Mr TEHAN (Wannon) (12:01): I rise to speak on the Customs Amendment (Strengthening and Modernising Licensing and Other Measures) Bill 2024, with what is called the Customs Licensing Charges Amendment Bill 2024. This bill amends the Customs Act 1901 to modernise and strengthen the customs licensing regime and makes amendments to streamline administrative processes, including through the digitisation of forms. The customs licensing regime encompasses depot, warehouse and customs broker licences. The bill also amends the AusCheck Act 2007 to allow for the disclosure of security identity card information to an officer of customs for the purposes of the Customs Act. The Customs Licensing Charges Amendment Bill modernises and streamlines the calculation of depot licence charges alongside the primary changes to the Customs Act by the bill. Amendments to the Customs Licensing Charges Act 1997 will strengthen licence fee compliance by aligning licence renewal payments requirements and calculations across the customs licensing regime. The charges bill will also rectify deficiencies in calculating depot licence renewal fees.

Together, these bills introduce a range of sensible changes to simplify and streamline the cross-border trade environment to ensure Australia remains globally competitive, building on the previous coalition government's simplified trade system—SDS—reform agenda. That simplified trade system work which was done by the previous coalition government has been incredibly important for driving down the cost of trade, and my hope is the government will continue to drive that SDS work and make it a focus and a priority. It needs to work across departments, and coordinating cross-departmental reform can be incredibly challenging unless it's driven by ministers in a very coordinated fashion. My hope is we will see that from the government so that the simplified trade system work—very important micro-economic reform—can continue.

The customs amendment bill is informed by the recommendations of the review of customs licensing regimes. It was a review that was conducted by the then Department of Immigration and Border Protection in 2015. The scope of the review was to assess all licensing regimes under the Customs Act, including licensing of custom brokers, depots and warehouses. It's also informed by the Australian Border Force's Operation Jardena, which was established in November 2021 to coordinate ABF efforts in combating organised crime in Australia's international supply chains and identify supply chain vulnerabilities to inform longer term supply chain reform. Measures in the bill address some of the identified vulnerabilities that are related to the customs licensing regime. So important work has been done, and now what we're seeing through this bill is that work, work which was done with two important reviews and other work, coming about in these amendments.

The amendments to reduce red tape and strengthen the integrity of the Australian customs licensing regime are supported by the coalition because we've done a lot of work that has led us here. In conjunction with amendments to modernise and streamline aspects of the licence administration, the amendments strengthen the eligibility to hold a licence and maintain a licence, which ensures the integrity of goods under customs control and that the applicant is adequately able to report, store and move goods under customs control, in line with the obligations of a licence.

The amendments in the bill are set out thematically according to each part of schedule 1 to the bill. Part 1 enables the digital transformation of depot warehouse and customs broker forms. Part 2 modernises provisions in respect of serving notices for the customs licensing regime. Part 3 modernises the publishing of notices by the Comptroller-General of Customs. Part 4 streamlines the disciplinary and licence cancellation process for licence customs brokers. Part 5 removes restrictions on the eligibility of contractors to be a nominee of a customs broker that is a company or a partnership. Part 6 facilitates the disclosure of information by AusCheck for a purpose or function under the Customs Act. Part 7 strengthens the fit-and-proper-person test in the customs licensing regime, including updating and ensuring that 'management or control' has the same meaning with regard to depots and warehouses. Part 8 strengthens the criteria for the grant and cancellation of depot and warehouse licences and strengthens integrity controls, such as by extending the powers of authorised ABF officers to give directions to persons operating in a customs licensed place and matters relating to the conditions attached to depot and warehouse licences. Part 9 streamlines and strengthens licence fee compliance by aligning payment and renewal requirements and enhancing suspension and cancellation provisions for non-payments. Part 10 facilitates the surrender of a licence upon request and removes the requirement to return or surrender licences after or when they are in the process of being cancelled. Part 11 provides for the refund of licence charges only where the licence has been voluntarily surrendered. Part 12 enables digitised forms relating to the loading, unloading and use of aircraft's and ship's stores and for these stores to be taken on board an aircraft or ship. Part 13 enables digitised forms relating to claims for return of seized goods. Part 14 makes amendments in respect of provisions for warehouses licensed under part 5 of the Customs Act and which are contingent on the commencement of the Excise and Customs Legislation Amendment (Streamlining Administration) Act 2024. The bill was introduced in May but has not yet passed, which up-states the drafting of these provisions.

The reforms benefit government by reducing the administrative burden associated with managing the customs licensing regime and strengthening the Border Force's ability to effectively manage threats of criminal organisation infiltration in the supply chain. These are important reforms, and that's why they're getting bipartisan support. As I've said previously, it builds on work done by previous reviews and what the coalition did through its reforms of the simplified trade system. It's good to see, especially in this area, the work that's being done on digitisation and on further streamlining, because the more we can do to simplify trade, red tape and licensing requirements, the better our trade will be and the smoother the customs processes will be, especially for Australian businesses.

As I've said previously, the coalition is happy to support this legislation. It builds on important work that we did in government, and my hope is that, especially when it comes to the simplified trade system, that very important and hard microeconomic reform work will be continued by the government.

Debate adjourned.

Ordered that the resumption of debate be made an order of the day for a later hour.

Mr COLEMAN (Banks) (12:11): I rise to speak on the Telecommunications Amendment (SMS Sender ID Register) Bill 2024. What this bill seeks to do is something very sensible. I think almost all of us, on some occasion, have received a scam text message that pretends to be from someone that it's not. You might get one that says it's from Westpac, HSBC or Telstra, but it's not. That is what is known as spoofing, where scammers put a false identity in the sender line. The idea is to trick people into believing in what's in that message. This bill seeks to create a register that the telecommunications companies would hold such that, if somebody tried to do impersonate Westpac, Telstra or whoever, the telecommunications company would see that it wasn't from that company and would block the message from getting through. It's a very sensible proposal. There are a few issues with the bill, which I'll come to in a second, but generally it is sensible and something we support.

There is a quite significant irony here, though. The Labor Party is putting forward a bill about not pretending to be someone you're not in a text message, when probably the single most famous example of this happening in Australia was perpetrated by the Australian Labor Party. It was actually eight years ago today that this happened, and it was something that became known as the 'Mediscare' scandal. Back then, in 2016, the Labor Party sent millions and millions of text messages to Australians, pretending to be from Medicare, and in those text messages they made various political statements. I have one here. It's from Saturday 2 July 2016—eight years ago today—and it says it's from Medicare. It wasn't from Medicare; it was from the Labor Party. It says: 'Mr Turnbull's plans to privatise Medicare will take us down the road of no return. Time is running out to save Medicare.' So this process is called spoofing, and it's something that was pioneered and championed by the Australian Labor Party—so much so that the then Leader of the Opposition, the honourable member for Maribyrnong, admitted to it.

The Sydney Morning Herald published a story, just after the 2016 election, about this text message. The story reads:

The election-day text, which said the government planned to wind back Medicare services, appeared to come from "Medicare".

…   …   …

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten in Morayfield told reporters the Medicare text idea came from Labor's headquarters in Brisbane.

Mr Shorten was asked directly on Tuesday if the "Mediscare" campaign came out of the Queensland branch of the Labor Party.

"Yes, they've taken responsibility for it," Mr Shorten said.

A number of people, including journalists, claimed on Saturday that they had been sent the same text message from a sender that appeared under the name 'Medicare'.

…   …   …

A spokesman from Queensland Labor confirmed it had sent the text messages …

So this is a pretty ironic situation, isn't it? The most famous example of what the government is now, sensibly, seeking to stop was perpetrated by the government itself. Minister Rowland, the Minister for Communications, said, quite accurately:

It's hard to imagine an Australian who has not received one of these text messages purporting to be from a bank or a toll road operator, for example—

She could have used Medicare—

These fraudsters operate domestically and overseas and use sophisticated technologies to trick innocent Australians …

She's right; they do. And probably the biggest one ever was from the Labor Party, but we won't quibble about that. I'm pleased that the Labor Party is seeking to ensure that it can never again do what it did with such enthusiasm in 2016. It's good that they want to legislate to stop that from happening again.

There are a few curiosities in the bill. It doesn't say whether the register will be mandatory or voluntary on the part of the telecommunications sector. That's a pretty important point. I believe the sector is open to it being mandatory and is broadly supportive of this legislation, but it's a pretty important point which is missing from the legislation. It also doesn't set a date for when the register will actually start working. Again, that would be good.

The government announced plans for this in April 2023—that's 16 months ago—and, as we're often seeing in the communications portfolio, there has been a sort of bureaucratic inertia. It's just layer upon layer of roundtables and consultative committees and, generally, not a great deal happening. In April 2023 the government says, 'We're going to do this'; 16 months later the legislation arrives, but then the legislation doesn't actually tell you when it will happen. That suggests it will not be happening for a little while. That is unfortunate, but it is a sensible piece of legislation.

As I said before, we've all been recipients of those text messages. Unfortunately, they often target older Australians and people who might be less familiar with how these scams work, who, unfortunately, can be susceptible to responding to some of these text messages. In my own electorate we have seen a shocking example of this, with a scam involving a scammer pretending to be HSBC Bank. This scam has led to numerous people, just in my own electorate, losing up to $50,000 each. I have very serious concerns about the way in which HSBC has responded, or, more frankly, has failed to respond to that scam. I know that the Australian Financial Complaints Authority, AFCA, is looking into this very closely, and I look forward to AFCA seeking a resolution—a resolution which is fair to those people who have been scammed out of very significant amounts of money. In some cases, those amounts equal their life savings.

This is a really serious issue. It's appropriate that the government moves in this area. It has taken too long, but it's better late than never. The coalition will support this legislation, but it is irony upon irony that the greatest perpetrator of scam texts in our history was the Labor Party, through the shocking 'Mediscare' scam. It's pleasing that, under this law, that will be unlawful in the future.

Debate adjourned.

Mr COLEMAN (Banks) (12:20): I rise to speak on the Communications Legislation Amendment (Regional Broadcasting Continuity) Bill 2024. Why is this called the 'Regional Broadcasting Continuity Bill'? The reason it's called that is because the continuation of regional broadcasting has just stopped in Mildura. In Mildura, one of our great centres in Australia, as of yesterday, Channel Ten is no longer being broadcast. Channel Ten in Mildura is a joint venture between WIN and Channel Seven, and the companies have said that for some years now the cost of running that business has exceeded the revenue, and that they had been trying and trying to come to some sensible resolution with this government which would enable them to continue to broadcast in Mildura. They said that no such resolution was provided—or, frankly, even an idea—by the government and that consequently they have shut down that service.

The issue about Mildura potentially closing has been on the agenda for a very long time. This is not a new issue and it's something that WIN has discussed over a significant period of time. WIN announced that the closure would occur on 30 June. When did the government introduce legislation related to the closure of Mildura, which was slated to occur on 30 June? When did the government actually introduce legislation to deal with this issue? On 26 June—four days before. That's when the government introduced the legislation. And what does the legislation say? It's quite extraordinary legislation, and I'll come to the detail in a moment. But I have here a letter that was sent to the Prime Minister on 18 June and signed by, it appears, all the television networks in Australia. It has Jeff Howard, the chief executive of Seven West Media; Mike Sneesby, the chief executive of Nine; Beverley McGarvey from Channel Ten; John Kelly from Southern Cross Austereo; Andrew Lancaster from WIN; Amy Wilshire from Imparja Television; and Bridget Fair from Free TV Australia. Those executives said to the Prime Minister that the closure of Mildura shows that things are getting desperate for regional television in Australia and that they needed his assistance to keep the lights on—to allow those broadcasts to continue.

They talked about the many pressures facing the industry, but what they pointed to in particular was what's known as the commercial broadcasting tax. This is a tax charged by government to broadcasters and it raises about $46 million a year. Because it's charged based on how much of the airwaves you use, regional broadcasters pay a disproportionately large amount—regional broadcasters, obviously, cover large areas and so they pay a disproportionately large amount of this $46 million. The CEOs wrote to the Prime Minister in good faith and said: 'We don't want to close Mildura and we don't want to close other regional broadcasters. What we need is a three-year moratorium on that commercial broadcasting tax.' Of course, that dovetails with policy that's already been announced by the coalition, and in fact was announced in last year's budget reply back in May, where the Leader of the Opposition said alongside the reforms that we would introduce to remove gambling advertising from live sport we would get rid of the commercial broadcasting tax. So one side of politics said, 'Yes, we are going to do this thing that is so important.'

So the CEOs write their letter in good faith, 18 June, and, to my knowledge, have not received a substantive response. On 30 June, what happens? Mildura television closes down; channel 10 closes down. If you live in Mildura today and you try to flick onto channel 10—nothing. Gone. This bill, which the government introduced four days before the closure of the Mildura service, is the government's attempt to address that issue. It is pretty remarkable what the government is suggesting here.

What this bill does is basically say, 'If you live in Mildura and you can't watch channel 10, we have a solution for you: you can get a satellite service.' Okay, but there is fine print which is, to get the satellite dish, you have to pay about $800. Imagine you are in Mildura, no more channel 10. Many people will access it through digital means but, if you can't access it through digital, you can't access it through the air waves because it is no longer there, so what does the government say to you four days before the thing is going to be shut down? 'Go and pay $800, buy a satellite dish just for the purpose of watching channel 10.' Look, channel 10 has a lot of fantastic programming—no doubt—but how many people are going to pay $800 so they can watch Ready Steady Cook? I don't know but I suspect it is not going to be a large number of people who are going to be particularly excited—Project fans though they may be—to go out and spend $800 on a satellite dish. This is the solution that this government has come up with four days before switchoff.

The network CEOs have very clearly stated there is a solution here and it is to provide tax relief on the commercial broadcasting tax, which hits the regionals really hard. If you are a regional broadcaster, obviously it is a much smaller market than if you are broadcasting into Sydney or Melbourne, so you have much lower advertising revenue, but, through this commercial broadcasting tax, you are paying quite a lot of tax. So the broadcasters are saying, 'Give us some relief from that tax.' This government said, 'No, we're not going to do that. What we're going to do is say, "Hey, people of Mildura, why don't you go and spend $800 on a satellite dish just to watch channel 10? You don't need it for nine or seven or other channels because they still work but channel 10 doesn't."'

The member for Mallee, who is in the chamber, I suspect, would have a better idea on this than me, but if you did a poll on the streets of Mildura and said, 'How do you feel about paying $800 to watch channel 10?' There would probably not be a lot of enthusiasm. But that is this minister's solution. Her solution is to say to the people of Mildura, 'You can still watch channel 10, but we want you to pay $800 for a satellite dish and you only need it for channel 10 because everything else will continue to work.' That is just very, very concerning. This is in the middle of Labor's cost-of-living crisis. As we know, many people in regional Australia are on lower incomes than people in metropolitan Australia. Who has a lazy $800 in Mildura to spend so they can watch channel 10? I don't think there would be many people in that position.

The lack of foresight, the lack of rigour, the lack of planning, the lack of strategic focus on the part of this government and this minister means we are in this situation in the parliament four days before switchoff. And, of course, we're only debating it today. It's actually two days after they switched it off, on 30 June. So two days after it's been switched off we're debating what to do.

Free TV has been quite scathing on this. Bridget Fair, always a very passionate advocate for the industry that she represents, said:

This legislation merely allows Mildura viewers the option of installing a satellite dish at their own expense to receive the remote area VAST service to replace their Network 10 services.

While this gives Mildura residents an option to replace their lost services, it is not a fair or reasonable solution, new satellite installation can cost upwards of $800.

She went on to observe, with great clarity:

In a cost-of-living crisis this is simply not realistic for many Australians just to access the television services that are available for free to everyone else.

It's extraordinary.

