QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Ms WELLS (Lilley—Minister for Sport and Minister for Communications) (14:46): I thank the member for Bonner for her question and for her ongoing advocacy on behalf of all women experience abuse and harm online. Today is Alannah & Madeline Day, a day that marks both an unfathomable tragedy in the loss of two beautiful young lives in Port Arthur. It also celebrates their legacy.
The Alannah & Madeline Foundation 30 years later continues to fight for the right of children to be free from violence, trauma and abuse. The Prime Minister is the patron of the Alannah & Madeline Foundation, and I recently had the pleasure of joining class 5 MM at Everton Park State School to try out some of the new modules of the Alannah & Madeline Foundation's eSmart program, which these students helped to develop.
This program teaches schoolchildren how to be safe and how to treat others well online. The Albanese government is proud to support this program with $6 million worth of funding, because the world has changed. Bullying has moved online and into group chats and online games and Snapchat and text messages.
And it can be relentless, following children home and into their bedrooms on the weekend. More than half of Australian children have now experienced cyberbullying, and the rates are higher among First Nations children, children who are gender or sexually diverse or children with disability. That means for most Australian families, at least one child has now experienced cyberbullying, whether that's through hurtful words, viral lies, humiliating or fake photos or being told online to hurt or kill themselves.
Online harms have real world consequences, and the Albanese government understands this. The Alannah & Madeline Foundation CEO Sara Davies, who joined us last week to announce our new draft Digital Duty of Care, knows this. Mia Bannister, Emma Mason and Wayne Holdsworth, whose children were lost because of what they experienced online.
They know this. At the heart of the Albanese government's digital duty of care is the right for children to live their lives free from abuse, harm, trauma and violence online. Digital platforms will have to satisfy the eSafety Commissioner that the tools and features that our kids are using are safe.
They will have to apply basic safety standards just as we have for kids' toys, for cars, for food. This means detecting cyber bullying and abuse. This means stopping it before it happens.
The digital duty of care has three goals: (1) protecting kids online, (2) getting illegal content off platforms and (3) giving Australians more choice over what they see online. I urge the opposition to tell us what it would take to support this bill and act with the urgency our children deserve. (Time expired)