QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Ms PLIBERSEK (Sydney—Minister for Social Services) (14:07): I thank the member for Cunningham for her question and for her many decades of advocacy against family, domestic and sexual violence. We know that rates of sexual violence in this country have been exploding, particularly amongst young people. We know that rates of sexual violence have increased by 70 per cent.
Teenage boys are now the most likely perpetrators of sexual violence towards children and other teenagers, and, increasingly concerning, almost 60 per cent of young Australians say that they have experienced sexual strangulation. There is no safe way to strangle someone. All the experts I speak to—the parents, the teachers, the police—will tell you that there is a link between what young Australians are being fed online and the harms that are spilling over into the real world.
Teachers in particular, and teenage girls, are telling us that this behaviour is turning up in classrooms and it's affecting their education. We know that it takes just 23 minutes for a social media account mimicking a young boy to be fed misogynistic content online—so a young man sets up a social media account, he's checking out the cars, he's checking out the footy scores, and within 23 minutes he is being fed misogynistic trash, whether he has gone looking for it or not.
What our young people are being fed online is seeping into the real world. The tech giants do not care. We have to make them care about this.
We're up for action. We've already taken strong action on social media accounts for under-16s. As the minister was talking about, nudify apps—we've introduced age verification for pornography.
It's why this prime minister, this communications minister and this government want to introduce a digital duty of care for the tech platforms, an obligation on platforms to keep users safe. Mia Bannister, a mother who lost her beautiful 14-year-old son Ollie to suicide, said: 'We're losing our children. The algorithm didn't know my son, but it certainly knew his behaviour.
It didn't recognise a vulnerable 14-year-old boy that needed protection. It recognised his engagement, and it fed him more and more. For too long, we've asked parents to somehow outsmart the most sophisticated technology companies on Earth.' As the minister in charge of the next plan to end violence against women and children but, more importantly, as a mother, I would beg those opposite to join us in protecting our children from this trash.