The member for Mallee has been articulating with such passion the situation that the residents of Mildura find themselves in, because this is actually unique to Mildura. Now, the fear is—and the CEOs talk about this in their letter—it might not be unique to Mildura in the future; this could easily happen in other country towns. And is the government's response to those towns seriously going to be, 'Hey, pay $800 to get a satellite dish to keep watching Channel 10'? The CEOs, in their letter, talk about the issues that are arising here. They say that we are now in a position where regional licensees have been forced to start turning off unprofitable licenses. The shareholders of Mildura Digital Television can no longer subsidise the losses incurred. They also say—and this is an important point. I mentioned before that, unfortunately, Mildura may not be the last. In their letter to the Prime Minister, the CEOs say, 'Decisions such as those in relation to Mildura and other challenged markets can be expected to continue into the future.' So Mildura is not going to be the last, and this proposal is a three-year relief on this bill.

But it is sometimes hard to understand the positions taken by the communications minister on so many different issues. Obviously, it's the judgement of the minister that we talk about here, given that the minister has put this legislation before parliament. As we've seen today widely reported in the media, this is the same minister who welcomed the NBN price increases of up to 14 per cent in eight months as great news for consumers. This is the same minister who, in response to the eSafety Commissioner's call for a trial of age assurance technology to protect children, wrote, in a letter to the Prime Minister in July last year, that that would be an unnecessary distraction, only to adopt that position some nine or 10 months later. It's part of a pattern of very concerning conduct by this minister.

The other part of the bill which I should mention is a sensible change to enable broadcasters to use effectively less spectrum when they broadcast, should they choose to do so. That is technically not allowed under the rules at present. So what this bill would do is enable that to occur. This is a sensible thing. It's good for the networks, it's good for the government and it's good for the efficient use of spectrum management.

This is a very concerning situation. There are some 70,000 viewers in the Mildura region who will no longer be able to see Channel 10, and the minister's response is, 'Pay $800 for a satellite dish.' It's very difficult to understand. I know the member for Mallee will have a lot more to say about this, given that this so directly affects her community. Unfortunately, this same issue may affect other regional communities in the future.

Dr WEBSTER (Mallee) (12:35): I rise to speak on the Communications Legislation Amendment (Regional Broadcasting Continuity) Bill 2024. Mildura and the wider Sunraysia region are ground zero for the vanishing future of regional free-to-air television broadcasting, which is in stark contrast to the trailblazing position Labor claimed Mildura held back in 2010—more on that in a moment. The 1 July closure of Mildura Digital Television Pty Ltd and, thereby, the transmission of Channel 10 and affiliate channel content must become a critical juncture for regional television in our nation, and it demands more than a bandaid. Regional Australians need and deserve a comprehensive long-term strategy to secure sustainable regional broadcasting.

Mildura residents can no longer watch Channel 10 or its Bold and Peach channels on free-to-air television, as Mildura Digital Television has now shut down. MasterChef is off the menu, and Mildura is sadly and undeservedly in the cheap seats. One constituent who rang my office was quite emotional. No longer will she be able to watch The Bold and the Beautiful.

The sad reality of this unwanted first is that in 2010, the Sunraysia region welcomed the then communications minister Stephen Conroy who read out the countdown for gathered media as Sunraysia became the first region in Australia to switch from analogue to digital. On board the PS Mundoo paddle boat—a fabulous paddle boat in the Mildura region—Minister Conroy, on loudspeaker over the phone, told technician Rob Kovac at Yatpool to flick the switch to switch off the analogue signal. As the analogue screen flicked to white noise, Minister Conroy then said, 'Today, Mildura makes history again as it becomes the first region in Australia to make the switch to digital only TV.' How sad that just 14 years later Mildura takes the unwanted first of being the first in the nation to switch off a digital TV signal. Indeed, Sunraysia residents are now the first in the country to cease having access to one of the nation's five major television channels. It's little wonder that the Labor spin doctors have called this bill a continuity bill. The only continuous thing from this government is weakness, incompetence and robbing regions to buy votes in the inner cities.

I raised the alarm about Mildura Digital Television's decision when I first heard about it in early May. I wrote to the communications minister, Minister Rowland, asking for assistance or intervention, bearing in mind that some of our older viewers may not have had the TV to access the digital alternative or may not have the digital literacy to do so. The panellists on The Project expressed similar concerns on Sunday night. I also spoke to both WIN, who co-own the Mildura digital TV operation, and Channel 10. In a peculiar arrangement, 10 are powerless to stop their programs from going off air due to a decision by the co-owners of MD TV's affiliates, Seven and Nine.

A constituent wrote to me about the loss of Channel 10 locally. She said:

As a long-time viewer, I am deeply distressed by this decision, as it impacts not only me but also many other residents in the area who rely on Channel Ten for news, entertainment and community connection.

Another constituent told me:

If they let Channel Ten close its services to Mildura, it will cause a cascade of changes across all networks—

How true—

Look at the banks, one closes in a small area and others follow.

My partner and I often watch 10 when we come home from a long day.

The second constituent is right about a cascade of changes that will follow, as we saw with bank branches. Free TV Australia has called for reform to establish a stable, long-term footing for regional television broadcasting. As regional Australians begin to lose access to television services, the availability of local trusted news, local advertising opportunities for regional businesses and Australian content in regional areas are all under threat.

Most regrettably, Mallee knows this all too well. Mallee has not one single television journalist or news service presented in the region. I remind the House that that is over one-third of the geographical area of Victoria. On the Mildura Digital Television shutdown, Free TV CEO, Bridget Fair, told ABC Mildura-Swan Hill: 'This has been a long time coming and the government has been aware of it, so they should have maybe had a bit more time to come up with a plan.'

Mr Coleman: Four days.

Dr WEBSTER: Yes; four days is all we got. This bill before the House today merely allows Mildura viewers the option of installing a satellite dish—at their own expense—to receive the remote area VAST service to continue receiving Network 10 services. The Sunraysia Daily, a local newspaper, generously called the minister's bill 'a last-ditch effort to provide access to the Channel 10 broadcast'. Sure. This bill gives Mildura residents what you could describe as a technical option to replace their lost services, but it is neither a fair nor reasonable solution. The cost of a new satellite installation, which is up to $800, is simply not realistic for many Australians, especially in a cost-of-living crisis.

Without urgent substantive action by the government, more regional digital transmission areas are likely to cease. Over the past five years, regional broadcasting has been the subject of numerous detailed government reviews, but we still have no plan from the Albanese Labor government to ensure a long-term sustainability of this critical media sector.

Regional commercial broadcasters spend millions on local content every year and comply with significant local news content quotas that do not apply to any other platform. In the financial year 2023, they spent $35 million on local news bulletins—$5 million more than the previous year. Regrettably, Mallee voters don't see the benefit of that as there are no local commercial TV news journalists or bulletins. Even so, while Mildura has taken the first hit in this latest round of signal closures, this is about regional Australia because the Nationals stand for regional Australia. All commercial television broadcasters also comply with additional regulatory requirements, such as the 55 per cent Australian content obligation and accessibility requirements.

Despite the public interest benefits they deliver, Australian commercial television broadcasters pay the highest spectrum taxes in the world—known as the commercial broadcasting tax here in Australia. This tax is a significant impost on regional broadcasters ability to fund content and infrastructure costs. The commercial broadcasting tax was introduced as a temporary measure in 2017 and, as the shadow minister has outlined, should have been abandoned years ago.

Solutions to keeping the lights on for regional TV are squarely in the hands and control of the Albanese Labor government. The coalition did its part during COVID-19 with the Public Interest News Gathering program, or PING, to help regional media, including regional television, to apply for grants totalling $50 million in value to help with staff wages, training technology or website upgrades. The coalition also provided spectrum tax-fee relief for 12 months to assist the regional media sector from 2020 to 2021.

Regional television now needs direct funding support for markets where services are not commercially viable. Regional and remote communities are now faced with the equivalent of a mobile blackspot—call it a 'broadcasting blackspot', if you like. The federal government provides funding for commercial telecommunications operators to ensure locals can receive their signal, yet this government has not ensured that regional Australians can continue to have access to high-quality TV services.

Regional broadcasters know their audiences love local news, community stories and sport, and that local businesses need regional TV to reach local customers. Without the government's long-term support, more services are at risk and the social and economic benefits for regional Australia will be lost.

Let me touch on the role of the ABC. As some members might be thinking, they are there to fill gaps like the one created by the demise of Mildura Digital Television and the Channel 10 signal in Sunraysia. The ABC's resourcing in regional Australia is problematic. One of the upsides of commercial broadcasters is that they get direct feedback on profit and loss statements, whether their content is fit for purpose and whether their local regional audiences like what they're broadcasting. If advertisers love your local content, they will advertise. If they hate it, they stop paying the bill. It is the best market-driven way of ensuring accountability to your local audience. Arguably, the ABC lacks that form of direct accountability, so the ABC is not adequate as the fallback solution.

I met with Minister Rowland's advisers last week alongside the shadow minister for communications, David Coleman, about the Mildura situation. Despite our efforts, Mildura Digital Television is committed to their closure decision, as we know—it's happened—saying the federal government's commercial broadcasting tax was a major contributing factor. For Channel 10 viewers in Mildura, the signal went off air on 30 June. The coalition is committed to reforming our television arrangements. Shadow minister Coleman and I have discussed policies to support regional broadcasting, including the abolition of the commercial broadcasting tax. In 2023, TV broadcasters were forced to pay over $44 million for this tax that disproportionately affects regional broadcasters, as he outlined. Eliminating this tax will allow broadcasters to invest more in local staff and programs for regional communities.

The Albanese Labor government yet again is robbing regions to buy votes in the inner cities, leaving regional Australia to wither on the vine. The Prime Minister's weak leadership sees the surging power of Meta, Google and social media platforms going unchecked, pushing their content and ideological agenda onto Australians as their primary source of entertainment and news. These foreign giants' unchecked market power is also a major factor in commercial TV's struggle for advertising revenue. Indeed, Bridget Fair, the Free TV Australia CEO, also told ABC Radio in Mildura: 'We've got more competition for eyeballs. Obviously, people are watching streaming and other services, and our services are required to be funded by advertising dollars.' As that becomes more difficult to generate with more competition, it means there will be more challenges for regional television operations.

The coalition has led the way on holding the social media giants to account, establishing the eSafety Commissioner and putting forward reforms to control online content in the national interest, proposing age verification to protect children online. The communications minister has only recently realised the need for action. As the Mildura Digital TV shut down date loomed, one Mallee resident said: 'Country people need to be able to source information and programs from all free-to-air channels. Surely the government can ensure these things are freely available to not only city but country people. Once again, we are the forgotten electors.' The right to access reliable news, local stories and entertainment should not be a privilege based on geography. The digital divide between city and country must be addressed to guarantee that all Australians, regardless of where they live, have equitable access to the same television services.

The Albanese Labor government's neglect of regional Australians is glaring. The needs and rights of regional Australians cannot continue to be overlooked. It is a matter of equity—something this government talks a lot about. The government has a responsibility to ensure that regional communities are not left behind, particularly in an era where information is power. The closure of Mildura Digital Television is a stark reminder of the disparities that still exist. We must ensure that regional voices are heard and that the essential services they rely on are protected and sustained.

Mr BIRRELL (Nicholls—Deputy Nationals Whip) (12:49): I rise also to speak on the Communications Legislation Amendment (Regional Broadcasting Continuity) Bill 2024. I do it with a heavy heart. It's the diminishing of regional TV. It's the diminishing of regional choices. And it's another indication that, when it comes to regional Australia, this Labor government just doesn't get it, whether it be WA sheep farmers, irrigators in the Murray-Darling Basin or people who live in regional cities who want infrastructure. You can't have a government that just focuses on cities and doesn't care about regions, and, unfortunately, that's what we've got. This isn't a huge example of that but it is an example of that, and it's really disappointing.

I want to support the member for Mallee, who just spoke, and her community in Mildura and surrounds. The loss of any free-to-air broadcasting in a regional area is a poor outcome for the industry, for viewers and for choice. Mildura Digital Television, which carried the Channel Ten signal to 70,000 viewers in Mildura, stopped transmitting on 30 June. MDT, jointly operated by WIN and the Seven network, first went to air in January 2006, but it has run at a loss and the decision was made to wind it up. Without any federal assistance to keep it going, the licence has been handed in. Viewers in Mildura now have to use the 10Play streaming app to watch the shows they previously watched free-to-air—and that's if they have the technology, the know-how and internet bandwidth to stream. Not everyone has that, particularly in regional areas. This bill is a response to the situation in Mildura, but it isn't the long-term solution we need and it isn't the long-term solution to the challenges faced by regional broadcasters.

What does this bill do? It amends the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 and the Radio Communications Act 1992 to support continued access to television broadcasting services in regional Australia by permitting viewers to access government funded viewer-access satellite television—VAST—or the VAST safety net when a commercial television broadcaster ceases to provide terrestrial services in a given area. That's the case in Mildura, where the Seven and Nine signals will continue to be broadcast but Channel Ten and its secondary channels will no longer be broadcast.

What is VAST? Viewer access satellite television fills gaps in regional Australia where there is no reception or there is very poor reception. Anyone wishing to access VAST needs to purchase a VAST approved satellite set-top box and a satellite dish of at least 65cm diameter. The cost is from around $500 for a dish-and-receiver bundle, plus installation. It's a popular service for many grey nomads, but the portable systems with automatic tracking can cost many thousands of dollars. While creating access to VAST in the Mildura scenario means that viewers can continue to receive terrestrial broadcasts for all channels, they face additional imposts in costs and technological challenges. Therefore, they aren't receiving equality of access with other people in Australia—for example, people who live in cities or even in regional cities. Some might argue it's a cost of living in rural and remote parts of Australia. But Mildura is a regional city on the Victorian-New South Wales border; it's a significant city and I think its people deserve the same sort of access, the equality of access, to terrestrial broadcast television that other Australians have.

The reason for this impost on viewers isn't remoteness or reception, it's a partial failure of the aggregated regional TV market. Continuing to broadcast at a loss was uneconomic for the broadcast licence holder—hopefully, this is a one-off. But, as a parliament, we just can't afford to hope it doesn't happen again to another regional community. It has happened to the member for Mallee. I'm her next-door neighbour in Nicholls, and I have some regional areas that might suffer from this in the future. Or it could spread to Indi. All of us in regional areas suffer consistently from this inequality and the perception that the government somehow thinks we don't count as much as people who live in cities. Thanks to this bill, the Mildura example now has a name: it's a declared 'service deficient area'. Decoded, that means some of the channels which viewers should ordinarily receive free-to-air will no longer be available for them. I think we should seek to avoid this situation.

The way to do that, the long-term solution, is to make regional broadcasting viable. This bill removes impediments to commercial television broadcasters consolidating their terrestrial transmission arrangements and, in certain circumstances, breaking the one-on-one relationship between broadcasting and transmitter licences. This will allow broadcasters to pursue more efficient and cost-effective transmission arrangements. The industry view is that these are tweaks rather than real reform.

Free TV, which represents regional television broadcasters, has called for a comprehensive four-step plan to put regional television broadcasting on a sustainable long-term footing. What is at stake here is access to services, particularly trusted local news; local advertising opportunities; and access to major sports and cultural broadcasts. That's so important because traditionally in Australia we have come together around sporting and cultural broadcasts—all sorts of sporting broadcasts, such as the Melbourne Cup, the Olympics and the AFL grand final. Some of those, obviously, are on channels that will still be broadcasting terrestrially in Mildura, but Channel 10 had some of those too. So there is an issue with access to sporting broadcasts into the future. Abolishing the spectrum tax is one of the suggested measures to reduce costs for regional broadcasters, and it's a cost-saving measure that the coalition supports.

