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

My question is to the Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts. Will the minister inform the House how the Morrison government is sticking to the national plan and protecting Australians during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly through support for children learning from home?

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

I thank the member for Reid, who of course brings distinguished academic and professional experience to this matter as a highly psychologist but also as a mother of several children studying at home. My 12-year-old son is studying at home. I know many of us in this chamber have children studying at home, and around Australia millions of children are studying at home. We are all so proud of our children for the way they're dealing with this challenging time—and it is challenging.

Last week I had the chance to speak to two groups of classes by Zoom at St Ives High School and Barker College, in my electorate, and saw them getting on with their education. We all want to get to a point where education can return to more normal modes of operation. But, in the meantime, that internet connectivity is so important. What's also so important is that we are protecting the safety of children online, because there are dangers online, and we need to guard against them. That's why our government has had a focus on online safety since coming into government in 2013.

We established the world's first eSafety Commissioner. We established a cyberbullying scheme to remove harmful bullying content from social media platforms. When an Australian child is bullied online, the eSafety Commissioner is there to help—esafety.gov.au. Trusted eSafety providers endorsed by the eSafety Commissioner are delivering education programs in Australian schools—850 sessions to over 120,000 students in just three months last year.

We're not stopping there, having just taken through the parliament our tough new Online Safety Act to keep children and other Australians safe online. Keeping children safe online when they're studying is so important, but what's also critical when you're learning or working from home is having a good broadband connection. If we had stuck with Labor's plan, which we inherited when we came to government in 2013, up to five million fewer premises would be connected to the NBN today. Labor's failed NBN had barely 50,000 premises connected to the fixed-line network when we came into government.

We've got on with getting out the NBN, which is so important for allowing children to study from home. Today, 8.26 million premises are connected. Labor barely managed to roll out 50,000 premises in the six years that they were in government. They did a hopeless job on the NBN rollout. Let's just be thankful that they're not responsible for the vaccine rollout.