David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to talk today about an issue which I think is one of the defining issues of our era, and that is the issue of child safety online. For a number of years, we've seen really disturbing trends in youth mental health, not only in Australia but around the world, and it's clear that access to inappropriate content for kids is contributing to that. I am really concerned about a decision that the government made in this area just last week. I want to talk about that, but I will come back to that in a moment.

The US Surgeon General is the top doctor in the United States, and occasionally he issues special advisories on issues of urgent public health importance. He did that quite recently, back in April, on the issue of youth mental health and inappropriate content. He said:

Children are exposed to harmful content on social media, ranging from violent and sexual content, to bullying and harassment. … We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis—one that we must urgently address.

That's from the top doctor in the United States, and the same issues apply here as well. In that context, one of the critical issues is ensuring that kids don't access material that is inappropriate for them. Then, of course, the question is: How do you do that? How do you ensure that kids don't access inappropriate content? There is an area of technology called age verification, also called age assurance, which is about doing just that: developing technology so that we can more accurately identify the age of users of websites and so that we can help to ensure that kids don't access material that is bad for them.

Two years ago, the member for Fisher led a very important parliamentary inquiry called Protecting the age of innocence. That was about the issue of verifying the age of kids online. We asked the eSafety Commissioner to look into this issue, and she did. She spent a lot of time, about two years, very carefully looking into this issue of age assurance or age verification online. How do we protect kids by trying to ensure that they don't access inappropriate material, whether it's pornography, inappropriate material on social media, gambling material, material about alcohol or whatever it is? The eSafety Commissioner gave her report to the government in March, but the government only released it last week. One of the key recommendations in that report was to trial age assurance technology before moving to implementation of age assurance technology. This is common sense. This is about working through the different technologies that are available, determining which is the best and most practical to use so that we can implement a system of age assurance for online technology, to keep kids safe. Inexplicably, the minister has refused to implement this recommendation and instead says that there will be some industry codes on this issue and we can revisit it—effectively years from now. It is an inexplicable decision which I just do not understand at all.

The National Children's Commissioner, Anne Hollonds, has been very critical of this. She said that it was needed so that we can safeguard children for whom this material, this content, is really inappropriate and actually can be quite dangerous. She told the Sydney Morning Herald she was disappointed in the decision and that it puts vulnerable children at risk. And just today, couple of hours ago, the eSafety Commissioner was interviewed on the ABC and was asked for her reaction to the government's refusal to implement this really important recommendation. She said that that was a question for government:

The government made its decision and I need to get on with using the tools that I have …

The commissioner is right: it is a decision for government. But it's an entirely wrong decision.

Why would you not adopt this very sensible recommendation? It's been heavily criticised by children's advocates, but it's been welcomed by the pornography industry. It's been welcomed by the Eros Foundation, and whether it's pornography, violent material or other inappropriate material with inappropriate or dangerous content, we have got to do everything we can to protect kids. This is a huge issue for our society not just in Australia but around the world, and the government must implement this important recommendation of the eSafety Commissioner.