We have lost so much of what we had in regional television, and I think we need to protect what we have left. Three years after television had launched in metropolitan Sydney and Melbourne, the first regional station started broadcasting. The first to launch was TVT6 in Hobart in May 1960 and then GLV10 in Traralgon in December 1961. That's so long ago that my friend the member for Gippsland wasn't even born—wasn't even watching.

Mr Hill: That is a long time ago!

Mr BIRRELL: It is; I agree. A few days later, very personal for me, it was GMV6 in Shepparton. I can remember waking up to GMV6 Six's Super Saturday Show. We only had two channels when I was young: Channel 3, which was the ABC, and Channel 6, which was GMV6. You'd watch the cartoons in the morning, Six's Super Saturday Show, and then at night you'd watch whatever good American TV was imported then—The A-Team or CHiPS. It was part of our childhood, it was great stuff and I really enjoyed it, and we want the same access for young people growing up now. I understand things are a bit different. I have conversations with my kids about streaming. But free-to-air television is still important for a number of families, particularly lower socioeconomic families in regional areas, where streaming is more difficult.

Regional television is part of our lives, and we're tempted to take it for granted, but we shouldn't. Local content has diminished over the years. Local news has consolidated, and that's disappointing. That has an effect on democracy. We used to have GMV6 News and then WIN News, which would report on local issues, it would report on what local councils were doing and it would report on what state politicians were doing and how they were representing their community. Those services have been significantly diminished, and I don't think that's good for our democracy. Now in Mildura the transmission of a whole network is ceasing because it's financially unviable. That impacts access and choice, it deepens the divide between city and country, and it's exactly why the Nationals continue to stand up for regional Australia, where people deserve equity of access regardless of where they live.

We often say in this place that your postcode shouldn't define a number of things—your access to education and to all number of services. It shouldn't define your access to the free-to-air television that people in the cities are getting. We are one country. We used to be more cohesive when we all got around the water cooler and discussed what we saw on the TV last night. I know things have changed, but equitable access to free-to-air television for people across Australia, including in regional Australia, is a really important thing that this parliament should be trying to facilitate.

Ms ROWLAND (Greenway—Minister for Communications) (12:59): I thank all the honourable members who have contributed to the debate on the Communications Legislation Amendment (Regional Broadcasting Continuity) Bill 2024. I'm very pleased I was able to be in the chamber to hear the words of the member for Nicholls. It was enlightening. I think there were two things in particular that the member for Nicholls said that are worth reiterating—first, that free-to-air broadcasting is special. It is special. It is the stable, free and ubiquitous platform that means that people in both metropolitan areas and rural and regional Australia have access to that, and I thank the member for bringing that to the attention of the House.

The member also drew attention to the fact that the diminution of services in regional Australia—consolidation, loss of news—has been occurring over a long period of time, which is very true. That's why it is necessary to understand that we are unfortunately in a situation where we've inherited an analogue era of regulation that needs to be updated for the future. We have legislation before the parliament to do that, and, at the same time, we need to appreciate the ongoing commercial decisions and the circumstances in which these regional broadcasters find themselves. But I thank the member for Nicholls for his very thoughtful contribution. I look forward to engaging with him on how regional communications—not only broadcasting but also broadband and telecommunications services more generally—can be enhanced for the benefit of his constituents.

It's very pleasing to see strong support across the parliament for measures that enhance access to free-to-air broadcasting services in regional and remote Australia. The Albanese government is committed to ensuring that all Australians have equitable access to high-quality television broadcasting services. This bill will make a small but meaningful contribution to that outcome.

The broadcasting sector faces particular challenges in regional areas, as the closure of Mildura Digital Television, MDT, makes clear. This bill responds to two recent developments, raised chiefly by the actions of regional broadcasters, and presents practical measures for regional broadcasting: firstly, the May 2024 decision by the board of MDT to cease operations from 1 July 2024 and, secondly, the April 2024 consolidation by WIN Television of the services it provides under two commercial TV licences in the SA licence areas of Mount Gambier / South East TV1 and Riverland TV1.

The decision to close MDT is a very disappointing commercial decision of the free-to-air broadcasters WIN and Seven Network to close their joint venture, which provided Network Ten services in the Mildura/Sunraysia TV1 licence area. The decision, as I said, underscores the significant structural issues that are affecting the provision of digital terrestrial broadcasting services in regional Australia, which is why the government has introduced legislation to expand access to the Viewer Access Satellite Television, or VAST, service.

VAST is a taxpayer-funded safety net which ensures that Australians in regional or remote communities without adequate terrestrial broadcasting can continue to access free-to-air television via satellite. The safety net supports the provision of free-to-air commercial television to over 1½ million Australians. It is a Labor initiative, and the government has extended funding to continue VAST across regional and remote Australia for an additional seven years to 2030-31.

The Albanese government has moved swiftly to address the two recent issues, which I mentioned, that impact regional Australia. We briefed the shadow minister and the member for Mallee ahead of bill introduction last week so the opposition would be in a position to facilitate prompt passage of the legislation on a bipartisan basis. If the coalition choose to delay this bill or refer it to a committee, that is their prerogative, but I would note that any delay to the passage of this legislation would do the following: it would increase the time that the residents of Mildura are unable to access the option of the VAST safety net, and it will increase the time that WIN is potentially in breach of its licence conditions and other regulatory obligations.

The closure of MDT reflects the difficulties of operating commercial broadcasting and transmission services in the contemporary media environment, and it demonstrates, as I said, the consequences of a decade of inaction in the way of meaningful media reform under the previous government. The former government, in 2017, declared that their media reforms heralded a new era for the media, yet regional broadcasting remained significantly challenged. To quote a media release dated 14 September 2017, entitled 'A new era for Australia's media', the Prime Minister at the time, Malcolm Turnbull, said:

The government is strengthening Australia's media industry, enhancing media diversity and securing local journalism jobs, particularly in regional areas.

Flash forward to 8 May 2024, when the shadow minister and the member for Mallee issued a media release about the closure of MDT and, of all things, poked fun at the issues facing regional Australians and the closure of MDT as they did so. This media release entitled: 'Seven West and WIN Mildura, get me out of here' responds to the closure of MDT with a series of thoughtless puns about various 10 programs. Even now, this unedifying media release remains available on the member for Mallee's website.

I have extended the member for Mallee the courtesy of briefings as well as advice on issues affecting broadcasting services in her electorate, including notification in February this year of an upgrade of services from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4. I will give the member the benefit of the doubt; she hasn't been here as long as some others. She wasn't here for the coalition's repeal of the two-out-of-three cross media rule, unlike the shadow minister. But it does demonstrate that the coalition, or some in it, are not taking this issue as seriously as they should.

The reality is that the closure of MDT has been under contemplation for some time. In fact, I understand the matter was brought to the attention of the former minister for communications in the coalition government but he failed to engage on the matter. If this is true, certainly, this is something that no doubt an inquiry into this bill might bring to light and I welcome it. By contrast, my office and my department have engaged with MDT several times to discuss their plans. I have engaged with the parties to support an orderly wind down that communicated the decision to the affected audience, and advised them of alternative ways of accessing the 10 service. And, as I said, the Albanese government has introduced legislation into parliament precisely so the residents of Mildura have the choice of accessing the VAST service so they may receive the full suite of television broadcasting services by satellite if they choose to do so. If a resident of Mildura takes up the VAST option, they will have access to a full suite of those services, more than just the 10 services. But consumers do have choice, and many residents in Mildura with an internet connection may choose to watch 10 content over 10 Play app. Because of the Albanese government's commitment to improving connectivity in the regions, many more residents of Mildura will be able to exercise this option.

I am pleased to inform the House that an additional 16,500 residents of Mildura are now able to access high-speed broadband, supported by the Albanese government's investment of $2.4 billion to give an additional 1.5 million premises full-fibre access and that includes more than 660,000 additional premises in rural and regional Australia. This investment is boosting the reliability of broadband services and the productivity of businesses, supporting the way we now work, study and transact.

I note the shadow minister mentioned the commercial broadcasting tax. He said this tax hits regional broadcasters hard. For the record, the commercial broadcasting tax was introduced by a coalition government. It is a Liberal-National Party tax, and the shadow minister was a member of the government that introduced this tax. In recognition of the challenges facing regional broadcasters, the Albanese government has already extended and increased the commercial broadcasting tax rebate, which means regional broadcasters pay less tax for the spectrum they use. Under the Albanese government, the rebate for the broadcasting tax has been extended and increased for the first time since the coalition introduced it in 2017.

I note the opposition have indicated they would remove the CBT. As has been reported in the Australian Financial Review, in May 2023 the opposition wrote to broadcasters offering to remove the commercial broadcasting tax in exchange for the removal of wagering advertising during the broadcast of sport. So it would be misleading for the opposition to now claim they are removing the commercial broadcasting tax to support regional outcomes when their purpose was to make up for lost wagering revenue. I think those opposite need to understand that the CBT can only be offset once, and I look forward to the opposition policy on how spectrum will be valued in Australia. I'm sure the telco industry and all of industry will be very interested to understand this too.

But that isn't all we're doing for the media sector when it comes significant reforms and, indeed, when it comes to this bill. We have funded the regulator, the ACMA, to intimate a new Media Diversity Measurement Framework. We've introduced genuine media reforms into the parliament to modernise Australia's analogue-era broadcasting laws with the Communications Legislation Amendment (Prominence and Anti-siphoning) Bill 2024, which will support access to free local TV on connected devices and free sports coverage in the streaming era. We've consulted publicly on the News Media Assistance Program, and my department has analysed submissions and is working across government to consider a range of measures to support the sustainability of the sector and media diversity. This is in addition to stable funding to ensure regional Australians continue to receive the ABC and SBS services, as well as community radio broadcasting, after a decade of cuts and uncertainty under the coalition. That's in addition to our funding for the AAP and over 200 regional and local independent newspaper publishers under the Regional and Local Newspaper Publishers program, as well as a journalist fund supporting cadets in the regions. Unlike the former coalition government, who wasted a decade, ignored regional broadcasters and now make light of this service closure, this government takes the issues facing regional Australia and broadcasters seriously. We're working hard to fix the mess that the coalition left behind.

As I said, this bill will make amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act to expand access to the government funded viewer access satellite television service for Australians living in areas where there has been a material reduction in the number of commercial television broadcasting services provided terrestrially. Although we know that these amendments to the Radio Communications Act adjust the licensing framework that applies to broadcasters, there is a strict one-to-one relationship between the broadcasting licences that authorise broadcasting services and the transmitter licences that authorise the use of radio communications equipment. Although this remains suitable in many circumstances, it won't permit broadcasters to pursue more innovative and efficient ways of delivering their services, should they wish to do so. That is why this bill will also address this anomaly and allow the ACMA to declare that a specified transmitter licence is taken to authorise the operation of one or more radio communications transmitters for transmitting the services authorised under two or more broadcasting licences.

These measures will ensure Australians can continue to access television broadcasting services in the circumstances where outdated regulations would otherwise prevent it. This is important for consumers and industry, and it will support the government's objective of providing equitable access to media services for all Australians, irrespective of where they live or what they earn. I call on members to support the bill.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Ms ROWLAND (Greenway—Minister for Communications) (13:12): by leave—I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Mr HILL (Bruce) (13:13): I said when I finished last night that I would be back soon with a different tie—and so it has come to pass! I'll perhaps precis my remarks of last night, given that they were very short. You can do a lot in two minutes, but not do justice to this bill. This new criminal law will ban non-consensual sharing of deepfake pornography. It's necessary as a consequence of the time we live in and the acceleration of technology, particularly artificial intelligence technologies. This new law will make it a criminal offence to share deepfake porn of someone without their consent. It does seem bizarrely unnecessary that such a law is required, if any sense of common decency could be relied upon. But here we are.

Digitally created and altered sexually explicit material is a damaging form of abuse and is accelerating. It's most often used against women and girls but it can be weaponised against anyone. There's been an explosion and a proliferation of artificial intelligence and online technologies, which has made this bill urgent. Anyone who is reasonably digitally literate now, so I'm told—just to reassure you, Deputy Speaker Vasta, and the House, this is not something I have direct familiarity with, but we are told that anyone with a modicum of technical ability can now undertake these activities. It is a high-priority reform for the government and is part of a suite of reforms to tackle online harms, and I'm glad to see ongoing, increasingly urgent action.

For all the many benefits of technology—we can name them and talk about them at length—there are also, apparently, many negatives such as scams, deepfakes and the growing recognition of the mixed benefits of social media and the harms that are occurring. Sexually explicit deepfakes, shared without the consent of the people depicted, are being used to degrade and dehumanise other Australians—especially to target women, to perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes and, so the experts tell us, to drive gender based violence; hence action is needed.

There are a number of questions. I posted something on various social media platforms a few weeks ago when we announced this, and on the rare occasion you get a couple of minutes to have a look at what some of the—there are always a bunch of silly comments and conspiracy theories, such is the world we live in, but there are some genuine questions people who have an interest in this and are trying to work out what it means are posing. There is a set of questions about what deepfakes are, and it's worth recording this: deepfakes, as this bill provides, are images, videos or sound files, often generated using AI, of a real person that have been edited to create realistic but false depictions of them doing or saying something they did not actually say or do. Deepfakes can create, as we're seeing across the world, entirely new content or manipulate existing content using a large number of photos or recordings of a person. The risks of abuse are growing as the tools to create deepfakes become more accessible. That's the general definition of deepfakes. But this bill doesn't cover all deepfakes; it just covers sexually explicit deepfakes.

Another question, which people, perhaps peculiarly, with various different intents may ask and have asked, is: will this bill cover sexually explicit deepfakes of famous people or just of people they know? The answer to that is: it will cover both. The new offences cover where a person shares a sexually explicit deepfake of a real person either knowing the person has not consented or being reckless as to whether they have consented or not. This is regardless of who the real person is and whether—this is really important—they're personally known to the offender, to the person sharing this deepfake material.

In a number of comments I saw, people were asking, 'Will this cover electoral fraud or other kinds of scams?' The answer is no. This bill is particularly and solely focused on the nonconsensual sharing of sexually explicit deepfakes online. It will only apply if the deepfakes are sexually explicit. There is of course a set of broader concerns, and we're seeing them play out in various elections around the world now—and no doubt it will be an issue for us in the next set of elections we face in this country. It is a set of broader and legitimate concerns in our democracy about the use of deepfake technology. It's not just politicians; those who want to undermine trust in our institutions can deploy this technology across all spheres of our society. But this is not what this bill is focused on; it is focused on sexually explicit deepfakes that are doing so much harm, particularly to young women and girls.

There is then the question: does this bill cover the mere creation of deepfakes? The answer to that, which some may be a little confused by, is no. It's not actually the creation; it's the nonconsensual sharing that this bill criminalises. The offences in the bill apply to the sharing of nonconsensual deepfake sexually explicit material online. Where the person also created the deepfake that is shared without consent, there's an aggravated offence which carries a higher penalty of up to seven years imprisonment. So an aggravated offence is there; if you create and share without consent, there's a higher penalty. But, arguably, just the creation alone is not something that the Commonwealth can criminalise. It's important to ensure that the new offences are legally robust and that they have a sound basis in the constitutional powers of the federal parliament. The Commonwealth's power to legislate does not extend to the mere creation of sexually explicit adult deepfakes; presumably, that's something the states and territories would have to deal with. There are state and territory laws that may well apply to the creation of deepfakes in different ways in the different states and territories, but the Commonwealth does have the constitutional power to deal with sharing of non-consensual material over telecommunications networks and so on.

