David Pocock (ACT, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on my private senator's bill, the Online Safety and Other Legislation Amendment (My Face, My Rights) Bill 2025. In this place, we often talk about the long-term challenges facing our communities. Over the past year, whether it's been through the Select Committee on Adopting Artificial Intelligence, in town halls I've held across Canberra, in mobile offices across Canberra or in hearing from experts and advocates, everyday Canberrans have got in touch to raise their concerns about artificial intelligence and deepfakes.

We are seeing an unprecedented rise in the use of artificial intelligence. We hear much about the benefits—benefits to productivity, benefits to the economy—but we also need to be very clear eyed about the not-insignificant downsides to this technology. There are very real risks to our privacy, our democracy, our safety and, I believe, our humanity—the thing that makes us human and allows us to function in the community.

Currently, our laws are falling dangerously behind. We essentially have no regulatory guardrails to stop the malicious use of AI to generate deepfakes other than for sexually explicit images, and that is clearly not enough. Everyone would agree that generating sexually explicit images and videos of someone is not something we should stand for. But I believe we need to go one step further and say to Australians, 'You own your face, you own your likeness and no-one can create a realistic, AI generated deepfake of you without your consent.'

We're seeing artificial intelligence weaponised in ways that are exploitative and damaging to our shared life together. They are beginning to, and will continue to, tear at the very fabric of our society. We're seeing a rise in sophisticated impersonation scams, like the one the ones featuring Alan Kohler. These scams rob hardworking people of their savings. We're seeing fake political footage explicitly designed to mislead Australians and distort democratic processes. Each time AI is used to deceive, it chips away at the trust that underpins our institutions and tears at the social fabric of our communities.

The my-face my-rights bill operates on a very simple commonsense principle: an individual's face, voice and likeness are intrinsic to their identity as a human and should not be used without their consent. We should be able to protect our identity in the digital world just as fiercely as we protect it in the physical world. I do not think the government's current approach is sufficient. We need to stop using guidelines and expectations and start giving Australians actual protections. This bill does just that. It provides a structural response, introducing two key pillars of reform to give people whose identity has been used without their consent meaningful avenues for redress.

First, this bill amends the Online Safety Act to empower the eSafety Commissioner. It establishes a dedicated, streamlined complaints system specifically for the non-consensual sharing of deepfake material. It grants the commissioner powerful new tools to issue removal notices to social media platforms, hosting services and individual end users, legally compelling them to take down fabricated content. Furthermore, it introduces strict civil penalties, including a 500 penalty-unit fine for users who post deepfakes without consent or for service providers who ignore a removal notice. If platforms and perpetrators do the wrong thing, there will finally be real, enforceable consequences.

Second, this bill amends the Privacy Act to establish a new civil cause of action. Current laws regarding image based abuse, defamation and privacy simply do not cover the unique harms of deepfakes. This legislation creates a statutory cause of action for the wrongful use or disclosure of deepfake material. It empowers individuals to bring civil proceedings against anyone who knowingly or recklessly uses their likeness without consent to cause detriment or turn a profit. Victims will be able to seek court ordered remedies, including injunctions to halt the spread of the material, mandatory apologies and correction orders.

Crucially, this legislation recognises that you do not need to suffer financial ruin to be fundamentally harmed. The damage caused by deepfakes is deeply emotional and reputational. Under this bill, victims can pursue action and be awarded damages for emotional distress and psychological harm without needing to prove financial loss. This is about restoring dignity and personal autonomy.

Good policy must always strike a sensible balance. We must ensure that these vital new protections do not unreasonably infringe upon freedom of expression or the public interest. This is why I've consulted widely to ensure this bill includes targeted, pragmatic exemptions. These rules will not apply to the legitimate use of material by journalists acting under professional standards, by law enforcement acting in good faith, by individuals under 18 years of age or for material used for genuine medical, scientific or legal proceedings.

We don't have to look very far to see the disruptive, sometimes disastrous, consequences of failing to regulate technology before it runs rampant. We don't have to wait for a crisis to overwhelm us, and we shouldn't have to wait for the major parties to slowly catch up to reality when it comes to artificial intelligence. We have an opportunity to set a world-leading standard that protects humans, that protects Australians, their personal identity and the integrity of our democracy. We need to find the political courage to act now, to stand up to these big multinational AI companies and actually say: 'There are things that we value as a country, as communities, as human beings, and we will not allow you to undermine that. We will not allow you to use your technology in a way that is disruptive, in a way that is damaging and in a way that chips away at an already fraying social compact in this country between fellow citizens and between elected representatives, the parliament, and the institutions that are meant to be there to serve them and the Australian people.'

Much work has gone into this bill, and I'd like to thank my team for their work on it. I'd like to thank the amazing drafters in this place for their work in drafting and working through some of the technical challenges of this bill. I'd like to thank the many, many Canberrans who've been in touch on this issue and who have helped inform the design of this bill.

