QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Ms WELLS (Lilley—Minister for Sport and Minister for Communications) (14:03): I thank the member for Corangamite for her question and for many constructive discussions about improving women's safety online. The Albanese Labor government is committed to working with the tech industry to ensure that Australia can capture the opportunities and spread the benefits of AI.

But, on behalf of Australian parents, one issue we are not willing to negotiate on is online safety, particularly for young people. If tech companies want to do business in Australia, they must obey Australian laws, and Australia's state and federal laws prohibit the publishing and distributing of sexualised, non-consensual deepfake material and AI generated child sexual abuse material.

I commend the Attorney-General for that work. But an ongoing issue is the heavy reliance on victims reporting the deepfakes after the harm has already occurred. We must move the burden of reporting online harm from the shoulders of victims and stop that harm at the source.

We must hold big tech accountable for the tools they are creating and putting out to market, including to children. We must create basic safety standards for big tech just like every other industry in this country, like cars or food or toys. And, under our draft digital duty of care, the Albanese government will create basic safety standards and ban so-called nudify apps.

The digital duty of care will require all online service providers to ensure that there are systemic and pre-emptive measures in place to restrict the use of nudify services, and the bill will give the eSafety Commissioner the power to issue take-down notices to search engines and to app stores that house these nudify apps. These apps are solely designed to abuse, to bully, to harass and to intimidate.

The Albanese government is determined to restrict them because, whilst the image might be fake, the abuse and the harm is real. Parents know this all too well. One child in every classroom in Australia has now been the victim of deepfake material.

Four out of five of those reported cases are young girls. In one Melbourne case, investigators found 50 female students at a single high school were the victims of sexually explicit deepfakes. The scale of this harm is escalating.

The eSafety Commissioner has found a 550 per cent increase year on year in this conduct since 2019. While AI has the power to move Australia forward, there is no place in our country for apps and technologies that are solely used to abuse, to humiliate and to harm people—especially our young people. Australian parents are desperate for help against this scourge which hides in phones, in bedrooms and in schoolyards.

The Albanese government hears their calls, and that is why the draft digital duty of care legislation will force big tech to listen as well.