The Criminal Code currently criminalises the sharing of private sexual material online. But the definition of 'private sexual material' is potentially limiting and doesn't explicitly extend to artificially generated material, such as deepfakes—hence the legal grey zone, with regard to which this bill makes absolutely clear. The bill proposes to repeal the existing offence related to private sexual material and replace it with a new offence that applies where a person transmits the material using a carriage service—one of those traditional Commonwealth heads of power—and the material depicts: a person who is, or who appears to be, 18 years of age or older; a person engaging in a sexual pose or sexual activity; or sexual organs—or, if we're going into great detail, the anal region of a person or a female's breast, and the person knows that the person depicted does not consent to the transmission of the material, or is reckless as to whether the other person consents.

I touched on one of these items before, but the bill introduces two aggravated offences which apply increased penalties to the offence in two circumstances. Firstly: before the commission of the underlying offence, three or more civil penalty orders were made against the person for contraventions of relevant provisions of the Online Safety Act 2021 and, secondly, where the person was responsible for the creation or alteration of the sexual material transmitted. The government argues, and I hope that every member of the House agrees, that these amendments are essential to ensure that offences can apply both to real material, such as unaltered images and recordings, and also to fake or doctored material that has been created or altered using technology such as deepfakes. The new offences, just to be clear again, will not cover private communications between consenting adults or interfere with private sexual relationships. We don't seek to criminalise consenting human sexuality with this; it's the non-consensual sharing of deepfake material that's of great concern to the Australian people and to the parliament—and particularly to parents, who are grappling with the impacts of this technology and the use, abuse and misuse of this in relation to teenagers. The offences will only apply to material depicting, or appearing to depict, adults. The Criminal Code continues to criminalise the use of carriage services for child abuse material, including child abuse material generated by AI. But of course there are various definition issues, so this complements the existing laws in relation to child abuse material.

I'm very happy to keep talking but I might check at this point, given we have six minutes to go, if we have another speaker? We do. Great—I always love hearing from the member for Forrest!

Mrs MARINO (Forrest) (13:24): As has been said, the coalition supports the intentions behind the Criminal Code Amendment (Deepfake Sexual Material) Bill 2024, as would, I think, every member of the House as we deal with some of the multitude of risks that we see online.

There is no doubt that there will be serious and damaging consequences to people through AI generated sexual material; it knows almost no bounds in this space. There is a proliferation of artificial intelligence that creates just extraordinary possibilities. It is, in some ways, so useful, but it comes with enormous risks, particularly when we're talking about young people. The risk we are dealing with here arises from that intersection of AI with its tremendous capability to generate material that actually appears to be real. But this will bring an extraordinary capacity to inflict real harm by distributing sexual material online.

I've delivered hundreds of cybersafety presentations to young school children, and teenagers as well. I've listened to what they've already had to deal with, with their faces—without the AI piece, just their faces—being replaced on other bodies and used in a sexual way. The harm that has caused them and the distress it has brought to them and their families was done even without AI. So in this space, the non-consensual sharing of deepfakes and sexual content is extraordinarily dangerous in my view. It's dangerous to the individual, and dangerous more broadly.

We know that this bill will replace some of the existing laws. We certainly took these laws very seriously when in government. Technology has constantly changed and will keep changing. There was a real need for our Enhancing Online Safety (Non-consensual Sharing of Intimate Images ) Act in 2018. We really needed that very effective civil take-down capability. One of the most common things for parents who ring my office—because they know of my work in this space—is that they want material removed very quickly. That's the first thing: they don't want it shared, they don't want it to go viral and they're panicking. Often, if it's a young child, that's their greatest worry—and the risk of that child being bullied as a result of that content being online, or being out there when they don't know about it.

We've seen a lot of work in this space previously, but I am concerned about the current bill and the removal of the current definition of 'consent'. Currently, the law says explicitly that consent means 'free and voluntary agreement'. But government has actually removed that definition. There are just a few issues with that—given the real focus on the need to keep people safe and what will happen in the AI generated world. How will the courts adjudicate the consent rule if it's not clearly defined in the legislation? That's what we're going to need, and that's what those who seek to use these laws will need: very clear definitions. The courts will need those as well.

The coalition have also announced a real plan to lift the minimum age for kids accessing social media from 13 to16. It is a top priority for us and it's very important that this is the case. Members have recently heard Meta giving evidence at hearings, where there was a claim made that there's no damage being done to young people on their platforms or in this social media space. Well, from my years of doing this, let me tell you that I have seen a significant deterioration in the mental and emotional health and wellbeing of young people because of what's happening online and on social media. So I don't swallow that for a minute. Every one of those social media platforms creates a harmful place for young people—even for adults as well—and certainly could in the deepfake non-consensual sharing of sexual images. Ever since the inception of online social media platforms, the creators and executives in charge of these platforms decided—apparently, because of what we've seen since—that it was perfectly fine to expose our very young children to what I see as, and it really is, a free-for-all in an online paedophiles' paradise. That's what this is. That's what they have done. Who would have thought there'd be a platform that allowed our children to be groomed online by sexual predators and exposed to extreme and violent pornography—because that's what's happening—and to be exposed randomly to billions of people of all ages on the Internet? But that's what the platforms allow. It is part of these platforms' business model and is what is available to very vulnerable young people—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Claydon ): The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour, and the member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.

Mr BURKE (Watson—Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Minister for the Arts and Leader of the House) (15:22): This document is tabled in accordance with the list—I'm not sure if it's a list when it's a list of one—which was circulated to honourable members earlier today. Full details of the document will be recorded in the Votes and Proceedings.

Mrs MARINO (Forrest) (16:55): In continuation, I was talking about the inception of online social media platforms and I wondered which one of the creators or executives in charge of these platforms decided that it was perfectly fine to expose our very young children to a free-for-all in what is an online paedophile's paradise. And I'll repeat that: a paradise where our children would be groomed online by sexual predators and exposed to extreme and violent pornography. That's what's available on their platforms to be exposed to billions of random people of all ages. But that is part of the platform business model and what's available to vulnerable young people on these platforms and these apps, exposing our young people 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The harm is there for all to see and for our families to have to deal with—from the bullying with the sharing of naked and semi-naked photos.

On Snapchat, which young people were sucked into—that's a nice way of putting it—they thought they could take provocative images and they would disappear. Well, they didn't. There was an app called SnapSave that automatically saved all of these photos, and people took screenshots. So many young people I've dealt with have been affected by this and the image based abuse that follows that—the suicides because of what's going on on social media.

In my electorate, we have seen young boys with image based abuse. We have seen increased rates of self-harm over the years, as well as the dramatic increase of hospitalisations of girls in the last decade because of this and the group chats and sites promoting everything from eating disorders to risky behaviours. We did see, some years ago, that dreadful choking game. We've seen such a rise in mental health problems, which I've repeatedly spoken about in this House before. We now see the online gaming addiction and the clinics that have had to be set up to help families deal with online addictions, as well as the risks on these apps with tracking and mapping. There are young girls presenting to GPs with internal damage from aggressive sexual experiences learned from online pornography sites.

These same platforms and representatives still believe, according to some of the evidence we saw recently, that they're doing no harm. I can tell them differently. I do cybersafety presentations in schools, and how dreadful it is that, through that interaction on social media and through these sites, the person of the youngest age so far, in all of the years I have been doing this, who will admit to me they've been to meet people in person that they've only first met online is a year 3 girl. I'll let that sink in—it was a year 3 girl, in all those classes and sessions that I've done over the years. When I do my silent survey and they put their hands up for the three critical questions, it is completely unusual to come across a class, of various ages—I've done from preschool through to year 12—in which there are not some children who have gone to meet people in person that they've only first met online.

I've dealt with an extraordinary amount of issues created by these online platforms, who claim that they're doing no harm. That is entirely incorrect. The harm to these young people is done every single day and night. It isn't okay when we see GPS or location services and geotagging turned on and embedded in the photos that young people share. Then they get tracked and mapped. It is not okay that we have four-year-olds being encouraged and conned into uploading totally inappropriate content. It's not okay when the mum of a nine-year-old girl rings my office because her daughter has uploaded an explicit video on one of these sites. I can just see the risks with AI generated images and particularly sexual images. This legislation is so important in that space because we will see a rise in the instances of this.

The harm to young people is constant. When I listen to these young people and ask them questions about what they do, how much time they spend online, where their devices are and how much time they can spend on them, it is almost unlimited. And so their level of risk in this space is extreme. Of course, the gaming chats in so many of the messaging platforms—it is just ongoing, and they're asked all sorts of questions in this space. When I look at the ages of the young people I've dealt with—and it's much younger than people think—one of the things I say to these good, young people is: 'Can you help your families? If you've got younger brothers and sisters, they are at risk in this space. You are in this as a family, and the whole family needs to be involved in what's happening online to help keep your family safe.'

I've dealt with some terrible experiences that young people have had. When you meet these young people—I had a group of great young kids that were 15 and 16, and they came to talk to me to tell me how concerned they were about the nine-year-olds in their school that they knew were watching and live-streaming sex acts in school time. What those young people were seeing and having access to is why age verification is so important, which we have been pushing for for some time. It's a start. It doesn't give all of the answers, but it is certainly a start. There have been extraordinary experiences that young people have been subjected to, and it has really harmed their whole lives.

Here is one of the other issues that I just want to warn people about as well. I had a visit recently from the optometrists at Optometry Australia. We are seeing an increase in myopia, shortsightedness, because of the amount of time young people are spending behind a screen. Not only is there physical harm and emotional harm, with young people going to meet people in person they only first met online, but what's happening to them with bullying and image based abuse is constant. When I spoke to one principal and said, 'What is the biggest issue facing your year 12 students?' he held up the phone and said, 'They're just not sleeping enough.' And they cannot cope with every other issue in their lives—their relationships, what's going on at school, what they intend to do when they leave school—because of what's happening online. They're engaging with it for so much of the night that they're simply not sleeping enough.

So I've been very active in this space for a lot of years. What the government is proposing here in relation to deepfake images—I think what we're going to see ahead is even worse because of this. I hope that people use these laws and that the laws are suitable for them to be used far more often. The issues that these young people have to deal with, with deepfakes, the issues around consent and how the courts will interpret and act on this, are very important to our young people and people of all ages.

Mr LIM (Tangney) (17:04): Today, I rise to present on a crucial piece of legislation on behalf of the Albanese Labor government. The Criminal Code Amendment (Deepfake Sexual Material) Bill 2024 is a bill that addresses a rapidly growing threat to privacy, dignity and safety—the non-consensual sharing of deepfake sexually explicit material.

As a former police officer who has witnessed firsthand the devastating impact of digital manipulation on individuals' lives, I can attest to the urgent need for these reforms. Digitally created and altered sexually explicit material, particularly deepfakes, represents a sinister form of abuse that targets women and girls. It not only violates their privacy but also inflicts deep emotional and psychological harm.

Under the proposed amendment to the Criminal Code Act 1995, we are taking decisive action to modernise our law and impose serious penalties on those who perpetrate these egregious acts. This legislation introduces new offences specifically targeting the transmission of sexually explicit material without consent utilising technologies like artificial intelligence to create or alter such content. The gravity of these offences is reflected in the penalties we propose: up to six years' imprisonment for transmitting sexually explicit material without consent and seven years imprisonment for aggravated offences where the perpetrator also created the material. These penalties underscore our commitment to deterring and punishing those who engage in this disgraceful conduct. This initiative aligns with a broader commitment to combating online harms, particularly those that disproportionately affect women and young girls.

Our government on 1 May 2024 publicly pledged to introduce a comprehensive suite of measures to safeguard vulnerable individuals from digital exploitation and abuse. The amendment proposed in this bill recognises that assisting law in adequately addressing artificially generated materials such as deepfakes. By repealing outdated provisions and introducing updated offences, we ensure that our legal framework remains responsive to evolving technologies and the harm it can perpetrate.

It is important to emphasise that this reform does not infringe on private communications between consenting adults or interfere with lawful sexual relationships. We have carefully crafted specific defences to ensure the legislation targets only nonconsensual acts and is proportionate in its application. Moreover, these reforms extend protection to adults depicted in the material, whether it is of a real person or a digital application. This inclusive approach is crucial in safeguarding individuals from the malicious use of technology to degrade, humiliate and perpetuate harmful stereotypes.

As someone who has personally experienced the malicious misuse of technology, I am compelled to share a personal reflection that has shaped my unwavering commitment to these reforms. As a former police officer and now a member of parliament, I have experienced firsthand the distressing misuse of my image and my identity on platforms designed to deceive and defraud. This violation left me feeling helpless and deeply frustrated by the inadequacy of existing legal protections. I have encountered instances where my own image and identity were exploited on scam platforms, subjected to identity theft and used in an attempt to tarnish my reputation. These experiences have deeply informed my understanding of the urgent need for robust protection against digital exploitation and abuse.

The legislation we are proposing today is not just about legal frameworks; it's about safeguarding the identities and reputations of everyday Australians. In a world where modern AI technology is advancing at a rapid, rapid pace, we must put in place strong guardrails and protective mechanisms. Deepfake technology poses a significant threat by allowing the creation of convincing and realistic, but entirely fabricated, images and videos. These can be used to deceive, defame and harm individuals, with devastating consequences. I can only begin to imagine the amplified sense of violation and devastation experienced by individuals, particularly women, who are targeted by deepfake technology for sexually explicit material.

The deliberate creation and dissemination of manipulated images and videos without consent represents a profound betrayal of trust and flagrant disregard for personal autonomy. The lack of adequate legal safeguards exacerbates the harm inflicted upon victims of such heinous acts. It is incumbent on us, as representatives of the community, to rectify this glaring gap in our legal framework and to provide robust protection against the insidious threat of digital exploitation. The reforms we propose today aren't just about updating statutes; they're about restoring dignity, ensuring justice and fortifying our defences against evolving threats in the digital age. By criminalising the non-consensual sharing of deepfake sexually explicit material, and by imposing significant penalties, we send a clear message that such behaviour will not be tolerated in our society. Moreover, these amendments are testament to our commitment to gender equality and to the protection of vulnerable individuals. They reflect our collective responsibility to dismantle the mechanism of gender based violence, and to empower victims to seek justice and reclaim their narratives.

My own encounters with this issue have reinforced my commitment to ensuring that our law evolves to keep pace with technological advancement. The amendments we're presenting to the Criminal Code are crucial steps forward in this regard. By explicitly criminalising the non-consensual sharing of deepfake sexually explicit material, we are sending a clear message that perpetrators will face serious consequences for their actions. It isn't just about protecting privacy; it's about protecting human dignity. The dissemination of manipulated images and videos without consent is a violation that can have profound and lasting effects on victims, perpetrating harm long after the image is shared. Our legislation acknowledges this harm and aims to provide meaningful help for those affected.

Furthermore, these reforms are essential in combating the insidious work of scammers and fraudsters, who exploit digital technologies for personal gain. By establishing clear boundaries and penalties, we strengthen our defences against those who seek to deceive and manipulate for malicious purposes.

In conclusion, the passage of this bill is not merely a legal obligation; it is a moral imperative. It sends a clear message that Australia stands firm against digital exploitation and affirms our commitment to protecting the dignity and rights of every Australian. I urge all members of this House to support this vital reform and to stand together in defence of justice, privacy and human dignity.

Ms DANIEL (Goldstein) (17:15): Artificial intelligence is a technology we don't yet understand or, at best, we are trying desperately to understand. It's very much a black box. Those that engineer it—OpenAI, Google and the like—continue to accelerate its capabilities without true knowledge of how a neural network, AI's underpinning logic, truly works, including how it works functionally and how it works philosophically and ethically. This black box, however, is dual sided. AI presents enormous opportunity as well as risk. The potential exists for even the currently available nascent models to exceed human intelligence in specific areas of knowledge within just the next few years. It also carries the potential to bring vast uncertainty, change and risk to our society. This presents us with a dilemma. How quickly do we allow this technology to develop and be deployed in light of its promise and its perils?