We know that this is an issue that's not going away. It's only getting worse. The rapid advancement of AI technology is such that a deepfake video from a year ago cannot be compared to what you can produce today. We have some warnings from the very people who are profiting from this. The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, said:

Very soon the world is going to have to contend with incredible video models that can deepfake anyone or kind of show anything you want.

He's warned that it'll bring really strange or scary moments and erode trust in video as a record of truth. Separately on AI enabled fraud, he said he is very nervous that we have a significant impending fraud crisis, calling reliance on voiceprint authentication crazy because AI has fully defeated it.

Yoshua Bengio, who's a Turing Award winner and one of the most cited AI researchers in the world, warned that AI capable of persuading people could be used to influence political opinion and destabilise democracies. He has urged governments to move quickly to rule against counterfeiting humans by AI bots. Nina Schick, the author of Deepfakes: The Coming Infocalypse, warns of a coming 'infocalypse' in which it becomes nearly impossible to tell what is real, undermining public trust in politics and creating a liar's dividend where the existence of deepfakes lets bad actors dismiss genuine evidence as fake.

This is not the world we want to live in, and we have an opportunity as a parliament to change that. We have an opportunity as a Senate to send a very clear message that we will not stand for this. We actually want an Australia where people can believe what they see, where people can engage in good faith. And so I would commend this bill to the Senate in good faith. If there are issues that people have with it, I am obviously very open to discussing amendments and really trying to ensure that we have something that every senator in this place says is the right direction for our country. These are the right rules and safeguards that we need to have against the misuse of artificial intelligence. Again, we hear so much about the benefits. This is about saying, 'Yes, there are benefits, but we have to guard against the harms and guard against the misuse of this technology'. And so I commend this bill to the Senate.

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia's online safety work is world leading, and the Albanese Labor government is taking decisive action to minimise online harms and hold big tech accountable. Under the current Online Safety Act, the existing image based abuse scheme already allows the eSafety Commission to take action against the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, regardless of whether the material is AI generated. Further, under the current unlawful material codes and standards, digital service providers are already required to take proactive steps to prevent the generation and distribution of all class 1 material, including child sexual abuse material and pro-terror material, and material that is generated by AI.

Our government has also ensured that the eSafety Commissioner is well resourced to assist Australians who face these harms each and every day, to educate Australians about online risks and to hold online service providers to account. The Albanese Labor government has been very clear this work must continue. We remain committed to introducing a digital duty of care, putting the responsibility on digital service providers to protect their users from harm before it occurs. We know that big tech companies have the technology, resources and responsibility to manage harms before they occur, rather than solely relying on individuals to report harmful material post exposure. That is what the digital duty of care will do. It will require all online services operating in Australia to be proactive and take steps to design safe services, rather than this being the exception. This includes AI platforms and chatbots.

Australia is leading the world when it comes to online safety, including our social media minimum age laws, and we will continue our work to protect people online. We delayed access to social media until the age of 16, with five million accounts deactivated so far. We want kids to know who they are before platforms assume who they are. We want to give kids three more years to build real-world connections and online resilience.

Our world-leading measures in online safety complement our privacy reforms. Our government has already implemented a first tranche of privacy reforms, to ensure Australians' privacy is respected and protected, and is committed to further uplifting privacy laws to ensure they are fit for purpose in the digital age. In 2024, the government amended the Privacy Act to include a new statutory tort for serious invasions of privacy, which may include sharing of deepfakes as a misuse of a person's private information. This enables Australians to take legal action directly against individuals and entities not otherwise covered by the Privacy Act.

Privacy is an important and complex policy area, and reform cannot be pursued in a piecemeal fashion, which this bill does. The government has committed to uplifting privacy laws to achieve the right balance between strengthening privacy protections and enabling personal information to be used in ways that benefit individuals, society and the economy. The government shares many of the concerns that Senator Pocock has outlined and the intent of this bill. However, we intend to address these concerns as part of holistic reform rather than through piecemeal reform. We are also concerned that, if passed, this bill would likely increase regulatory and enforcement overlap, including between the functions of the eSafety Commissioner, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and law enforcement agencies. This bill does not address the intersection of such overlap, and therefore the government will not support it. For those reasons, while supporting the bill's intent, the government will be opposing the senator's bill. Our government will continue our world-leading action in online safety and ensure that we hold big tech accountable, but we'll do that in a holistic rather than a piecemeal manner.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to this debate this morning on a bill that's really important, the Online Safety and Other Legislation Amendment (My Face, My Rights) Bill 2025, and I commend Senator Pocock for bringing this bill to the chamber today. It's a good bill and it's an important bill that brings forward changes that we actually need to the law. It is time for real laws to protect real people. For too long, big tech companies have been making megaprofits off the rubbish that is spread and created on their platforms. For too long, big tech has allowed deepfakes to spread, to be created and to be monetised.

It's not just individuals who are harmed by this. It's not just the young women who are copping the abuse of these deepfakes, although they, of course, need proper and real protection in law. The problem is that this isn't just an individual issue. These deepfakes and the monetisation of this deepfake technology, in the spreading and the viral nature of them, is now actually undermining the very essence of democracy.

