Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Gerard Rennick People First) | Hansard source

You just said that taking mobile phones off children at schools has been very successful. The question I have is: why can't you take mobile phones off children when they're at home? We take the phones off our children in the bedroom. We take the phones off them during the week days. They're allowed to have the mobile phone or the devices on the weekend, but that's in between sporting requirements, me forcing them to take the dog for the walk and their mother telling them to get out there on the trampoline or go gardening—whatever it is. So I'm confused as to why we can't have some good old-fashioned parental supervision. Whatever happened to the role of the parents in the family?

I've been advocating for years the need to have a parent stay at home while you're raising your children. I stayed at home for four years. I don't want to turn this into me saying women should stay at home—I've never said that. Dad should stay at home more often. Indeed, I was just talking to Senator Hanson-Young yesterday, and she was saying how she fought to have children in the chamber. What a great thing that is. Yet again we've got another example of the government thinking it can solve a problem.

I note Senator Henderson said before there are things like anorexia and that children are subjected to these things on the internet, and that's fair enough; they are. But these things have always been around. Kate Moss was criticised in the 1990s. I well remember Karen Carpenter, who died from anorexia in the late seventies or early eighties. We've always had to deal with issues with our children, and the important thing is that they have close parental supervision so that you can detect if something's going on.

The other thing is—and I've raise this before, but it's worth raising again—you can have software that monitors your children's activity. We do that already. We monitor our children. It is effective because we have a middle child that loves to get up at about three o'clock on a Sunday morning. The only way we can bust him is to actually—

Yes, he sneaks the iPad into his room. He's terrible! So, yet again, what guarantees do we have that this will actually be effective? I think you'll find that children are very good at getting around laws. What guarantees do we have that this will stop bullying? This won't stop bullying per se. What will stop bullying is, again, having a parent keep a close eye on the children while they're growing up and being in touch with your children so if they are being bullied you're aware of it.

I'll note a question raised the other day about VPNs. Thirty-three per cent of people in this country use VPNs, and I suspect most of that 33 per cent are probably people aged under 40 because most people over 40 probably wouldn't even know what a VPN is—that is, a virtual private network. The reply from the government in estimates was, 'We're going to get the social media companies to track the person if they have a VPN, through geotracking.' Here we've again got Big Brother surveillance coming in and watching every little thing we do, every breath you take. What is it? Every time we come down here, I feel like we're just holding the line, and we're not even doing that when it comes to government overreach and surveillance and command and control. So my question to you, Minister, is: why it is that parents can't be encouraged to keep the devices from their children? You have quoted an example of taking mobile phones off children in the schools, which is a good idea. Why can't that very simple principle be applied in this situation when it comes to children having a social media account and monitor it that way?