In light of this, legislators must find the right balance between overregulating this technology too early and underregulating it too late. A first step is acknowledging the nature of how AI foreseeably intersects with almost every aspect of society, from the economy to physics to medicine and, yes, once again, to violence against women. In the case of the Criminal Code Amendment (Deepfake Sexual Material) Bill, the proposed law reflects the urgent need for additional legal measures, particularly to protect women and girls from emerging AI technologies. The unregulated explosion of AI on the internet over the past two years has seen a range of mostly unintended but, in the case of deepfake sexual tools, disgustingly intentional consequences. This legislation addresses one of these consequences—the capacity of this technology to cause humiliation and violence against women online.

In the interim period between the availability of these AI tools and the proposal of this legislation to the House, individuals have been able to, shockingly, create blended images of people they know using templates of naked bodies within seconds. These images have been shared and sold around social networks and social circles. In just the past few weeks, boys of two Melbourne schools have been expelled and arrested for targeting girls in grades 9 to12 as well as teachers with online sexual deepfake images. Up to 50 girls may have been targeted in one case. Investigations are ongoing; however, it's apparent that these boys took profile images from social media and allegedly uploaded them to free sexual image generation tools on the internet. The images were circulated among school cohorts and have been described as 'incredibly graphic'. One female victim described the lifelong consequences of being targeted, the inability of these images to ever truly be deleted from internet, the unfair risk they may pose to future employability and the prolonged impact to emotional wellbeing and mental health.

It's important to consider the specific impact of this kind of abuse on teenagers, who are particularly vulnerable to bullying, social isolation and feelings of humiliation and lack of self-worth. This behaviour is dehumanising, demeaning and must be prevented. Without a strong legal framework preventing the sharing of this content, we risk normalising the sexualisation of women, including underage girls.

I support this legislation, but I do have some concerns about its limitation to the transmission of content depicting an individual who is exclusively over the age of 18. While I understand that other legal mechanisms exist to capture content depicting girls under 18, such as child exploitation and pornography laws, more must be done to clearly communicate to boys and men that this behaviour is not just illegal but immoral and unacceptable. I have raised with the Attorney-General my concern about whether teenager-to-teenager deepfake abuse would be captured under existing laws. My concerns were graphically borne out when, subsequent to that conversation, the serious incident involving dozens of girls happened at Bacchus Marsh Grammar outside Melbourne. The Attorney-General says this behaviour is captured, but I do wonder whether the existing legislation regarding child abuse is quite fit for purpose in this evolving space and whether underage deepfake offences should be looked at specifically.

School led educational and awareness programs during the early years of high school are a start, but government can do more—either to legislate or to coordinate across government at all levels. One example is programs and campaigns to make clear that these actions have severe, and sometimes lifelong, consequences. Another action the Commonwealth could take, as suggested by Asher Flynn, Associate Professor of Criminology at Monash University, involves placing the onus of responsibility of the creators of these AI models and tools. The powers of the government's Online Safety Act could be expanded, including the ability of the eSafety Commissioner to intervene as this content spreads online and across digital platforms. I say that in the knowledge that the Online Safety Act is at risk of becoming an enormously tentacled piece of legislation. We have to make sure it doesn't become impossibly unwieldy, and also that any enforcement is properly resourced.

As the capability of artificial intelligence is accelerated and deployed by commercial interests into society, Australia and all countries face a challenge to regulate its risks before they're realised. I would like to take this opportunity to endorse the second reading amendment proposed by the member for Warringah. Artificial intelligence is indeed a technology in its nascency, but the capacity exists today for deepfakes to present a risk to the integrity of electoral processes around the world. In a year of democratic elections, and our own in the foreseeable future, this is perhaps more relevant now than ever. Videos of prominent politicians and celebrities, including non-consensual spread of content depicting the likes of Taylor Swift, are already readily accessible online. We will soon find out the capacity for this tool to mislead and misinform electorates here in Australia, because the present capacity for AI to interfere with election integrity is only set to accelerate. Emerging models, such as OpenAI's Sora text-to-video model, present an even more significant challenge for regulators than existing deepfake-generation tools. I strongly suspect that there's a reason that this model will remain publicly unavailable until after the US election in November.

While this legislation targets deepfake sexual material only, I think there's a strong argument for banning all deepfakes that are used without permission. Political deepfakery, for example, has the potential to influence voters in insidious and dangerous ways, and can be difficult to debunk. Deepfakes can also be used for identity theft, scams and extortion. AI's capabilities and risks are rapidly accelerating—its engineers understand this—and bold action is required by government if Australia is to safeguard against them. Historically, governments around the world have not been up to this task, being more reactive than proactive. Regrettably, I suspect that this will not be the last time I discuss the societal risk of AI in this House. As well as legislation, tech companies can contribute by using technology to track, trace and prevent deepfakes. Deepfakes are a threat to democracy and public trust, and we must step in strongly to prevent their nefarious use. This legislation, which I will support, is part of that process. Thank you.

Mrs ELLIOT (Richmond—Assistant Minister for Social Services and Assistant Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence) (17:24): I, too, wish to speak on the Criminal Code Amendment (Deepfake Sexual Material) Bill 2024. It strengthens existing Commonwealth criminal offences and creates new offences to respond to the online harm caused by deepfakes and other artificially generated sexual material, and we know how vitally important it is to have this legislation.

We are all aware of instances of AI digital creations and altered images, and it is horrific. Digitally created and altered sexually explicit material that is shared without consent is a damaging and deeply distressing form of abuse. Many of us have seen people in our areas and right across the country who are deeply distressed when this happens. It is an insidious behaviour. It is degrading, humiliating and dehumanising for victims. We know that such acts are overwhelmingly targeted at women and girls, perpetuating harmful gender stereotypes and gender based violence. I know that everyone in this House joins with me in the actions that we take, as a government and as a parliament, to end gender based violence, and we have had record commitments when it comes to many investments. It's important to act right across the sphere of all that government can do, and we are in fact doing that in this bill as well, because we know that digitally created explicit material adds to very harmful gender stereotypes. That's why this bill, along with all of our other measures, is vitally important when it comes to all of us working together to end violence against women and children.

This bill will deliver on a commitment made by the Albanese government following the National Cabinet meeting that was held in May to address gender based violence. This commitment recognises the urgent and collective need to respond to the growing challenges associated with artificially generated sexual material. The bill creates a new offence that applies where a person uses a carriage service to transmit sexual material depicting an adult person and they know the person depicted does not consent to the transmission of the material or they are reckless as to whether the other person consents. The new offence will carry a maximum penalty of six years imprisonment. It will apply to sexual material depicting adults, with child abuse material continuing to be dealt with under very serious, dedicated separate offences in the Criminal Code. The bill repeals previous offences in the code dealing with non-consensual sharing of private sexual material. The new offences are based on a consent model to better cover both artificial and real sexual material.

It's vitally important to have this legislation in place. As I say, these measures add to the already record amounts of funding that we have put in place, since we came into government, to end violence against women and children in one generation. We have our national plan. We have a major investment in providing frontline services. We have announced in the budget our 'leaving violence' payment, which is now permanent. We are working with all of the states and territories—and we call on all the community, as well, to work with us—with the aim of ending violence against women and children. I know I've spoken on this in the House many times, and I know it's an objective that we all share. That's why taking the action in this bill is vitally important. With the growth of AI and the horrendous depictions that we see, it's important that we pass this bill and that we keep speaking publicly about this and about the action that needs to be taken. I commend the bill to the House.

Mr KHALIL (Wills) (17:28): On 1 May 2024 the Albanese Labor government made a public commitment to introduce a suite of measures to tackle online harms, particularly addressing the harms done to women and girls. Delivering on that promise, we are creating new criminal offences to ban the non-consensual sharing of deepfake pornography. We already know that digitally created and altered sexually explicit material is a damaging form of abuse against women and girls that can inflict deep harm on the victims, but I also want to take this opportunity to highlight the broader issues that we are facing as a society in this respect.

The purpose of this parliament is, yes, to make the laws of the land, but we are also required to show leadership, to lead reform on the pressing social issues of the time. And while the current reforms are about making it crystal clear that those who share sexually explicit material without consent using artificial intelligence, AI, will be subject to the most serious criminal penalties, it is also important to continue the national conversation we are having around the safety of women and girls in our society. That is our role here in parliament, and that is what we want to do today in this debate.

As a nation, we have been horrified at the young man at a private school who recently distributed graphic deepfake images of 50 girls in Victoria. This young man did this by taking their likenesses from social media and using an AI app to create sexually explicit deepfakes. He then shared them on social media—obviously without the girls' consent. This was a despicable act of degrading and dehumanising his peers, young women he was supposed to have respected. And it's attitudes like these that, if not rooted out at the earliest opportunity, will go on to perpetuate the stereotypes about women that should have no place in our society because they drive that gender based violence that we abhor in the adult lives of these young men.

At the immediate point when these images were shared without consent, they had already damaged, possibly irrevocably, the lives of those victims. This was not just a breach of privacy; it is much more than that. It is really difficult to imagine the feelings of shame, embarrassment, anger and pain that these young women face when these images are shared with others or posted online, and so we want to be extremely clear, in this government, that there is no place for such behaviours. That's why the suite of reforms in these laws are so important.

The bill amends the Criminal Code to modernise and strengthen offences targeting the non-consensual sharing of sexually explicit material online, especially material produced with the assistance of AI. This includes material that has been created or altered using technology such as deepfakes. Aggravated offences will build on this new underlying offence where the person was responsible for the creation or alteration of the sexual material transmitted.

The gap in the Criminal Code currently criminalises the sharing of private sexual material online; however, the definition of 'private sexual material' may not cover artificially generated material. This bill eliminates any doubt that artificially generated material is absolutely without a shadow of a doubt covered by these changes. Section 473.1, which contains this definition, will be replaced or repealed. The new offence applies where a person transmits material using a carriage service and where the material depicts a person who is or appears to be 18 years of age or older.

Those opposite think there is no need for these laws. The Manager of Opposition Business thinks we are 'repealing existing offences and replacing them with offences that appear to do the same thing'. That's a quote. With great respect, what we are doing is moving to a consent model where an essential part of the determination is whether these images were created and shared without consent. We are doing this by introducing new offences in the new section 474, where the key question relates equally to both types of sexual material, both artificial and real.

Did the opposition not learn their lesson when it came to social media? Famously, governments around the world, including former coalition governments, took a laissez-faire approach to not regulating giant social media companies. Only now we are paying the price; we're seeing that play out, decades on. Nine years in government and suddenly they have now realised that they didn't do enough to regulate emerging social media companies. This is the realisation of the opposition, all of a sudden. I ask the opposition: why don't you come out and tell us exactly why you didn't do this when you had the chance?

We unequivocally disagree that these amendments to the Criminal Code are not needed. We are mitigating and we must mitigate the unintended harms of AI, and we will do this. We must do this early. We're not going to wait another 10 years. And we're going to do it in a pragmatic way that recognises the productivity benefits of these tools, but approach much more cautiously than the coalition ever did with social media companies when they had the chance. There is a need for regulation, there is a need for a legislative framework to deal with the rapidly expanding technologies we're seeing, like AI.

We are behind the eight ball. We need to start taking the necessary legislative and regulatory action to mitigate the worst effects of these technologies. And there are negative effects—clearly—as I have described already with the AI deepfake sexual material.

We cannot go down the same path that we did in the past with the social media companies with respect to AI. In many respects, people are arguing that it's already too late for our kids who are addicted to doomscrolling and spend hours and hours on screens, exposed to content that disrupts their mental health and self-esteem, either through social media or through just being online for hours and hours as well.

There is a real epidemic within our communities. Parents are waking up to it, clearly. Parents are disturbed by it. There are a lack of legislative or regulatory frameworks to address or mitigate the worst impacts of these technologies. That has to stop. I'm not saying we're going to get it right 100 per cent of the time, but we do need to do this and we need to start the work today. The opposition needs to actually understand that this is in the national interest.

The other thing we have seen time and time again is when someone is already known to law enforcement authorities and recognised in the justice system and they offend again. That is why this bill introduces two aggravated offences which apply with increased penalties if the offender has had three or more civil penalty orders made against them for contravening the Online Safety Act 2021—'creation or alteration of the sexual material transmitted'. The new offences will have a maximum penalty of six years imprisonment for transmitting sexual material without consent and seven years imprisonment for aggravated offences, including where the person created the material themselves. These amendments are absolutely necessary and absolutely our priority.

In conclusion, I want to remind the House—and we're all aware of this, as recent events have shown—that young girls in schools are not psychosocially safe, in many respects. When you have these horrific offences being committed against them, like the sharing of sexual deepfakes or the making of lists which rank young women and sexualise them, there is no safety for these girls. It's these events where a society-wide scourge starts to take hold. As I said earlier, we've made the mistake—the previous government and other governments around the world certainly did—of not regulating the social media giants and the impacts of that technology. We cannot make the same mistake when it comes to the use of AI in this context. The young people who are exposed to and partake in these behaviours today will go on to live in a world where women will be harmed by their intimate partners or raped or killed on our streets. The majority of women who are killed are killed in that way—by people that they know or men that they know.

Online abuse, and the element of psychological violence therein, is a part of this cycle of physical violence. It's all interconnected. This is what women are subjected to on a society-wide scale. We've seen the horrible outcomes of this in many examples. In my own electorate, the murder of women and the rape of women has occurred, in the northern suburbs of Melbourne. Jill Meagher was an infamous case, and there are many, many others. People in my electorate of Wills won't forget that. They won't forget what happened to Jill Meagher while she was walking home in Brunswick in 2012 or, in May 2019, when Courtney Herron, another young woman from our community of Wills, was murdered in Royal Park or, in the same year, when Aiia Maasarwe was murdered in the northern suburbs whilst walking home.

These were just young women—who were walking home after going out or going to work or who were on shift—and that is what happened to them. There was also a woman who, again, in the same year, was running along Merri Creek, which borders my electorate—a spot that many of us in my community in Wills have found sanctuary in. She was attacked, sexually assaulted and raped there. We can't forget their stories. We can't forget what happened to them. We can't forget the deep trauma that has impacted their families and their loved ones. They were part of our community. They were part of the fabric of our community. What they went through in their deaths was senseless and needless. I say again: harm is not just the physical harm. There is also that psychosocial harm that comes from the impacts of having that kind of sexually explicit material shared online without consent. Harm is that which young women go through when targeted by these forms of online abuse and it is a harm that leads them to a deadly and life-threatening cycle that is, as I said, interconnecting all of these behaviours. That is why legislation like this is so important.

Young men should be educated, encouraged to be strong allies and work actively towards reducing violence at its source, where it starts. Educate young boys, teach them respect, empower them to understand that there is a positive sense of being male and what that positive masculinity entails, which is not the violent acts, not the anger. Give them another path where they are empowered to be respectful and strong in a very different way. That is what real manhood is about and that is where early education comes in.

It is not only the responsibility of parents, of teachers and of society to teach kids respect but it is also responsibility of this place, this House, to pass laws to provide the legislative and regulatory framework that make it unacceptable by law to take such actions. It is also our responsibility to show leadership, to take actions and to lead societal reform in this place. I would hope the opposition would understand the importance of that to the national interest.

We won't hesitate, through these laws, to punish those that violate these expectations, these standards that we're setting. That is what we do here in this place. The safety of women across Australia starts in our schools, starts at our sports clubs, starts in the conversations we have at the dinner table about respectful relationships. In the worst-case scenarios, when it has to be addressed, it is addressed by these laws that we pass here. The Criminal Code has to be robust and it has to appropriately criminalise actions. All of this in combination has to be able to break the chain of disrespect towards women that leads to the worst elements of violence down the track.

