Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One of the advantages of being dumped from the frontbench is that I get to come back to my electorate, spend more time with my community and take up some of the passions that I've been involved with since I've been in this place—10 years now. I want to refer to a report that I authored back in 2020, which was Protecting the age of innocence. That report, which was on behalf of the Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs, made a number of recommendations. Some of them were in relation to age verification for online pornography and online gambling. Scott Morrison, when he was the Prime Minister of this country, made 'you shouldn't be able to do online what you can't do in the real world' a commonly used phrase. Kids can't walk into a newsagent and access pornography. Kids can't walk into a casino and gamble. Yet for years and years and years, that's what you've been able to do in this country. Kids have been able to access pornography and gamble online.

This report, Protecting the age of innocence, looked into the harms that our society was experiencing as a result of those. Let's face it; they are evil. The porn industry is impacting upon every sector of our society. It's demonstrably involved in the increase in domestic violence in this country—demonstrably—and this report called it for what it is.

It's not very often I'll stand up in this place and give the government a shout-out, but I will on this occasion because the government finally implemented some of these recommendations. I was really pleased to see the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, set guidelines and rules for access to sites like Pornhub that mean that only adults are able to access pornography sites online. Only adults will be able to gamble online. Now, if an adult wants to do that, I don't like it, but that's a matter for them. But what we shouldn't allow is access for our kids as young as seven that were being targeted by these pornography sites. That is damaging for all our kids. It's damaging for us as a society. I'm very pleased to see that Julie Inman Grant, the eSafety Commissioner, who was appointed by the coalition, has finally got on to this and made it clear it's now going to be against the law. (Time expired)