Deepfakes aren't just used to harm, harass and abuse individual people—individual users; they are being used to undermine democracy and the very institutions that support our democracy, like journalism. We know that to have a strong, functioning democracy, we have to have a strong, trusted news system. Journalism must be able to do its job to hold power to account and be trusted to do that. Just this week, the New Daily has reported multiple deepfakes of journalist Natalie Barr clashing with politicians—posts that have thousands of likes and shares, primarily run by operators in Vietnam. We now have deepfake images, videos and technology being used as part of foreign interference in the very institutions that underpin our democracy here in Australia. One of these fake posts of Natalie Barr, actually accuses me of not being Australian. The deepfake Natalie Barr says:

Test her. I'm sure she's not Australian.

It is utterly absurd, utterly untrue and totally fake, but it is online, and it is circulating. The post also claims that Natalie Barr calls Anika Wells 'Anthony Albanese's puppet' and told her to 'sit down, Barbie', something that a journalist obviously wouldn't say. But this looks real. It's designed to look real, and it's designed to meddle with Australian politics. It's designed to make Australian citizens think that this journalist has made this statement and has conducted this interview. It should be illegal, and the people impacted by this should be able to have legal recourse.

I am worried that there are some in this place who are benefiting from the use of this deepfake technology. I am very concerned that there are some in our political class who are benefiting from the foreign interference of this type of deepfake technology. I would ask Senator Pauline Hanson and her One Nation Party just how involved they are in a number of these deepfake accounts and deepfake material that is circulating online. Are they involved? Who's paying for them, and what is their connection? Now, I can see Senator Hanson right here sitting in the chamber. What is she going to say about this piece of legislation? I put it to you, Deputy President, that One Nation is up to their neck with foreign interference and political meddling in this country, and they are using the technology—

Slade Brockman (WA, Deputy-President) | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Hanson, on a point of order?

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

On a point of order, I think that language is offensive. It is untrue, and I want it withdrawn.

Slade Brockman (WA, Deputy-President) | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll take some advice. My own view is that it was a debating point that you'll have the ability to respond to, but I will take further advice. Being there was no personal reflection, it is a matter that you can address in your contribution, Senator Hanson. I will give the call back to Senator Hanson-Young. I will just remind all senators in the chamber that we should treat other senators with respect.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

That is precisely the point. Our institutions should be treated with respect. The use and weaponisation of deepfake technology to benefit one's political endeavours should be illegal. It should not be allowed to continue, and the foreign interference of it should be absolutely flushed out. We need to make sure that individual Australians are protected from the use of deepfake technology. It should be individual Australians who have the right to say how their faces and their voices will be used online. Our media institutions, our journalists, should absolutely be protected from this type of undermining, dishonesty and foreign interference attack. Australians should be able to know that, when something like this occurs, it will be taken down and corrected.

Now I ask you, through the chair, how will One Nation vote on this bill? Will One Nation admit to having any interaction with, or to having any benefit from, the type of deepfake posts and technology that is being pushed out of these Vietnam centres? There are some media organisations that have already tried to report on this, but, of course, One Nation sits there and pretends that they've got nothing to do with it. Every politician in this place should be standing up for the very essence of our democracy, for strengthening the foundations of our democracy, not for finding ways to undermine it.

Deepfake technology is being used to abuse and to harass individual Australians. It is being used to try and trick people and undermine the trust of our very important public interest journalism. Deepfake technology is being used to intimidate journalists from doing their job. Every politician in this place should be calling it out and putting in place laws that protect us as a community, as a society and as a democracy.

Corinne Mulholland (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to acknowledge the intent behind the Online Safety and Other Legislation Amendment (My Face, My Rights) Bill 2025. At its heart is a genuine concern that every person should have control over their likeness, their face, their voice and their identity, and that, when that control is taken away, there must be consequences. That is something that we can all agree on. This chamber must ask itself: how do we respond in a way that actually works, not just for one form of harm today, but for the many forms of harm that we know are coming tomorrow, the next day and the next day? The reality is that online abuse does not sit neatly in one box. It crosses platforms, content and technology. That is why the Albanese Labor government is taking a comprehensive and proactive approach to online safety reform. We are not standing still—far from it.

Already Australia has some of the most world-leading protections through the Online Safety Act, including schemes that allow harmful, image based abuse, including AI generated content, to be rapidly addressed. We have strengthened the role of the eSafety Commissioner, ensuring Australians have somewhere to turn when harm occurs, and, importantly, we have begun modernising our privacy laws, including creating new avenues for people to seek redress when their privacy is seriously invaded. We also recognise that responding after harm occurs is simply not enough, and that is why we are progressing a new digital duty of care, a reform that goes to the heart of where the responsibility lies, because, for far too long, the burden has been on individuals, on women, on migrants, on people with a disability and on victims to report, to fight and to chase down harmful content after it has already spread online. Quite frankly, the internet should not be the Wild West. But it is, and the harms Australians are experiencing online are real. The same standards of decency, responsibility and respect that exist offline should apply online. This Labor government believes Australians deserve a comprehensive response to that harm, not a fragmented response but a comprehensive response. We need to respond as online harms continue evolving. Technology is evolving, and our laws too must do the same.