Legislative change plays an important role in sending a strong message that non-consensual distribution of such horrible images is unacceptable to us as leaders—as political leaders, as community leaders and as citizens and that applies whether it is AI-generated—artificial intelligence—or it is real. This bill starts the first steps towards regulating the worst effects of this technology. Because we cannot wait until something else happens to regulate technologically created harms, until it becomes worse, until the scourge is so widespread that we have lost control of it completely. We cannot wait for things to get worse before we change these laws. That is why I call on the opposition to support this bill, to support the necessary changes that we are making to address these issues, and to begin that journey together. I commend this bill to the House.

Ms ROBERTS (Pearce) (17:43): I rise to support the Criminal Code Amendment (Deepfake Sexual Material) Bill 2024. Every time you read or hear the news there is another story about artificial intelligence, deepfake abuse, and the ongoing debate on how to regulate these rapidly advancing technologies. Encountering many forms of sexual violence online driven by AI-generated deepfake technology is deeply unsettling. Women represent 99 per cent of those targeted by deepfake pornography, which makes up 98 per cent of all deepfake videos online.

Urgent action is absolutely needed and effective legislation is a critical starting point. Thousands of women and girls have experienced this form of gender based violence already and it is exacerbated by the advancing accessibility and the sophistication of technology. In 2023 alone the volume of deepfake abuse videos surpassed the total of all previous years combined, with the number of nonconsensual videos doubling annually. Those nonconsensual images are created and shared with the goal of humiliating and degrading the women and girls in them. The fallout is immense, and it goes beyond personal harm.

Deepfakes, for those unfamiliar, are digitally manipulated images, videos or audio recordings that use artificial intelligence to create realistic but false depictions of individuals. These creations can depict people doing or saying things they never did—always stunning realism blurring the lines between reality and fiction. The legislation before us aims to address a specific and troubling aspect of this technology: the nonconsensual sharing of sexually explicit deepfake material. This bill seeks to criminalise such acts, ensuring that individuals who distribute sexually explicit content without the consent of those depicted face significant legal consequences. This includes deepfakes generated using AI or other technologies which have increasingly been used to exploit and harm individuals, particularly women and girls.

The new bill aims to criminalise the sharing of nonconsensual deepfake sexually explicit material online. These reforms ensure individuals who distribute sexually explicit content without the consent of those depicted, including deepfakes created using AI or other technologies, will face significant criminal penalties. The bill targets individuals who share and create sexualised deepfake images without consent. The application of Commonwealth criminal law to individuals who meet the minimum age of criminal responsibility is not a new concept. It is worth noting that the new offences are specifically targeted at sexual material depicting or appearing to depict individuals over 18 years of age. Existing criminal offences already cover child abuse material, which is comprehensively addressed in a separate division of the Criminal Code. This includes detailed offences and severe penalties for the sharing of child abuse material online, including content generated by artificial intelligence.

Whether you personally know a victim or have simply seen and used their image on the internet will now be irrelevant. The new offences cover instances where an individual shares a sexually explicit deepfake of a real person either knowing the person has not consented or being reckless as to whether they have consented. This applies regardless of who the real person is and whether they are personally known to the offender. Prosecuting offences like this is increasingly complex in the digital age. However, the Australian Federal Police possesses unique capabilities and extensive experience in investigating these types of crimes. The AFP was also consulted in the development of this bill, ensuring their input and the challenges faced by law enforcement were taken into consideration.

It is also worth noting that the Commonwealth power to legislate does not extend to the mere creation of sexually explicit adult deepfakes. The offence applies to the sharing of nonconsensual deepfake sexually explicit material. If the person who shares the material also created the deepfake, there is an aggravated offence with a higher penalty of up to seven years imprisonment.

There are existing Commonwealth offences that prohibit menacing or harassing another person online. These could apply, for example, if someone creates an image of their partner and then threatens to post it online without consent. Additionally, state and territory laws largely cover the creation of such deepfakes. This approach is consistent with existing arrangements for the criminalisation of child abuse material. State and territory laws address the creation of child abuse material, while strong Commonwealth offences criminalise the sharing of such material online.

The existing Commonwealth criminal offences do not clearly apply to sexually explicit deepfake material. Some state and territory jurisdictions have legislation to address the nonconsensual sharing of intimate images online. This bill will compliment state and territory criminal offences and ensure a more consistent national approach. The bill stipulates severe consequences for those found guilty of transmitting such material without consent. Offenders can face up to six years imprisonment, with aggravated cases facing potentially up to seven years behind bars. These penalties are designed to deter and punish this harmful behaviour.

To ensure the legislation targets appropriate cases, specific offences have been incorporated. For example: reporting to authorities—passing material to the police to report a crime, or providing it to court to assist in prosecution, is permissible; for medical and professional purposes—doctors can share images to obtain a second opinion from colleagues without falling under the law's purview; for content based photography—images of models taken with explicit consent for advertising or publication purposes are exempt from the legislation; and for satirical use—images used in a satirical context are also considered exempt under these laws.

It's important to know that the legislation is not intended to encompass the sharing of legitimate adult pornography. Rather, its focus is on prohibiting the dissemination of deepfake sexually explicit images where the perpetrator either knows that consent has not been granted or behaves recklessly in determining whether consent was given. This approach aims to address the harmful impacts of non-consensual deepfake material while safeguarding legitimate uses of digital content. Someone may wonder what happens when consent is uncertain. The law addresses this by focusing on cases where individuals knowingly share deepfake sexually explicit images without consent or recklessly disregard whether consent was given. This includes situations where consent is not actively considered.

There's a deep and profound impact from non-consensual sharing of digitally altered and sexually explicit material, particularly on women and girls. This behaviour not only causes immediate harm but can also have lasting emotional and psychological effects. It's a form of abuse that degrades, humiliates and dehumanises victims, and which perpetuates harmful gender stereotypes, contributing to gender based violence. Unfortunately, instances where such material is created and shared out of revenge or malice, often referred to as 'revenge porn' or image based abuse, are widespread. These are actions that exploit vulnerabilities and which can severely damage a person's reputation and sense of security. Victims of such abuse often face severe anxiety, depression and trauma. The non-consensual distribution of sexually explicit deepfake material can destroy personal relationships, careers and mental health. The fear of these images surfacing can lead to long-term psychological distress and a pervasive sense of insecurity. Furthermore, this behaviour perpetuates a culture of misogyny and violence against women. By creating and sharing deepfake sexually explicit images, perpetrators are engaging in an act of control and humiliation, reinforcing toxic power dynamics that have long oppressed women. This form of digital violence is an extension of the systemic gender based violence that continues to plague our society.

Clearly, artificial intelligence technology also has the potential to exacerbate election related challenges, including the spread of disinformation and cybervulnerabilities in election systems. The Albanese Labor government is committed to enhancing the transparency and accountability of Australia's electoral system. Actions are being taken by the Minister for Communications and by the Australian Electoral Commission to combat misinformation and disinformation, especially during elections. Additionally, the government has asked the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters to consider ways to prevent or limit the influence of inaccurate or false information on electoral outcomes. This includes examining the impact of artificial intelligence, foreign interference, social media, misinformation and disinformation.

The government also has work underway to combat online scams and fraud, including establishing the National Anti-Scam Centre to coordinate and share intelligence across law enforcement, private and public sectors. It has taken down over 5,000 investment scam websites through ASIC's scam disruption activities. The government has also committed to introduce legislation in 2024 and to fund the administration and enforcement of mandatory industry codes for banks, telecommunications providers and digital platforms.

As AI technology advances and becomes more accessible, the potential for misuse in creating and distributing such material grows. This necessitates urgent legislative action, like the proposed bill, to establish serious penalties. These measures are crucial for protecting vulnerable individuals from further online harm and ensuring that those who engage in such abusive behaviour face appropriate consequences under the law. Looking ahead, the Albanese Labor government remains committed to safeguarding Australians from online threats including deepfake misuse, conducting ongoing reviews such as the statutory review of the Online Safety Act 2021, seeking to enhance protections and ensuring our online safety laws remain effective in combatting emerging harms.

In conclusion, this legislation represents a critical step in protecting individuals from the insidious impact of deepfake technology. By imposing stringent penalties and clarifying exceptions, we aim to uphold dignity, privacy and safety in our digital age. This bill sends a clear message that our society will not tolerate the degradation and abuse of individuals through technological means. We stand against the perpetration of misogyny and violence against women, and we commit to fostering a safer, more respectful digital environment for all.

Mr BURNELL (Spence) (17:56): I rise today to speak in favour of the Criminal Code Amendment (Deepfake Sexual Material) Bill 2024. At the beginning of the previous sitting year, I remember the member for Bruce came into this place and delivered a speech that was, in part, the product of artificial intelligence. The member for Bruce, of course, disclosed this fact, for it was indeed part of illustrating the capability and role of artificial intelligence, the rapid pace of its evolution and how it can find its way into activities within our lives which have been occurring even prior to the advent of the digital age.

As we know, the humble art and science of speechwriting predates the invention of the computer, the typewriter and even paper as we conventionally know it. Now we can utilise generative artificial intelligence to create speeches, a whole raft of other documents, sounds including a person's voice and video including the likeness of a person. Subjects can be blissfully unaware of the production of those last two until the content is disseminated by its creator. The potential applications for these productions can be completely benign, humorous and even satirical, but they can also be malevolent. It is incumbent on governments and parliaments alike to act to deter and punish individuals to ensure that society can reflect on the criminal law keeping pace with technological adjustments.

This is the position we find ourselves in today with the measures contained within this bill. It is one that forms a crucial step in addressing one of the most insidious forms of abuse that has emerged in our digital age: the non-consensual creation and distribution of deepfake, sexually explicit material. Deepfakes generated through advanced artificial intelligence can create disturbingly realistic but entirely false depictions of individuals in compromising and degrading situations. This legislation aims to protect individuals, particularly women and girls, from the profound harm caused by these digital fabrications. Deepfakes are manipulated images, videos or audio recordings that depict individuals in situations they never actually experienced. The technology behind deepfakes has advanced rapidly, making it increasingly accessible and easy to use. This has led to a surge in the creation of deepfake content, much of which is sexually explicit and intended to humiliate, degrade and harm the victims. As noted by the Australian Federal Police Commissioner, we are facing a potential tsunami of AI-generated abuse material.

The impact of these deepfakes on victims is profound. They suffer from severe emotional distress, reputational damage and, in some cases, financial harm. The victims are often young women who find their likeness manipulated into explicit content that is then shared widely on the internet. This not only violates their privacy but also perpetuates harmful gender stereotypes and contributes to a culture of gender based violence. The emotional and physical toll on these victims cannot be overstated. Many suffer from anxiety, depression and a profound sense of violation. This is a form of abuse that leaves deep and lasting scars.

The Criminal Code Amendment (Deepfake Sexual Material) Bill introduces new offences to specifically target the non-consensual sharing of deepfake sexually explicit material. The key provisions of the bill include the creation of a new offence for transmitting sexually explicit material using a carriage service where the person depicted is an adult and has not consented to the transmission. This offence carries a maximum penalty of six years imprisonment. The use of a carriage service has evolved with its meaning over the course of time, but such is the nature of the law adapting to reflect technological change and capture future developments within its auspices. The bill also introduces aggravated offences with a maximum penalty of seven years imprisonment. These apply where the perpetrator was responsible for creating or altering the material or where they have a history of civil penalty orders under the Online Safety Act. These offences will cover both real material, such as unaltered images and recordings, and fake material, created or altered using technology, like deepfakes.

Existing laws have not kept pace with the rapid advancements in technology that enable the creation of deepfakes. The current definition of private sexual material does not explicitly extend to artificially generated content, leaving a significant gap in our legal framework. This bill addresses the gap, ensuring that those who exploit technology to create and disseminate harmful material are held accountable. The introduction of these new offences is a clear signal that the law must evolve to meet the challenges posed by new technology. Moreover, this legislation is a response to the growing public outcry against the misuse of deepfake technologies. Victims, community groups, and advocacy organisations have called for stronger protections against this form of abuse. The Albanese government's commitment to introducing these reforms reflects our dedication to safeguarding the dignity and rights of all Australians.

The need for such legislation is underscored by the numerous reports of deepfake pornography circulating online, often targeting young women and causing significant distress, even leading to self-harm and suicide. There have been numerous instances where individuals, particularly young women, have been targeted with deepfake pornography. For example, recent reports highlighted a case where students at a school were subjected to fake nude images circulated online. These incidents underscore the urgent need for robust legal protections. In another case, a female teacher found herself the victim of a deepfake attack, with manipulated images circulating amongst students and colleagues. These examples illustrate the profound harm that can result from the misuse of deepfake technology.

Law enforcement agencies, including the Australian Federal Police and the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, have provided critical input in shaping these reforms. Additionally, legal experts and victims-survivors have emphasised the importance of creating a legal deterrent against the creation and dissemination of deepfake pornography. The involvement of these stakeholders ensures that the bill is both comprehensive and effective in addressing the issue. This bill is part of a broader suite of measures aimed at tackling online harms.

The Albanese Labor government has been proactive in addressing various forms of digital abuse, particularly those targeting women and girls. These measures include increasing funding for the eSafety Commissioner, advancing the review of the Online Safety Act and committing to address harmful practices such as doxxing. These efforts demonstrate the Albanese Labor government's commitment to creating a safer online environment for all Australians.

The rapid growth of deepfake technology has created new challenges for law enforcement and policymakers. While artificial intelligence can have many positive applications, its misuse to create deepfake pornography represents a significant threat to individuals' privacy and dignity. This legislation ensures that our laws keep pace with technological advancements and provide robust protections against digital abuse. By criminalising the non-consensual sharing of deepfake sexually explicit material, we are taking a decisive step to protect individuals from digital abuse and to uphold their dignity and their privacy. The new offences introduced by this bill are designed to be both comprehensive and proportionate. They target the non-consensual sharing of both real and artificially generated sexually explicit material, ensuring that perpetrators can't evade responsibility by exporting gaps in the existing law.

The bill also includes specific defences to ensure the offences are targeted and do not overly criminalise legitimate activities. For example, the transmission of material necessary for law enforcement, court proceedings or genuine medical or scientific purposes is exempted from the purpose of this legislation. These defences are consistent with the existing exemptions in the Online Safety Act and ensure that the new offences are applied fairly and justly. It is important to note that this legislation does not intend to interfere with private communications between consenting adults. The government has no interest in regulating the private activities of adults who engage in consensual behaviour.

The focus of this bill is solely on the consensual creation and distribution of sexually explicit material. This distinction is crucial to ensure that the legislation is both effective and proportionate. By targeting the harmful and non-consensual use of deepfake technology, we are upholding the rights and dignity of individuals while respecting personal freedoms.

Whether it is in the transmission or the creation of such material, the knowledge that the subject has consented to being a part of it should remain vitally important as to whether it can be deemed to be lawful or otherwise. Reckless indifference as to whether someone has provided consent to be involved in any sexual activity—whether it involves them or their digital likeness and whether it is within cyberspace or outside of it—should always have a presumption of being unlawful.

The bill also addresses the issue of aggravated offences, which carry higher penalties for more serious conduct. These aggravated offences apply in cases where the perpetrator has previously been subject to civil penalty orders or similar conduct under the Online Safety Act and where they were directly involved in creating or altering material. By introducing these aggravated offences, the legislation provides a stronger deterrent against repeat offenders and those who engage in particularly egregious conduct. The inclusion of these higher penalties reflects the serious nature of the offences and the profound harm they cause to victims.

The introduction of this legislation follows extensive consultation with key stakeholders, including law enforcement agencies, legal experts and victim advocacy groups. This collaborative approach has ensured that the bill is both comprehensive and effective in addressing the issue of deepfake pornography. The feedback from these consultations has been invaluable in shaping the final provisions of the bill and ensuring that it meets the needs of victims and the broader community.

