Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts, Paul Fletcher, has announced new online safety reforms, including a new Online Safety Act, aimed at strengthening protections for Australians online.
Speaking at the National Press Club, Mr Fletcher said keeping Australians safe online was a top priority.
“The internet offers significant economic and social benefits, but these benefits will only be fully realised if Australians can engage confidently and safely in the online world,” Mr Fletcher said.
“Australia has been at the forefront of online safety policy over the past two decades and the proposed reforms address the risk of evolving harms and build on our strong foundations.”
He noted that in 2015 the Government had established the world’s first Children’s eSafety Commissioner.
In 2017 the eSafety Commissioner’s remit was expanded to include all Australians and introduced a scheme to support victims of image-based abuse.
“The new Act will establish a new take-down scheme to tackle the cyber abuse of Australian adults. While children are particularly vulnerable to online bullying, we know that adults in the Australian community are also subject to online abuse and hate,” Mr Fletcher said.
Mr Fletcher said consultation on the proposed legislation had now begun.
“There will be a higher threshold for what constitutes adult cyber-bullying compared with the cyber-bullying of an Australian child,” he said.
Another feature of the proposed new Act included decreasing the time within which platforms must take down harmful content under the cyber-bullying and image-based abuse schemes from 48 to 24 hours.
The reforms also propose application of cyber-bullying be extended for children to cover various other online services such as gaming, chat services, messaging apps and social connection sites.
In addition, the eSafety Commissioner would be provided with powers to mandate transparency reporting by the digital platforms.
Consultation closes on 19 February 2020.