Australia is already leading the world on online safety. Under the Online Safety Act, the eSafety Commissioner already has strong powers to address image based abuse, including AI generated material. Under Australia's unlawful-content codes and standards, online service providers are required to take proactive steps to prevent the generation and distribution of the most harmful material online, including child sex abuse material, terrorist material and AI generated material. We have ensured the eSafety Commissioner is properly resourced to help Australians, to educate Australians and to hold online platforms to account.

We have legislated a social media minimum age of 16. Already, millions of accounts have been deactivated. We want children to know who they are before platforms assume who they are. We want children to build resilience. We want children to build real world connections. We want them to be safe, and so we have strengthened privacy protections. We've introduced a statutory tort for serious invasions of privacy, giving Australians stronger rights and stronger remedies when their privacy is violated, and we're continuing the work of modernising Australia's law for the digital age. That is why this government remains committed to introducing a digital duty of care.

It's a simple principle: if a company profits from Australians being online, it should take responsibility for keeping them safe online. Big tech companies have the resources. They have the technology. They also have the responsibility, and the burden should not fall solely on individuals after harm has occurred. The focus should be on preventing harm before it occurs, and that is exactly what this government's digital duty of care will do. It will require online services to design for safety from the outset. It will require platforms to identify risks, to mitigate risks and to protect users, including users of AI platforms and chatbots. This is a significant reform, and it is being developed as part of a broader framework, because privacy reform cannot be done in isolation, online safety reform cannot be done in isolation, and a regulation cannot be done in isolation. We must get the whole framework right.

The government is concerned that this bill would create overlap between regulators, overlap between enforcement bodies and uncertainty about responsibilities. Australians deserve clarity, Australians deserve consistency, and Australians deserve laws that work together. As a woman in politics, I know this personally. Every day, I see the abuse. Every day, I see the intimidation that women face simply for participating in public life, not because of what they say and not because of what they do but simply because they are women. I know some of my colleagues have personally fallen victim to deepfakes.

I acknowledge Senator Pocock's intentions. This parliament contains a record number of women. This is something Australians should be proud of, but the personal abuse and the negativity directed to women online is not. If this is happening to women in politics, what is happening in our community is far worse and far more damaging to people who have no voice and no recourse. The women who see this happening in public life—it discourages them from wanting to pursue a life in public life, and that matters, because, when good people decide public life isn't worth the abuse, our democracy is weaker.

The internet has become our modern public square. It's where Australians work. It's where they learn. It's where they connect. It's where Australians participate in democracy, and Australians should be safe there. Just as we work to make our streets safe, just as we work to make our community safe, we must work to make the digital world safe as well, and that is why the Albanese Labor government is taking action. So while the government will not be supporting this particular bill, I want to be clear that we share the objective. We recognise the challenge and we are acting in a comprehensive manner, not with a single measure but with a comprehensive framework, a plan that puts responsibility where it belongs—on the platforms, on big tech, on those who profit from Australians being online.

The Albanese Labor government will continue to lead the world on online safety. We will continue to hold big tech to account and we will continue working to ensure Australians are safe online, just as they should be safe everywhere else, because safety should not stop when you log offline.

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, One Nation will not be supporting this Online Safety and Other Legislation Amendment (My Face, My Rights) Bill, but I do appreciate Senator David Pocock coming up and having a discussion with me about it. The bill allows a person to complain to the eSafety Commissioner about their face being used as a deepfake without their permission. The definition of 'deepfake' is so broad that it could capture many things, including our Please Explain cartoons. This is a lawyers' picnic and that concerns me greatly. The cartoons, yes, they depict many of our political people in this place. They've been going for four years and are well received by the Australian public. I think they've learnt more about politics watching our cartoons. It would devastate so many people if this piece of legislation was to capture and get rid of our cartoons, which I think are more informative to the public than what would be warranted with this bill.

Senator Watt, who's comments I hardly ever agree with, is right. It is already there in legislation that the eSafety Commissioner can act on this. The commissioner can issue takedown notices, but she can already do that and she's doing it, so we already have these laws in place. The existing powers of the commissioner allow deepfake material to be taken down if it's abusive. Now, it's not protecting people from abuse but there is a strong potential for the bill to stop legitimate satire.

Oh, come on, guys, you know, toughen up. Let's get some political hide about us in this place. If anyone were to complain about satire, after what I've had to deal with over the years, I'd be the first one supporting this bill because nearly 30 years I've been attacked with so much. At the moment, I could complain because they've got me out there as Wonder Woman. My God, they've got me out there with all this deepfake as a band leader singing in a band. I've got to put up with all this going on. I'm not complaining about it. I've toughened up over the years. So let's toughen up. Let's get some political hide about us, shall we? Look, I will acknowledge that deepfakes are a problem and that kids are putting up teachers' heads on porn stars' bodies, but the eSafety Commissioner already has powers to take them down, so it's just ridiculous.