This process has also highlighted the widespread support for these measures and the urgent need for action. The importance of this legislation cannot be overstated. It sends a clear message that the non-consensual creation and distribution of sexually explicit material is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. It provides a robust legal framework to hold perpetrators accountable and protect victims from digital abuse. This is not just a legal issue but a moral imperative. As a society we must stand against the misuse of technology to harm and exploit individuals. This legislation is a critical step in that direction, and I am proud to support it. By working together, we can create a safer and more respectful online environment for everyone.

The issue of deepfake technology and its misuse is not confined to Australia. It is a global problem that requires international cooperation and collaboration. We must work with other nations to develop and enforce standards that protect individuals from the harmful use of deepfake technology. By leading the way with this legislation, Australia can set an example for other countries to follow. This global approach is essential to effectively combat the spread of deepfake pornography and to protect individuals worldwide. Additionally, legal experts and victims-survivors have emphasised the importance of creating a legal deterrent against the creation and dissemination of deepfake pornography. The involvement of these stakeholders ensures that the bill is both comprehensive and effective in addressing the issue.

Moreover, it is essential to continuously evaluate and adapt our legal frameworks as technology evolves. Though we must continue to develop innovative legal solutions to address the dynamic challenges posed by emerging technologies, we must explore avenues to enhance digital literacy, strengthen cybersecurity measures and promote responsible AI development as it continues to evolve and improve its ability to learn and execute even more complex commands and functions. We need to ensure they follow society's expectations. Ensuring the creators and the end users of this technology are not just ethical but that they uphold community values and expectations is important, given that artificial intelligence itself isn't ethical or moral of its own accord. This bill lays a foundation for future efforts to combat digital abuse through collaborative efforts between government, industry and civil society. We can create a digital environment that prioritises safety, privacy and dignity for all Australians, whether they're public figures or just someone who, like all of us should, have an expectation that if anyone were to create and transmit sexually explicit deepfake-generated content without their consent, then such conduct would be defined explicitly as criminal behaviour. Perpetrators of this conduct must know that what they're doing is not just unethical or morally reprehensible but also that it's something that's illegal—and that this criminal behaviour is of such a nature that it deserves to be condemned both by the government of Australia and the people Australia insofar that, when prosecuted, their actions are punished. And that punishment should also provide a strong deterrent not just for themselves but for others out there who might attempt to do the same to someone else in the future.

In closing, I want mums and dads—fathers and mothers—brothers and sisters to know that we have an obligation to educate our young people in society and to ensure that we uphold the values we all expect. This type of behaviour needs to stop. I commend this bill to the House.

Ms PAYNE (Canberra) (18:11): I also rise in support of the Criminal Code Amendment (Deepfake Sexual Material) Bill 2024. This important bill will ban the non-consensual sharing of deepfake sexually explicit material, something which is a serious and growing concern which is already, very sadly, impacting Australians who have fallen victim to this new technological abuse. Digitally created and altered sexually explicit material is a vile and damaging form of abuse that can inflict deep harm on victims.

Young people, in particular, are at risk of image based abuse. The internet has changed dramatically in recent years, with new social media apps constantly popping up—changing platforms that are, increasingly, showing children and young adults damaging content. Further, the rise of artificial intelligence—while potentially an incredibly useful tool in work or study—has the potential to be increasingly harmful. The children of today are digital natives; they have never lived in a world where the internet and social media don't exist. Older generations learned new technologies as we moved into the workforce and engaged with many of these new apps, however, this was without the innate knowledge from being on the internet from as young as being a toddler, as Gen Z were. They inherently understand and use social media. I see this with my own very young children and the way in which they adapted very quickly, and from a very young age, to these sorts of technologies.

With the onset of new social media and the wide range of AI platforms now available, new ways of subjecting women and girls, particularly, to assault and harassment have, disgustingly, infiltrated their way into society. We must act now to ensure we can end violence against women and girls within one generation, as our government has committed to. Specifically, this bill amends the Criminal Code to modernise and strengthen offences targeted to non-consensual sharing of sexually explicit material online, including material that has been digitally created or altered. This bill also includes aggravated offences, which build on the underlying offence, for people who have created or altered the material that has been transmitted.

The reforms in this bill make clear that those who share sexually explicit material without consent by using technology like artificial intelligence will be subject to serious criminal penalties. The new offences will have a maximum penalty of six years imprisonment for transmitting sexual material without consent, and seven years imprisonment for aggravated offences, including where the person created the material. These amendments are high-priority reforms following the government's public commitment on 1 May this year to introduce a suite of measures to tackle online harms, particularly those targeting women and young girls. These new offences will place a high burden on anyone who thinks to perpetuate this kind of abuse. It is another step that the Albanese government is taking to protect women and girls from horrific online attacks.

Sexually explicit deepfakes which are created and shared without consent are used to degrade and dehumanise victims. They are primarily targeted at women and can perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes and drive gender based violence. When they are shared with others or posted online without the consent of the person depicted, it is a serious breach of a person's privacy and can have lasting physically and psychologically harmful impacts on victims.

The phenomenon of image-based violence and abuse is not new. Currently the Criminal Code criminalises the sharing of private sexual material online. There has also been a decades-long discussion about the sharing of private sexual material, often called revenge porn. Revenge porn has been criminalised in every state and territory and the Commonwealth, with the exception of Tasmania. This has ensured that people who are victims of that form of image based abuse can receive restitution for the harm that experience and that perpetrators can be charged. However, the current definition of 'private sexual material' does not adequately cover deepfake images or other artificially generated material.

This bill proposes to repeal the existing offence relating to private sexual material and replace it with a new offence that applies in the following circumstances: where a person transmits material using a carriage service, where the material depicts a person who is or appears to be 18 years of age or older, where the material depicts or appears to depict a person engaging in a sexual pose or sexual activity, or particular parts of their body, and where the person knows that the person depicted does not consent to the transmission of the material or they are reckless as to whether the other person consents.

The bill also introduces two aggravated offences which apply increased penalties to the offence where, before the commission of the underlying offence, three or more civil penalty orders were made against the person for contraventions of relevant provisions of the Online Safety Act 2021 and the person was responsible for the creation or alteration of the sexual material transmitted. These amendments are essential to ensure that our laws can apply to both real material, such as unaltered images and recordings, and fake or doctored material that has been created or altered using AI or other technology.

The bill sets out specific defences to the transmission of the sexual material without consent to ensure the offence is targeted and proportionate. The new offences will not cover private communications between consenting adults or interfere with private sexual relationships. It's about sharing with other people or more broadly. They will also only apply to material depicting or appearing to depict adults. The Criminal Code continues to criminalise the use of carriage services for child abuse material, including child abuse material generated by artificial intelligence.

I am proud to be part of a government that is aiming to end gender based violence in a generation. Our government's work is guided by the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children. The plan sets out how all parts of society, including governments, businesses, workplaces, the media, schools and educational institutions, the family, the domestic and sexual violence sector, communities and all individuals must work together to achieve this shared vision.

In the recent budget, our government permanently established the Leaving Violence Program so those escaping violence can receive financial support, safety assessments and referrals to support pathways. The Leaving Violence Program supports victims-survivors of intimate partner violence to make informed choices about leaving violent relationships and ensures they are receiving the vital support they need. Our government has also funded a pilot of age assurance technology to protect children from harmful content like pornography and other age-restricted online services. The new pilot is part of a suite of interventions aimed at curbing easy access to age-inappropriate material by children and young people and tackling extreme misogyny online.

Education is such an important part of the prevention of gender based violence. That's why our government is funding a new phase of the Stop it at the Start campaign. This new phase will specifically include a counter-influencing campaign in online spaces where violent and misogynistic content thrives to directly challenge the material in the spaces where it's being viewed. The campaign is intended to counter the corrosive influence of online content targeted at young adults that condones violence against women. It will raise awareness about a proliferation of misogynistic influencers and content and encourage conversations within families about the damaging impact of the material.

The disturbing reports we heard out of Victoria last month, where over 50 girls were subjected to sexually explicit deepfake photos of them spread around their school, indicates how important it is for our government to act now. Criminalising deepfake sexually explicit images is the next step that we can take to ensure that vulnerable people are protected online. Sexually explicit deepfake images can affect everyone, from major celebrities to school students. For each person subjected to image abuse online, it is a harrowing and life-altering experience. As technology develops at a never seen before rate, our laws must protect vulnerable people from new forms of abuse. No-one should ever be subjected to any form of abuse, and this bill is how our government is working to ensure that future generations are kept safe online.

I must say, as a mother of young children, just how important this is and how concerning, I suppose that as part of an older generation—as my staff, who drafted this, have described me, and I guess that's so—I was not exposed from such a vulnerable and young age. We didn't live through that in the way that our children's generation are. The idea that young girls could have these faked images spread around their school—just think about the impact that that will have on those girls for rest of their lives. That is why this bill is so incredibly important.

As I said, our government is wanting to end gender based violence in a generation, and the online abuse is a really important part of that. This deepfake AI generated or altered pornography is something that we first saw affecting celebrities, but now it's affecting children in our schools. I am very proud that our government is taking this action now, taking this seriously and putting an end to it.

Ms PLIBERSEK (Sydney—Minister for the Environment and Water) (18:22): The Criminal Code Amendment (Deepfake Sexual Material) Bill 2024 is a timely piece of legislation. The Albanese government will create a new criminal set of offences to ban the non-consensual sharing of deepfake pornography. Digitally created and altered sexually explicit material is a damaging form of abuse against women and girls that can inflict deep harm on victims. I say women and girls because overwhelmingly this material is created and used against women and girls, although some boys are also the victims of it. In fact, some of the apps that create this deepfake material won't work on male bodies; they only work on female bodies.

These reforms will make clear that those who share sexually explicit material without consent using technology like artificial intelligence will be subject to serious criminal penalties, as they should be. This includes material that's been created or altered using technology such as deepfakes. Sexually explicit deepfakes, created and shared without consent, are used deliberately to dehumanise and degrade others. They particularly target women and girls, and they can certainly perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes and drive gender based violence. When they are shared with others or posted online without the consent of the person depicted, it is a serious breach of that person's privacy, and it can have long-lasting harmful impacts on the subject. So I welcome this legislation. It's the work of a government that is looking at the issues that our society faces and addressing them in a swift and thorough way.

This legislation is designed to stem the flow of the particular harms that result from deepfake pornography, and it's very important that we act now. The world's changing, and the technology that's available to online actors is changing. We're in a very particular moment of history, before what I think will be a really massive change as AI becomes even more dominant and mainstream. The shift that we're talking about, with the massive upswing in the use of AI, is as profound as the shift that we saw in 2007 when the iPhone was introduced. But only now is the alarm beginning to be raised, in the last couple of years, about the huge impact that social media is having on our health, on our attention spans and, in particular, on the mental health of our children. The lag between the introduction of the iPhone, the widespread use of social media and the way that this government is beginning to address those harms shows how quickly our society can change—and not for the better—and how important it is that we tackle these problems now. We can't allow the new and additional problem of AI generated deepfake pornography to escape from us in the way that some of the worst elements of social media escaped from us.

This bill amends the Criminal Code Act 1995 to modernise and strengthen offences targeting the non-consensual sharing of sexually explicit material online. The new offences will have a maximum penalty of six years imprisonment for transmitting sexually explicit material without consent and seven years imprisonment for aggravated offences, including where the person created the material. These amendments are a high priority following the government's public commitments on 1 May 2024 to introduce a suite of measures to tackle online harms, particularly harms that target women and young girls, who are overwhelmingly the victims here. This is timely.

As I said a moment ago, we're at a moment in history where AI is about to massively take off in its influence in all elements of our lives, and I do think that, as a community, we are not even beginning to grapple with what some of those effects might be. We're perhaps just beginning to understand what the future looks like. We really do need to think about how we get the best out of artificial intelligence, how we use it for public good and human benefit. We need to give some thought to that now in these early stages in a way that we really didn't give consideration to the massive upswing in the use of social media a few years back. We allowed open slather in social media and we're constantly chasing the harmful impacts of that now, trying to, in some ways, put the genie back in the bottle.

For deepfake porn apps, essentially what you do is you feed a photo of a real person into the app, and it spits out a faked sexually explicit pornographic but ultra-realistic image of that person. In fact, one Spanish mother that was interviewed on this said, if she hadn't known the details of her daughter's body, she would have assumed that the image that was circulating in her small town of her 14-year-old daughter was a real image.

In her book, Time to Reboot: Feminism in the Algorithm Age, Canberra writer Carla Wilshire calls this an 'epidemic of non-consent'. The apps and fake images are being used very deliberately to bully, to harass and to cause immense distress to the, largely, young girls who are being pornified by their classmates—young girls, fellow students and sometimes teachers and other women that they come into contact with.

Parents who were interviewed by News Corp papers in May told horror stories about their children even taking their own lives after being bullied and threatened with these sorts of deepfake images. There are so many horror stories, including that of Tilly Rosewarne from Bathurst, who was bullied from grade 5 onwards but found that the bullying escalated beyond endurance when one kid faked a pornographic picture of her and put it on Snapchat. Tilly suicided. Bullying follows children home from school. They cannot escape because of the influence of social media in their lives, the fact that their phones are always in their pockets, and it becomes a million times more toxic and more powerful when you combine it with the technology that allows this sort of deepfake pornography. So we are acting with this legislation to ban the creation and nonconsensual distribution of deepfake pornography. These reforms will make it clear that those who seek to abuse or degrade people through doxing or deepfakes or abusing their privacy online will be subject to serious criminal penalties because what is happening to people online is having a real-world impact in our homes, in our schools, in our workplaces, in our community.

In the most recent budget we funded a rapid review of research into perpetrators that we expect will also look at the way perpetrators of violence are using social media and technology to continue their harassment and intimidation. Researchers in the area of domestic violence and sexual violence, Jess Hill and Michael Salter, are very explicit, too, about the connection between pornography and rising rates of violence against women. Professor Salter said last month, 'The technology sector is profiting from services and products that cause mass social harm, including violence against women and children.'

The most recent research shows that pornography related searches and downloads range between 10 and 20 per cent of overall internet traffic. While research on the algorithms that porn sites use is just beginning, what is very clear from the studies is that people are being shown and recommended new and more extreme forms of pornography compared to what they searched for or have even expressed an interest in. A 2024 study from Dublin City University shows that the recommender algorithms used by social media platforms are rapidly amplifying misogynistic and male supremacist content. The study tracked and recorded information to 10 neutral accounts on 10 blank smart phones, five on YouTube shorts and five on TikTok. The researchers found that all of the accounts that were identified as male accounts were fed masculinist, antifeminist and other extremist content irrespective of whether they sought out general or male supremacist related content, and they all received this content—this is the bit that really blows me away—within the first 23 minutes of the experiment. That is what the algorithm is feeding people whether they want it or not. And there are plenty of young men who will say to you, 'I believe in equality between men and women, girls and boys. I don't search out the stuff. They know I'm a bloke, possibly, because I'm looking up car videos, and the stuff that gets fed to me is violent, it is degrading, it is graphic and it is harmful.'

Released today was a study that outlined the link between social media use, pornography and choking, which has become very common in the sexual relations of teenagers and young adults. Choking is a sexual activity that is significantly on the rise. There is no question in my mind that it's on the rise because it's being depicted in pornographic videos that are being fed to young people in their social media accounts.

