Mr HAMILTON (Groom) (10:56): I will begin my comments by thanking the member for Fisher for raising this motion. It is important. It does speak to so many issues that are coming to the forefront of the national conversation today as we look across this nation to the level of lawlessness and social discord that we haven’t seen for years. It is tearing at the fabric of our society and it’s causing a lot of people concern and grief.
What I really want to thank the member for Fisher for is not what he is doing today but what he has done over a long period in this place on committees. He’s been speaking on bills like this for a prolonged period of time. He’s been advocating on this issue that’s been important to him and that’s been important to his community. His community and the people of Australia need to know. If you’re concerned about these issues, if you’re worried about what’s happening online, if you think your kids are getting exposed material they shouldn’t be, if you think your kids are responding or reacting to pressures that they shouldn’t be experiencing, it’s important that you know that people like the member for Fisher and others have actually stood up on this and they’ve done something about it. I thank him for it. Its been an important contribution to this place over a long period of time. It’s a difficult conversation to talk to young men about the impact of pornography and violent imagery on their mobile phones and on social media. He’s been willing to have it.
I raise this because so often when the member for Fisher has been advocating for change in this area, he hasn’t had support. I have to push back. This is such an important issue facing the country at the moment. I’m not going to launch into attacks, but I will point out that under the last term of government there were significant changes to the Online Safety Act. There was the establishment of the eSafety Commissioner. There were steps taken forward to address this issue. Unfortunately, far too many times this place, bipartisanship means us supporting Labor when they’re in government. But their support was not there on age verification. It was not there when the member for Fisher was raising it.
I want to raise another issue that is very relevant to this motion today, and that’s the impact of social media in spreading violent images and acts of violence and crime amongst young children. This was something that was raised with me by a local community group in Toowoomba who had seen far too often, as we saw growing crime in our community, something that was new for us to experience, that what sat behind it was a recording of these crimes on social media. What sat behind them was a recording of these crimes on social media. Not only was it an affront for people to have their possessions taken from them; unfortunately, we also saw theft move into violent crimes such as assaults and, in some cases, now murder cases going through the courts. All was recorded on social media.
What was confronting was that people would have these things happen to them and then someone would show them the video clip on TikTok, Instagram or Facebook of the crime being committed. That was confronting, but what was worse was that we were finding copycat videos being produced by younger kids. These videos were coming out and they weren’t just direct videos. These were videos with the crime being committed, with great graphics, with pumping soundtracks, making this life of crime look attractive. Unfortunately, to some very vulnerable people in our community, it did look attractive. They perpetuated this cycle of violence, so younger and younger kids were seeing this and getting involved.
When I raised this in the parliament—I brought my private member’s bill in March 2023—and I wrote to the Minister for Communications, asking her to address and saying this was happening and was going out of control, the response in the statement was, ‘If you come across material you think goes against the terms of service of a platform, you should report it to the platform in the first instance and, if it isn’t removed, you can make a report to the eSafety Commissioner.’ Nothing to see here. Nothing wrong at all. We didn’t need to make a single change back then, because it wasn’t on the front page. It wasn’t in the national conversation. It wasn’t popular to talk about then, so dismiss it and walk away.
Unfortunately, what’s happened since that time is these crimes have got worse and worse. They’ve spread right across our community and they are unavoidable now. The minister has to act. Member for Fisher, you stood there all the way through. Congratulations for your conviction.
Debate adjourned.