This whole bill is about a carve-out for journalists. Why should journalists be carved out? Are journalists' cartoons also carved out? Now, some of those cartoons can be very offensive. Are they carved out? Why are journalists and agencies of state and territory authorities carved out? Why are they carved out? Why would they need to be carved out for deepfake? Also, law enforcement bodies—what on earth would they be doing to warrant carving them out for deepfake? Also, intelligence agencies—why would they be carved out? You've got to ask yourself these questions. This is a poorly drafted bill with no real understanding. It is going to be a lawyers' picnic. There's no carve-out for satire, yet satire has been a legitimate and widely accepted tool for political commentary for centuries, for a long time. This is the problem with a lot of legislation; laws should not be in subjective language. Language in legislation should be objective and definitive. The High Court has ruled on the implied right of political communication, so that's what's happening.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

Where's the Russian money?

Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Order!

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Hanson-Young has made reference to foreign interference. The thing is that Senator Hanson-Young and the Greens would dearly love to have the social media that I have. They probably know I have over a million viewers, who are organic, on my Facebook page alone—over a million followers. They'd dearly love to have that. What's happening is that foreigners are actually piggybacking on our social accounts and on our followers.

Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Hanson-Young, on a point of order?

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

Just on a matter of clarification, I think Senator Hanson—

Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Is there a point of order?

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

meant that foreigners are funding her.

Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Hanson-Young, you know that you have to raise a point of order. There is no point of order. I remind everyone to refrain from interjections and to make comments through the chair.

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Through the chair: it's another false statement. That's all they've got. All the Greens have got are comments they constantly throw across the chamber which are so untrue.

Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Hanson-Young!

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

It's just farcical. They are so concerned about One Nation and the rise in the polls that we have that they're throwing out there all these lines with no basis to them whatsoever.

Honourable senators interjecting—

Anyway, it's a joke. It really is a joke. Oh, my God, you're so—

Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Order, senators! We all appreciate everyone's having an opportunity to have a say, and I understand there will be a few others, but we are also entitled to be heard in silence. Senator Hanson, please continue.

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you. These false allegations that you're making in this chamber—this happens all the time. Like I said, I've built up a political rawhide over the years, so, like they say, it's like water off a duck's back. They wouldn't want to say it outside this chamber. They haven't got the guts to say it outside, but they'll throw these false allegations at me across the chamber. But that's the Greens for you. I think they're very concerned. You'll get over it. If you actually do get the support from the public, maybe you'll get over a million followers on your Facebook page. You only wish to have the followers that I have.

Honourable senators interjecting—

Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Hanson-Young, order! Order, senators, please! We understand everyone's passionate about the bill before us, but we have limited time.

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Mulholland spoke about the impact it's going to have on getting women into parliament, with all these deepfakes. I don't know if that's the case at all. Do you know what? You don't need to be on a Facebook page or on social media and that type of thing to get attacked, because all you've got to do is get attacked in this parliament. More attacks happen on the floor of this parliament, across this chamber—the false allegations, the comments that are made, the accusations and the words that are used in this chamber. This is where it starts. This is where it starts—here. Don't worry about social media. This is what I've had to put up with for a long, long time. I get it from numerous senators around this place. That's what needs to change. So don't say that, using social media, women won't want to get into politics. They watch what goes on on the floor of parliament—the allegations that are made in this place.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

What was that phrase—'Suck it up, sweetheart'?

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Through you, Chair, I have really sucked up a lot over the years that a lot of other people in this place couldn't. They wouldn't have the backbone to be able to do it. I know what it's like to suck it up. I do.

Look, I understand; she's hurt. She's feeling upset about the rise of One Nation in the polls. That's understandable. It's up to the Australian people. There's still a year and a half. You can still get your act together and get rid of climate change, get rid of all the BS—the cost of living to everyone. Get rid of your policy to open up the floodgates for a lot more immigration into the country and all the refugees you want to flood the country with, for all the foreign aid that you want to give away overseas and for the destruction of our environment to put in wind turbines which are destroying our countryside. What is happening in this country is just unbelievable.

But let's get back to the bill that Senator Pocock introduced, and I do appreciate him having a talk to me. He said it would not include satire, because it's not mentioned here; it's been carved out. I don't believe it has. It hasn't been shown to me that it is carved out.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

You're not worried about satire; you're worried about Vietnam—

Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Order, Senator Hanson-Young! Your interjections are disorderly.

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Anyway, the fact is that we've brought in hate-speech laws and we're shutting down people. I tried to put freedom of speech in our constitution. I moved a motion in the parliament to have it put, by referendum, to the people. That was stopped; no-one wanted that. You voted against that. You're controlling people more and more with your laws and legislation, and people are frightened to say or do anything whatsoever. We are not building resilience; we're protecting everyone. We're putting them in cottonwool. 'You can't do this; you can't say that.' That's the problem with a lot of these kids: they have built up no resilience whatsoever.

