Online Safety for Children Policy Announcement with Malcolm Turnbull at Strathfield Girls High School

Reporter: Paul and Malcolm can you go back to the e safety legislation how exactly will it work can you give us some specificities about it?

Paul Fletcher MP: A couple of key ideas firstly the establishment of a Children’s E-Safety Commissioner to take the lead at federal government  level to take measures to enhance online safety for children and secondly a complaints system backed by legislation under which harmful cyber bullying material that is targeted at an Australian child can be removed if it’s on one of the large social media sites.

So the Children’s E-Safety Commissioner will administer this scheme, now the way it works, it has been designed to be minimally disruptive of business processes of the large social media sites so the way it will be structured and legislated is that if you have a complaint that you as a child or as somebody under the age of eighteen  has been the victim of cyber bullying, that there has been harmful material targeted at you on one of the major social media sites the first thing you are required to do, as it is today, is go to the site’s own complaints system so you report or use the analogous term that the various sites use and report the content but if the site does not take action then there will now be the capacity to go the Children’s E-Safety Commissioner and say this is cyber bullying material the Children’s E-Safety Commissioner will assess it and if the Commissioner agrees that it is cyber bullying material then the commissioner will then be able to go the large social media sites and say you need to take this down.

Now key points: Specifically restricted to content directed at children not a general content regulation scheme, it is specific to cyber bullying and the first place to go is to the large social media sites but it’s about increasing the degree of confidence that where children and teenagers are the victims of cyber bullying, there is a process to get redress. In all the consultations that we’ve done to number one message that comes back is people say look there is very nasty stuff about me online on this social media site and I don’t seem to be able to do anything about it and the remedy people seem to be looking for more than anything else is to get harmful material down.

Journalist:

So to clarify is that getting the sites to take it down or getting the person who posted to take it down?

Paul Fletcher MP:

The principal path is to have the site take it down when it is a large social media site subject to the scheme. The other measure that will be part of the legislation is that Children’s E-Safety Commissioner will have the ability to issue a notice against a bully, the person who has posted harmful material, again if it is harmful material targeted at a child in Australia, and the notice will say you should take this down you should apologise etc. etc. and if there is no response to the notice then the Children’s E-Safety Commissioner will be able to refer that to the police.

Journalist:

You were talking about how it is a criminal offence?

Malcolm Turnbull MP:

Well it is, harassing people online using the internet or telecommunications to harass people online is a serious offence it is not often prosecuted, not often used.

Journalist:

Would it be the websites that are prosecuted?

Malcolm Turnbull MP:

If an individual does it they open themselves to prosecution, look we’re not trying to wave a big stick around, the aim is to get the problem solved.  We want to get the site to take it down, we want the commissioner to be able to send a notice that says you have been engaged in cyber bullying, we are requiring you to cease and desist and apologise.  If somebody is just relentlessly at it then they might find themselves in more hot water than they bargained for and we would expect that to be extremely rare. Most people when the nature of their conduct and consequences are brought to their attention they wake up to it. I think education and quick response is the critical thing the Children’s E-Safety Commissioner has got to be able to work very collaboratively with these social media sites and very collaboratively with communities, schools and, Departments of Education because the law moves quite slowly so this is really about a practical response and I  think it will be a very effective response.

Paul Fletcher MP:

Now just to add to that for a second, what we’ve done is have a very careful look at the end to end elements of the system that you want to have in place in relation to cyber bullying and we looked very carefully at the legislation that’s in place and the analysis suggests that there are adequate legislative provisions certainly in the federal criminal code. The challenge is that people don’t really know where to go to make a complaint right now and all too often when a complaint is made to the police they don’t know what to do with it so by establishing the Children’s E-Safety Commissioner this will be a central point where you can take a complaint if the large social media site does not respond it will also be an organisation that will support and work with schools, state education departments, and so on. One of the important things is that it will be the contact point for the large social media sites so it’s clear that we have a central contact point so it is clear that in the Australian Government there is leadership on these issues.

Journalist:

If the situation does get quite bad and someone is quite relentless in cyber bullying, will the police be notified?

Paul Fletcher MP:

Certainly, the complainer always has the option to go straight to the police today, they will always have that option in the future. If the conduct meets a criminal standard and as the minister says in many instances serious cyber bullying will meet a criminal standard, then you can proceed under the provisions that are in the law right now.

Journalist:

Even at a children’s level?

Paul Fletcher MP:

Yes, my word,  it doesn’t change the criminality of conduct that the person who is the victim of it is a child, certainly not.

Journalist:

From the time the complaint is made to the time the commissioner takes action, what duration would you like to say?

Paul Fletcher MP:

Pretty rapidly, in the discussion paper we talked about a 48 hour period, that’s a detail that’s to be finalised as we finalise the legislation but certainly a rapid period.

Malcom Turnbull MP:

Look as I said in the classroom all the big social media sites all want to do the right  thing but as you can imagine the scale, I mean take Facebook for an example this is a business that didn’t exist 10 years ago and now it has 1 billion accounts.

Paul Fletcher MP:

We should emphasise we have extensive discussion with the large social media sites with a view to coming up with a system that is as minimally disruptive as it can be to their existing systems.

Journalist:

Sorry one more question, when do you guys expect this to go out to all the schools?

Paul Fletcher MP:

Well the intention is that some funding is available this Financial Year but certainly from the next Financial Year, so the intention is that from the end of this Financial Year the first funding will be allocated so the program can be in place.