only one who's ever experienced this. I'm sure even the member for Melbourne, with whom I have many disagreements, has experienced that, as I'm sure the member for Chisholm and every member for every other electorate has experienced it. That's just tragically part of, as I said at the start, the consequence.

This bill is not trying to say free and public debate should be stopped at all but is saying that, to the extent that we can through law, there is a responsibility in how you conduct yourself online, that basic safety expectations be put in place and that industry be held as accountable as people for their conduct, particularly where they're the vehicle for publishing the material online and particularly—and this is a consequence of the Christchurch terrorist attacks, horrific attacks which were despicably used as a form of political attack today in the form of a question at question time—to stop abhorrent violent communication and conduct and volumetric attacks being part of online discourse that is normalised.

We want to stop cyberbullying, and that's why we have included in the legislation a strengthened cyberbullying scheme for Australian children. There is no environment in which we would accept bullying of children—not in the schoolyard, amongst their peers or in other settings—and we're certainly not going to accept it online. We need to make sure there are proper processes for notification and identification and for there to be appropriate penalties where bullying occurs. But critically, so often with younger Australians who are digital natives, there is a pathway where they may use technology in their adolescent minds for content of a sexual nature. They may become victims of attacks such as revenge porn, where content is used against people's will and is then used as the basis to target, bully and attack them. That sort of content is the most despicable content, particularly when it may have been taken in privacy, and should never be used as a basis for targeting and bullying others.

I don't think anyone's under any illusion that the challenges we face from an evolving online platform make it harder to legislate and to regulate what goes on. In many cases, it would be bad if the state had the power to regulate what goes on. But there are lines that we all accept: there is no place for harassment in society; there is no place for bullying in society; there is no place for violence, online or offline, in society; and there is certainly no place in society for where people are taken to the point where they feel safe and then they lose their own dignity because they have been targeted in a malicious way by either individuals or digital lynch mobs because those individuals or mobs think they can get away with it.

We as a government are doing what I hope that most members in this place would support, which is to support Australians to have a basic standard of safety. I've had some people who have raised with me concerns around some aspects of this legislation, particularly around the empowerment of what content may breach thresholds or lines, particularly around offensive conduct. But I've made it clear and made an effort to go and look at the specific details and how they would interact, and the specific measures, which ordinarily would raise concern on my part, are targeted principally at stopping revenge porn. I don't know anybody in this place—and I would hope there is nobody beyond this place—who thinks that revenge porn is acceptable or would tolerate such conduct or think that it should be legal. The threshold we apply when we want to limit people's conduct in the public square, online or offline, is to assume that all conduct is legal unless we explicitly make it illegal. This bill seeks to make it explicitly illegal, and rightly so. This legislation has an important part. When the mums and dads, dads and dads, mums and mums and everybody in between and everybody else in society look at the safety of their children in this country, they can know that, whatever happens offline or online, the Morrison government has their back. We understand the concerns and the fears for safety that exist within the community, and we understand that, if you're engaging in ordinary, lawful conduct, you shouldn't become the target of harassment, abuse or online bullying. That's how you have a society that prospers and flourishes, in which people can go about their lives wanting to be able to contribute rather than fearing the worst. And, in many ways, what this law does is harmonise the offline and the online.

We're going to need to keep targeting, and tinkering with, these laws because the challenges and the nefarious uses of social media platforms by other Australians and by people from overseas towards Australians and the reverse are not going to change. People seek to exploit avenues, and sometimes it's done through the innocence of adolescence. We've got to set a new standard. That's why this law is important, but it is not the end. It is not even the beginning, because it starts with the responsibility of the individual and of parents to assist their children in understanding their conduct as part of a value stream of how they should conduct themselves in a free society. But it is an important step, and it's a step that Australians can have confidence in, understanding that we can serve the values that underpin the strength of our nation around protecting people's freedom in all senses—freedom to express themselves in a public square, as well as their freedom online to be able to express themselves without facing bullying, intimidation or harassment of an offline or online kind. It won't fix everything, but it's another tool in the toolbox to, hopefully, conserve the best of our nature.

5:22 pm

Photo of Andrew GeeAndrew Gee (Calare, National Party, Minister for Decentralisation and Regional Education) Share this | | Hansard source

I thank all of those in the chamber who have contributed to the debate on the Online Safety Bill 2021. I'd particularly like to thank and acknowledge the member for Boothby, who, a short time ago, shared with our parliament and our nation the appalling ordeals, vitriol and venom she has had to endure just for doing her job as an MP in this place. I think it showed tremendous courage. Our parliament will be the poorer for her retirement at the next election. We need more members of her calibre, and she will be missed.

This bill sends a clear message that the government and society as a whole expect industry to work harder to prevent online harms occurring in the first place and introduces important new protections for Australians when wrong is done and when crimes are committed. I commend the bill to the House.

Photo of Ross VastaRoss Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this, the honourable member for Gellibrand has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The immediate question is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.

Question agreed to.

Original question agreed to.

5:24 pm

Photo of Adam BandtAdam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | | Hansard source

I want to have the Greens' opposition to the bill as currently drafted recorded. We urge the government to withdraw it and come back with a new bill.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.