We have to get back to the larrikinism that we had in Australia. We used to have Paul Hogan, Bert Newton and Norman Gunston. We could actually have a laugh at ourselves with the things that were on TV. That's all gone because you're offending someone, and this is another form of shutting people down. Yes, if it is offensive, it can be taken down. We do have the laws, and I don't believe in anything being put up that's going to create violence. I think that's wrong. But we've got to realise who we are. People aren't stupid out there. Give them some credit to actually look at this and understand. They know I'm not this leader of a bloody band singing a song on a stage. People can work a lot out for themselves.

So stop shutting people down, because that's what I see happening in this parliament all the time. Let people have an opinion and have a say. The same as you nearly did in this parliament by bringing the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024—that's what you want it to do. Again, you can't control the people. People must have a right to work it out for themselves. You can't put them in cottonwool and baby them. That's what democracy is about. It's about freedom of choice. It's about rule of law. It's not about parliaments controlling them, and if we keep going down the way that we're going—we are becoming such a socialist country. That's where we're headed, and that's not what the people want.

People want their freedom: freedom of expression, freedom of choice. Let's get back to the Australia that we used to have. I know damn well people would be a lot happier in their own life—without being controlled.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

What about women's freedom to choose?

Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Hanson-Young! I'm getting my vocal cords working this morning. Senator Shoebridge, you now have the call, and I hope you're heard in silence as well.

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

Thanks, Acting Deputy President; I appreciate your efforts. That's pretty remarkable, isn't it? One Nation comes in here and defends the right to create deepfakes, and then tries to draw a parallel between the appalling harm that overwhelmingly women are facing with these appalling sexualised deepfakes that are able to be produced through AI and political satire or picturing somebody as being a member of a band when they're not a band. To come in here and minimise the reality of deepfakes—particularly how they're used in the manosphere and the misogynistic way in which they've been used across the internet—and belittle it, like Senator Hanson did, is an extraordinary act.

Of course One Nation is going to come in here and defend deepfakes. They want to keep running their big offshore deepfake factory in Vietnam. They want to be able to keep getting the dark money from wherever the hell it's coming from. Whether it's coming from Russia, a tech bro in the US, Gina Rinehart or wherever they get their funds from, they want to be able to keep the funds coming in to produce the deepfakes in order to lie and spread their racism and misogyny. That's what they want. They want their deepfake factories to keep coming in and destroying any sense of collective response. That's why One Nation comes in here, and that's why Senator Hanson opposes this bill, the Online Safety and Other Legislation Amendment (My Face, My Rights) Bill 2025.

What I find remarkable is we don't have the government trying to find a pathway to get this bill through or to say deepfakes, without consent, should be illegal in this country unless they meet criteria such as those that already exist in the Copyright Act. Pick up those provisions in the Copyright Act that exclude satire—exclude those existing exemptions in the Copyright Act. We know that would work. We could just pick them up, pop them in this bill and have very clear exemptions. But, instead, we're going to get to this point where, literally, the Labor, Liberal and National parties all join with One Nation to vote down a bill to stop deepfakes.

We're watching One Nation with their right-wing politics using this technology to literally tear our society apart, to spread deep lies about politicians and about political positions, to spread deeply destructive messages online: racism, hate and lies. We have a chance here with this bill, to take it through to committee, to work through some amendments and to say, 'Actually, the hate factories of One Nation, in the right of politics, should be illegal when they're abusing people's images and producing realistic deepfakes.' But, instead, Labor's just shutting it down; I've got to vote it down today. There's so little leadership, again, from the Labor government on a core issue.

Now we have One Nation making the false argument that this bill would stop their 'please explain' cartoons. Well, I'd recommend One Nation read the legislation before they come in here and speak about it, and I think that's generally good advice for politicians before they speak about legislation. What is the definition of 'deepfake' in this bill? It is material that could be a still image, a speech, music or sound. And then it says, very clearly, 'the material depicts, in a realistic way, an individual's face or voice or an attribute or aspect of an individual's face or voice'—in a realistic way. This isn't picking up political cartoons; it's not picking up satire like that. The Greens wouldn't support legislation to do that. I'll tell you again: when you have politicians come in here and lie about the legislation, deliberately misleading people about the effects of this legislation in the course of trying to retain the right to spread deepfakes against people, I think it exposes exactly what that political project is for.

What does this bill do? Well, let's take a step back. It's not in dispute now that AI can fabricate a person's face, their voice and likeness convincingly enough to deceive people, to humiliate people, to exploit and profit. The cost of that falls on the individuals who are often not politicians. Often, they're just people trying to live their lives without being humiliated, insulted or misrepresented. The ability of AI to do that is continuing to improve.

This bill goes to something essential about being human. Our face, our voice, our presence, the way we walk—it goes to those singular and essential natures that each of us know is us as an individual, as a human. Protecting that essential humanity, not just our data or our reputation but what makes us us, is what's at stake here. It's a simple principle, and I'm surprised we can't get agreement on it across the chamber: that your face, your voice, the way you walk and your likeness are yours, and they can't be appropriated by somebody and used without your consent. And they definitely can't be appropriated by somebody and used without your consent to drive the hate, the misogyny and the profits of overseas big tech. And, unless we deal with this, that's what's going to keep happening. So I welcome Senator Pocock's bill and thank him for bringing the legislation in. It's a meaningful step to address a real and growing harm.

