Fatima Payman (WA, Australia's Voice) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I table an explanatory memorandum and I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

Historically, the Internet had been somewhere minds were opened and horizons were broadened. A place where academics from the world's universities discussed developments in their respective fields. People were civil. Posts were made to inform, not to enrage. Yesterday's Internet is nothing like the Internet we have today.

Bygone is any notion, or even comprehension, of netiquette. Day in and day out, we see calls to hate, to be disgusted, to retreat further into our algorithmic bubbles. All this is designed to keep us glued to our feeds, to increase the profitability of the social media giants. Yet, as the Prime Minister has said, social media has a social responsibility. No one I have spoken to believes that these companies will fulfill this responsibility out of the goodness of their hearts.

I know better than most what it is like to be a woman with a public profile in Australia today. Nearly two years ago, I had the courage of my convictions and walked across the Senate chamber floor, but that decision has not been without cost.

After standing up for what I believed in, I had cast myself into the piranha-infested waters of the public eye and, relevantly, online debate. I made a controversial decision, and this made some people very angry.

Every day, words of hatred are used against me. After a while, you get used to it. What you don't get used to are the threats against yourself, your family and your staff or the frequent correspondence with the Australian Federal Police about the latest person threatening to shoot and kill me or my husband.

As I said in the Senate in October 2025, this is an issue that disproportionately affects women. I began work on this bill after meeting with Perth activist, Caitlin Roper. Through the meeting, I also became aware of the impact this abuse had on Lyn Kennedy and other members of Collective Shout, the advocacy group campaigning against offensive video games, including those that simulate rape.

Following a recent campaign push, Caitlin and Lyn were subjected to what was described as a tsunami of cyber abuse.

As the West Australian reported: "The threatening messages included: "you f...ed with garners, now we are going to rape you" and "my bat gonna fit nicely in your skull". "I'll cut off your heads and f... your corpses," said another, with a doctored image showing a gun pointed at Ms Roper's face.

Some of the activists were doxxed. Others had deepfake pornography of Collective Shout members.

When they went to the regulator, the eSafety Commissioner, they were bewildered by the level of inaction. The level of heinousness necessary for the regulator to take action is too high.

Caitlin told my office that "eSafety dismissed material because it refers to an organisation rather than an individual. This included threats to murder us, tagging an individual team member."

The Online Safety Amendment (Broadening Adult Cyber Abuse Protections) Bill 2026 makes a simple change to the Online Safety Act 2021.

It amends that Act to lower the threshold for material to be considered by eSafety under the adult cyber abuse scheme and empower eSafety to take action against abusive conduct online.

This comes from recommendation 18 of the statutory review of the Online Safety Act, a report which was provided to the Government in October 2024. The Government has not moved quickly to implement these changes, but it is important that we do.

As the report states: "The new threshold should require that an ordinary reasonable person would conclude that 'it is likely the material was intended to have an effect on a particular Australian adult', and that an ordinary reasonable person would 'regard the material as being, in all the circumstances, menacing, harassing or seriously offensive."'

Australians have been waiting for more than a year for the Government to tum its commitment to a digital duty of care into a reality. For the women who find themselves targeted by hateful chuds (for whom online abuse is a form of amusement, no different to the news of Clavicular getting brutally framemogged by the ASU frat leader), they cannot wait any longer.

If we want to protect our women and girls online, we need a regulator that has the legislative authority to go out there and fight for them.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted.

Debate adjourned.