Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the Online Safety Bill 2021 and the Online Safety (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2021. Labor supports measures to consolidate and strengthen online safety laws for Australians. This is an area of bipartisanship, and Labor has engaged constructively with the government to address concerns with the Online Safety Bill. This bill seeks to create a new online safety framework for Australians. By consolidating various online safety laws and introducing some new changes, this bill will create a modern regulatory framework that builds on the existing online safety scheme and ensures that these laws are kept up to date. This bill will retain and replicate provisions in the Enhancing Online Safety Act 2015 that are working well to protect Australians from online harms such as the non-consensual sharing of intimate images scheme. It will also replace the content schemes in schedules 5 and 7 of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 to address harmful content such as refused classification material.

Labor supports the new elements of the online safety scheme that this bill seeks to establish. We know the devastating impact that online abuse and bullying can have. We know the harm that is caused by inappropriate and graphic material being shared online. Labor supports the articulation of a core set of basic online safety expectations and the creation of a new complaints based removal notice scheme for cyberabuse when it is perpetrated against an Australian adult. However, we do have a number of concerns with this bill, which Labor shares with stakeholders, regarding consultation, transparency and review mechanisms. While some necessary amendments have been made, the government's delays have risked undermining confidence in what is, of course, very important work.

It has been over 2½ years since the Briggs review recommended a single up-to-date online safety act. Let's look at what has happened since the Briggs review. It was back in October 2018 that Lynelle Briggs handed down the review of the Australia's online safety laws. In May 2019, during the election, the government made its first promise to introduce a new online safety act. In July 2019, the minister stood up in question time and again promised that an online safety act was coming. In September 2019, in response to Labor's questions about online hate speech, racism and the rise of right-wing extremism in Australia following the Christchurch terrorist attack, the minister stood up in this parliament and yet again promised that a new online safety act was coming. In December 2019, there was another announcement, another promise, that an online safety act was coming. In September 2020, when asked about what they were doing to curb graphic content on social media in the wake of a self-harm video on Facebook and TikTok, they stood up again and promised a new online safety act. In October 2020, this time in an op-ed in the west, there was another promise that an online safety act was on the way. Then in December 2020, just two days before Christmas, this government finally released their exposure draft, with the consultation process ending only eight business days before they tabled the bill in the parliament.

The government is asking us to believe that it took two years to draft a bill but only eight days to read and consider 376 submissions. This short time frame at the end of a long drawn-out process has undermined confidence in the government's exposure draft, and stakeholders are therefore rightly concerned that submissions have not been given proper consideration. The department confirmed that, from 376 submissions, they had identified 56 issues that warranted further consideration. From those 56 issues, only seven amendments have been made. So the government has spent years talking about this bill just to rush through the work at the last minute.

This government has spent the last 2½ years talking about the importance of keeping women and children safe online, but how can this government claim to care about creating a safe space online? How can this government claim to care about women's safety while they allow the member for Bowman, Andrew Laming, to remain in their party room, while they allow the member for Bowman to remain as chair of a parliamentary committee, with the support of the Liberal National Party? The member for Bowman has a history of trolling and abusing his own constituents on Facebook. So, while we discuss the importance of online safety in this chamber today, the government sit here and in the other place turning a blind eye to one of their own who, in his own words, engages in trolling on Facebook, who in his own words has undermined the safety and the mental health of at least one woman in his own electorate. In estimates last month—