The bill would strengthen the Online Safety Act with a dedicated complaint system for deepfake material and would give the eSafety Commissioner powers to issue take-down orders on hosts and on users to take down deepfake content once a complaint is received. It also allows for consent to happen, and there actually are instances where what would otherwise be a deepfake may have a really powerful role if it operates with consent. For example, some people are using AI to create what would otherwise be a deepfake to do real-time translations in multiple different languages. If that's done with consent and it's getting out there and it's helping communicate issues across a diverse community, there are arguments that that can have a positive outcome. But it needs to be with consent, and I think it should be labelled as deepfake content so people can tell that that's what the material is.

The bill also creates penalties for posting non-consensual deepfake content on social media and lets the commissioner direct that fast removal and have the platforms held to account. It's a really important provision. It creates a new private right, a tort, where individuals can seek injunctions, damages and to have the harmful material removed. In doing that, they don't have to go to the expense of proving financial loss. It's assumed that a non-consensual deepfake is harmful and there's a right to have it removed.

The bill references human rights obligations under the ICCPR and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and preserves legitimate use by journalists, law enforcement, ASIO and scientific research. I want to be clear: if this bill gets to committee, the Greens would also like to see incorporated in this bill those exemptions that exist in the Copyright Act that allow for satire and similar reasonable use provisions.

It's critically important to give people impacted by deepfakes the power to have them removed and to seek a remedy. It's also critically important for our law to seek to work upstream. I don't often quote the Pope, but I reckon Pope Leo was useful in the first encyclical this year, where he talked about how technology takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance and profit from it, and its worth must be measured by who it harms and who it serves. I think that's a really important contribution to how we look at technology: who does it harm and who does it serve?

The deepfake platforms, particularly the nudify apps and the platforms monetising them, aren't neutral infrastructure, and we shouldn't regulate them as though they're neutral. We should recognise the harm and we should regulate to protect people from the harm. We should recognise who it serves and we should regulate to hold them to account. The tools and platforms that generate this material currently face no real accountability, and they keep profiting. So we need that safety by design and those duty of care obligations to work upstream on generative AI providers to really protect communities. Theft or abuse shouldn't only be unlawful if you're caught or you target someone who is a lawyer.

It's the Greens' position that, until laws comprehensively deliver that safety, platforms that are shown to present an inherent risk, particularly of deepfakes, should be banned. We could start with Grok, and we could work on from there—we bloody well could. A take-down and sue model is at the heart of this legislation. Whilst it does create a right and we think it's a powerful way to create a right, I think we should be having a look at alternative ways in addition to that to ensure that deepfakes can be addressed. Giving a more proactive right and a more proactive regulatory power to eSafety is one of the ways of doing that. Of course, whilst I recognise that torts are an important way of holding people to account, it often requires money and lawyers, and we want to make sure that everybody who's impacted by deepfakes has a realistic right to get a remedy.

The take-down model also captures the public viral nature of some of this material. But we need to make sure it also reaches encrypted messaging, peer-to-peer transfer, some of those closed forums and offshore sites. I think that's a difficult task, but I think public sharing is only one dimension in which deepfakes can actually cause harm. We should be looking at that, and the government should be working with the crossbench in order to come up with provisions that don't only look at public sharing but look to some of that other non-public or less public sharing where we know that there's coercive material and we know that this is causing harm. With sextortion, in particular, the threat to share is the weapon and the image may never be posted publicly. That needs to be picked up in this legislation.

I'll say it again. I appreciate Senator Pocock for bringing this to the chamber. In the lead-up to the last federal election, the Greens were very clear about saying we need to get ahead of this and we need to prevent deepfakes from poisoning our politics. I saw Senator Pocock at that same time raising the issue in real time before the last federal election. Of course, the government didn't listen.

I want to be clear: there are jurisdictions that are forging ahead and getting this far closer to right than Australia does. You could look at what South Korea has been doing in regulating its online platforms and preventing deepfakes being shared. Look at some of the creative regulation that's happening in Taiwan about ensuring the online space is meeting basic duties and having some nimble regulation. There are places in the world we can look at to get working real-time examples about how we can address deepfakes while keeping the right to produce satire and comedy material and to hold politicians to account. We can keep the right to do all of that but come up with laws that say: 'You can't use deepfakes for misogyny, racism and hate. You can't use deepfakes without people's consent. You can't see politicians and political parties creating these hate factories and attaching them to deepfakes.'

I say again that I urge the government to vote to put this into committee and then to work on amendments, if they're needed, to put in the copyright provisions to take this forward, because simply voting this down today—walking across and voting with One Nation to vote this down today—will send exactly the wrong message. It will send the message that the deepfakes, the hate, the misogyny and the racism are not going to be addressed under the Albanese Labor government. Let's not get there. Let's support the second reading of this bill. I again thank the mover of this legislation for bringing it to the chamber.

Ellie Whiteaker (WA, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

On this side of the chamber, we certainly agree that the online space has been unregulated for too long, and it's put people, particularly young people and women, at risk for far too long. That's why we have taken strong and decisive action since coming to government to put the onus on platforms to do better in this space. The Prime Minister and Minister Wells have put these tech companies and platforms on notice and said: 'We will no longer accept them shirking their responsibility. If they want to operate in Australia, they should do so while taking responsibility for protecting Australians and, in particular, protecting young Australians.'

Last year, of course, we delayed access to social media until the age of 16 because we want kids to know who they are before platforms make those assumptions for them. We want to keep kids safe online. The digital space really was the Wild West for far too long. So I think our world-leading social media ban—which has now, I note, been adopted by a number of countries around the world—is a really important step in the right direction, towards putting that onus back on the tech companies. We've also quadrupled the eSafety Commission's base funding to ensure that they can enforce the law, help Australians who face serious abuse online and educate Australians about the risks that exist online. We also brought forward the independent statutory review of the Online Safety Act 2021 to ensure the act remains fit for purpose. One of the really important recommendations of that review is to legislate a digital duty of care, and that is something that our government has said that we will legislate very, very soon.

Why is a digital duty of care important? Because we believe that the onus should be on the platforms, not on users, and that online platforms and big tech companies have the technology and the resources to do this work. They should reduce, manage and remove harmful content. They should stop it before it ends up in people's feeds, and they need to do better in this space. Our government expects them to do better in this space. So Labor will ensure, through our digital duty of care laws, that we will force platforms to take stronger action to keep Australians safe.

Our work in online safety is world leading. Under the current Online Safety Act, the existing Image-Based Abuse Scheme already allows the eSafety Commissioner to take action against the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, whether AI is used or not. Further to that, under the current Unlawful Material Codes and Standards, digital service providers are already required to take proactive steps to prevent the generation and distribution of class 1 material, including child sexual abuse material and pro-terror material, and, again, that includes material that is generated by AI. The government has ensured that the eSafety Commissioner is well resourced to assist Australians who face serious abuse online, to educate Australians about online risks and to hold online service providers to account. But there is more work to do. We know that, and we are committed to doing that work through our digital duty of care.

The other thing I think is really important to call out and talk about is the responsibility that we have as leaders, as elected members of this place, to think about the kinds of things that we do online. In recent months, I have been absolutely disgusted by some of what I have seen posted online by One Nation. I know that we've got Senator Walker here in the chamber. I asked her whether she would be happy with me talking about this in here, and she very generously said that I can. I think it's really important that we do. Some of the content that Senator Hanson and her colleagues in One Nation have posted about Senator Walker online is absolutely disgraceful. Not only is it disrespectful to Senator Walker—who I've come to know very well over the last 12 months and I know is extremely tough, one of the toughest people in this place, who doesn't blink an eyelid and who continues to come in here and stand up for young people—it is extremely disrespectful to other young people who shouldn't feel discouraged from being a part of the political conversation, from putting themselves forward, whether it's on the Labor ticket or the Liberal ticket or the Greens ticket or as an Independent. Young people should feel like they belong in this place. I want more young people like Senator Walker in this chamber—not fewer.

Senator Hanson and her colleagues need to do better. I don't know why Senator Hanson is so afraid of Senator Walker. I think it says a lot that she's afraid of what Senator Walker will do in this place now and for the next five years, and I'm sure for many, many years to come after that, because it's clear to me that she is afraid of Senator Walker and what she can do. But that is not an excuse to post content online that sends a message to young people that says, 'You don't belong here,' 'You don't belong in the places where decisions are made,' and 'You don't belong at the table when important conversations are happening.' We know in the Labor caucus just how important it is to have a diverse range of people elected to this place as part of the conversation. It is completely unacceptable that Senator Hanson and her colleagues think that it is okay to post that kind of shameful political content.

I've made my fair share of political ads over my time as a party official. And you know what? We all sometimes like to have a bit of fun. I think that's an important part of engaging people in the political conversation. But there is a line that we, as elected members to this place, with the responsibility of representing Australians, should be held to. So I say to Senator Hanson and to her colleagues in One Nation that that behaviour is absolutely disgusting and disgraceful. Senator Walker can take it. She's tough. I know she can take it. But I don't want other young people to feel discouraged from being part of the political conversation. That is why I say in this place that it is absolutely unacceptable, and we will continue to call Senator Hanson and her colleagues out for doing that kind of absolutely disgraceful online content. I believe we may have met the hard—no? Oh, I've got a bit more time. Okay, excellent. So I think the intention of the Online Safety and Other Legislation Amendment (My Face, My Rights) Bill 2025 is good, and I think broadly we agree on the—

Sue Lines (President) | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Whiteaker. You've now met the hard marker.

Debate interrupted.