Researchers from the University of Melbourne and the University of Queensland raised the alarm about the harms done—again, mostly to women and girls—by the increasing adoption of this practice. Harms include, obviously, losing consciousness. Of course, every time you lose consciousness, you're damaging your brain, in the same way as you would if you were a footballer getting a knock to the head that knocked you unconscious. Obviously, it can lead to death in extreme cases—after minutes, mind you, it can lead to death. But harms also include the risk of strokes. In fact, sexual choking is the leading cause of strokes for women under the age of 40, according to this research. Most people engaged in these practices are not aware of the risks involved. I have to say: this is a really good example of where you need very explicit sex education for young people and you need very explicit consent education, because I don't believe you can consent to a practice unless you know that there is potential for brain damage, stroke or death from that practice.

I congratulate the Attorney-General for this very important legislation. It is one of the ways we are seeking to address the increasingly hostile and dangerous online world that exists for our children. I think the increasingly hostile and dangerous online world, instead of helping us build a better, more equal, fairer society, in many respects is taking us backwards.

I want to finish by saying to the eSafety Commissioner how important her work is and how much, as a government, we value the effort that she and her team are putting into creating a safer online world for our children. We cannot allow the progress that we've made, over decades, towards gender equality, or allow the progress that we want to make towards safety for women and girls from gender based violence, to be undermined by the tech bros and cowboys who think the rules don't apply to them.

Mr REPACHOLI (Hunter) (18:37): I rise to speak on the Criminal Code Amendment (Deepfake Sexual Material) Bill 2024. One of the biggest changes in our world over the past couple of years has been the rise and rise of artificial intelligence technology. Every second day now there is another news story involving AI. It is being used in all sorts of ways, mostly for good, to help people learn new things and for businesses to increase their productivity. It is generally being used to make the world a better place. But, as is sadly common with new, powerful technologies, AI is also being misused for bad reasons. One of the most highly disturbing examples of this is the use of AI to create non-consensual deepfake sexual material.

A deepfake is a fake image, video or voice clip depicting a real person. Deepfakes are created by using AI to manipulate real data associated with the depicted person, which could be photos or videos of them from social media. Deepfake content can be highly convincing and hard to distinguish from real photos or videos of a targeted person. This is especially true as AI tools become more advanced and as people upload more and more content of themselves online as well. The more data that is out there and available for a given person, the more realistic deepfakes of them can become.

Most deepfake content isn't sexual, and sometimes deepfake technology could be useful. I suspect many singers around the world would probably not have a career without autotune. Deepfakes can also be funny when they are created in good faith and clearly meant to be a fake, such as when a constituent in my electorate sent a deepfake image of me as a kind of Transformer merged with a helicopter. That was a nice surprise, but unfortunately, alongside the harmless deepfakes, a serious issue has been brewing.

Deepfakes can be very dangerous. The danger of a deepfake lies in the fact that they can depict people doing or saying things that they did not actually do or say. When sexually explicit deepfakes are created of a person without their consent, this is a highly distressing experience for the person depicted and extremely harmful to them and their loved ones. It is a damaging form of abuse and it must stop.

Fake and manipulated content has been a feature of our society for many decades. Famously, in magazines and newspapers, photoshopping has been used to make all kinds of alterations to the way people look—be that slimming them down, whitening their teeth or removing their wrinkles. But deepfakes are opening the door to a whole different league of manipulation.

In terms of the quality of output and how realistic it is and how easy it is to generate, AI powered deepfakes are making photoshop look like ancient technology. Soon it is possible that an everyday person will be able to generate huge amounts of almost any content they like of very high quality at the click of a button. It is deeply disturbing that some people in our community will use this technology to degrade and dehumanise others by generating non-consensual sexual material based on their likeness.

Sadly, deepfake technology is already being used in this way. When deepfake sexual material is shared or posted online without the consent of the person depicted, it is a serious breach of the person's privacy and their sense of security. The effects can be long lasting. Once images are out there, victims may have to live with the fear that the reputational damage they're experiencing will follow them throughout their life. The harm also extends to the friends and family of the victim, who share their distress.

Recently we have heard shocking news stories about non-consensual deepfake sexual material. Some of these stories involve material being distributed at schools and at workplaces. The stories involving school students are particularly disturbing. Other existing laws already appropriately penalise the use of AI technology to generate sexual material depicting children. This bill applies to deepfake depictions of adults. As young people are early adapters of AI technology, it is crucial that we clearly set out expectations in law. This bill ensures that it will be illegal to generate non-consensual sexual material of any person regardless of their age.

Given the new risks that AI technology is opening up and the harms that are already being brought upon victims of deepfake sexual material, it is crucial that we, as a government, match powerful advancements in technology with advancements in the law, and that is what this bill seeks to do. It addresses an important area of risk and harm that the rise of AI has opened up.

This bill will amend the Criminal Code to ban the sharing of deepfake sexually explicit material of a person without their consent. This offence will carry a serious criminal penalty, a maximum of six years in prison. If an offender is also responsible for the creation of the non-consensual sexually explicit material, the offence will be considered aggravated, which increases the maximum penalty to seven years imprisonment. The law as it already stands criminalises non-consensual sharing of private sexual material; however, this bill amends the law to ensure that it equally penalises deepfake sexual material of a person too. These important reforms make clear that those who share and create sexually explicit material without consent, including by using new technology like AI, will be subjected to serious criminal penalties—and so they should be. What makes this bill especially needed and important is that we also know that in the vast majority of cases the victims of deepfake sexual material are women and girls.

The government is deeply concerned about the level of gendered violence in this country. In May, the Prime Minister met with state leaders from across Australia to address how the gendered violence crisis in our nation could be best addressed. After that meeting, the government announced almost $1 billion of funding towards the Leaving Violence Program, which will provide those escaping violence with financial support, safety assessments and referrals to support pathways. We also announced a trial of age verification technology to limit the ability of children to access sexually harmful content online. Non-consensual deepfake sexual material perpetuates harmful gender stereotypes and drives gender based violence. That's why our next step to address the gendered violence crisis is to crackdown on harmful deepfakes.

This bill builds on other initiatives of this government that work towards ending gendered violence in this country. We made a commitment to tackling online harms, particularly online harms that affect women and young girls, and this bill is part of our effort to honour that commitment fully. The bill was developed in consultation with the Australian Federal Police, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions and other relevant Commonwealth agencies. It will work hand in hand with relevant state based laws to empower law enforcement and prosecutors to properly go after the people who are doing this abuse who create and share non-consensual deepfake sexual material.

We have heard the calls of victims and members of the public who have felt strongly that the law must be strengthened to address non-consensual deepfake sexual material. We are listening and we are also acting. I support this bill because it penalises the sharing of non-consensual deepfake sexual material. It will reduce this terrible kind of abuse, and I support this bill because it helps our continuing fight against gendered violence in our country. I commend this bill to the House.

Mr DREYFUS (Isaacs—Attorney-General and Cabinet Secretary) (18:47): Digitally created and altered sexually explicit material that's shared without consent is a damaging and deeply distressing form of abuse. This insidious behaviour is degrading, humiliating and dehumanising for victims. Such acts are overwhelmingly targeted at women and girls and perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes and gender based violence. The Criminal Code Amendment (Deepfake Sexual Material) Bill 2024 delivers on a commitment made by the Albanese government following the National Cabinet held in May to address gender based violence. This commitment recognises the urgent and collective need to respond to the growing challenges associated with artificially generated sexual material.

This bill will strengthen the criminal law to protect vulnerable people from online harm and abuse and hold perpetrators to account. It will create a new criminal offence that applies where a person transmits sexual material depicting an adult person, using a carriage service and the person knows the person depicted does not consent to the transmission of the material or is reckless as to whether or not the other person consents. The new offence will carry a maximum penalty of six years imprisonment.

The bill also introduces two new aggravated offences. The first aggravated offence applies where the person transmitting the material is also responsible for creating or altering the material. The second aggravated offence applies where a person has already been found liable for similar conduct as the civil standard under the Online Safety Act 2021 on three occasions. These aggravated offences carry a maximum penalty of seven years imprisonment to reflect the seriousness of this offending. The bill sets out specific defences to ensure these offences are targeted and proportionate.

Let me address some matters that have been raised in debate. The bill ensures criminal offences relating to non-consensual sharing of sexual material applies to both real and fake material, including deepfakes. The bill repeals previous offences in the Criminal Code dealing with non-consensual sharing of private sexual material. Those existing offences do not adequately cover the situation where deepfake sexual material is shared online without consent. This was the clear advice of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement in December 2023. The new criminal offences remedy this defect and create a strong framework to criminalise the non-consensual sharing of sexual material online. The new criminal offences are based on a consent model to better cover both artificial and real sexual material. Consent is not defined in the legislation and relies on its ordinary meaning, which is understood to be free and voluntary agreement. A person is taken to have consented if the person freely and voluntarily agrees to the sharing of the material. It would not apply where consent was obtained through fear, force or deception.

The new offences will apply to sexual material depicting adults, with child abuse material continuing to be dealt with comprehensively in a separate division of the Criminal Code which includes detailed offences and heavy penalties. The new offences do not change the meaning of recklessness, rather it clarifies that being reckless as to whether a person has consented includes:

… not giving any thought to whether or not the person is consenting.

That's consenting to the transmission. This is consistent with other offences in the Criminal Code which deal with non-consensual sexual activity—for example, the war crime of rape and sexual violence crimes. The spurious arguments raised by the opposition, particularly by the member for Bradfield, to the effect that these new criminal offences are not needed should be firmly rejected. The opposition should instead support stronger laws to counter deepfake sexually explicit material.

The bill will hold perpetrators to account for causing harm through the non-consensual sharing of deepfakes, and ensure that Australia's criminal offences keep pace with new technology. The Albanese government is committed to keeping Australians safe from technology facilitated abuse.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Goodenough ): The question is that the amendments be agreed to. There being more than one voice calling for a division, in accordance with standing order 133 the division is deferred until the first opportunity on the next sitting day.

Debate adjourned.

Dr SCAMPS (Mackellar) (18:54): As I was saying previously: in addition, in 2023 over 270 acres that were bulldozed in the Banana shire for beef pasture had been mapped as habitat for 45 EPBC listed species, including the koala, the northern quoll, the spotted-tail quoll and the greater glider. These areas of critical habitat were able to be cleared because of the continuous land-use exemption in the current EPBC Act. This bushland was able to be cleared without any assessment under our national environment laws. In the midst of an environmental and climate crisis, in a country which leads the world for both its mammal extinctions and deforestation rate, it is extraordinary that this can still be happening.

An assessment of a project's climate change impacts must also be integrated into the EPA's functions through the establishment of a climate trigger. The Australia state of the Environment 2021 report clearly made the point that climate change is supercharging the destruction of our environment and our nature. As I said earlier, already 19 ecosystems across Australia are on the brink of collapse, and, as UN experts warn, greenhouse gas pollution is the largest and most pervasive threat to the natural environment the world has ever known. Environmental destruction, extinctions and climate change are inextricably linked. Any EPA must have a duty to consider and assess projects for their carbon and their methane emissions. Otherwise it will be doing a vastly incomplete and insufficient job, and this will mean we will continue to see widescale destruction of our environment and our species' extinctions. It is illogical in 2024, having already hit 1.5 degrees of global warming, to create Australia's first Environment Protection Agency with no mandate to protect against further climate change impacts.

That takes us back full circle to the problem of establishing this EPA as part of the so-called 'stage 2' and delaying stage 3 until who knows when. This EPA, once created, will only be tasked with enforcing what the environment minister herself described as fundamentally broken nature laws, laws which, for the past 25 years, have failed to protect our nature. As the Climate Council pointed out, more than 7.7 million hectares of threatened species' habitat have been cleared since the EPBC Act came into effect in 1999. There are now 1,918 species under threat, with more than half of those at risk of extinction. More than 740 fossil fuel projects have been waved through under the current act, despite their direct role in fuelling harmful climate change. With the great uncertainty about when or if the stage 3 reforms will ever see the light of day, it is critically important that simple steps, such as repealing the RFA exemptions and implementing a climate trigger, be enacted now, in this stage of the reforms of the EPBC Act.

Australia absolutely needs a national Environment Protection Agency—there is no doubt about it—and I thank and commend the government for their work to establish this body. But it could be so much better and stronger. If ever there were a time for strong and visionary leadership, it is now, and so I urge the minister and the government to act decisively to enact a strong and independent board to oversee the duties of the EPA. This is what environmental organisations across the country are calling for, loud and clear, as a critical step towards the true protection of our nature. I would also strongly urge the minister to include a climate trigger in the EPBC Act in this stage of the reforms and repeal the Regional Forestry Agreement exemptions in this stage of the bills because, if the intention is to truly protect nature, then it simply does not make sense to not do so.

Mrs ELLIOT (Richmond—Assistant Minister for Social Services and Assistant Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence) (18:58): I too rise to speak on these really important bills, the Nature Positive (Environment Protection Australia) Bill 2024, the Nature Positive (Environment Information Australia) Bill 2024 and the Nature Positive (Environment Law Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2024. The fact is that the Labor Party is committed to a nature-positive Australia. It is something we believe in very much. We believe in it because our livelihoods, our economy and indeed all our wellbeing depend on the health of our natural world. We all want a country in which nature is being repaired and is regenerating rather than continuing to decline. We have to address that, and we're doing that. We also want to ensure compliance with environmental laws. I would like to commend the Minister for the Environment and Water for the work that has been done on these bills and across a range of different projects since we have been in government. We are a very proactive government when it comes to protecting our environment.

The Albanese Labor government went to the election promising a strong national independent Environment Protection Agency to be a tough cop on beat and we are delivering upon that. This all comes after a wasted decade under the Liberals and Nationals but, in contrast, Labor is getting on with the job of what needs to be done for environmental repair, and we are delivering more than ever on programs, projects, policies and actions to create a Nature Positive Australia. In fact, no government has done more for the environment or acted on climate change more than the Albanese Labor government. We are absolutely committed to acting on climate change and we have shown that through our very decisive actions in our transition to renewables and through the vast amount of projects and investment that we have made in that area. Labor wants to see our precious natural landscapes repaired instead of the continuing decline we have seen under those opposite in a wasted decade of environmental vandalism.

When we turn to these bills, what they will deliver is stronger environmental powers, faster environmental approvals, and more environment information and transparency. In essence, the key changes in this bill will be Australia's first national independent environmental protection agency with strong new powers and penalties to better protect nature, more accountability and transparency with a new body called Environment Information Australia, which will give businesses easy access to the latest environmental data—release the State of the environment report every two years—and report progress on national environmental goals. We will continue working to fully deliver the third stage of environmental law reform. We will do this through constant consultation, working closely with environmental groups, businesses, states and territories, and others, on further updates when it comes to environmental laws, as outlined in our Nature Positive Plan. So it is very clear the depth of our commitment.

This parliament now has an opportunity. The choices before the parliament are very clear: do you want an independent environmental protection agency or not? We do. We know it is important. Do you want better data to inform environmental decisions? Labor believes we do. Do you want tougher penalties for those breaking environmental laws? We do. Labor want to see that. A really important question for this House to look at is: do you want Australia to be the first jurisdiction in the world to enshrine a definition of Nature Positive in legislation or not? Labor do, which is why we have these bills here.

Our new EPA, Environment Protection Australia, along with Environment Information Australia, will ensure compliance with environmental laws and will improve so many processes. It will integrate environmental data collection so there is consistent reliable information on the state of the environment across the country to inform decision-making and to track our progress against our goals, like protecting 30 per cent of our land and oceans by 2030. I think there is consistent agreement that the current regulatory system doesn't work. We know that it isn't working at all. So under Labor we are fixing our laws and we will make sure they improve nature, protect our unique native animals and plants, and prevent extinctions. That is what Australians expect of us, it is what they voted for and it is what we are delivering on.

Last year we passed legislation to establish the world's first nature repair market. We also increased the reach of our environmental laws so the Minister for the Environment must assess all unconventional gas projects, including shale gas, which trigger our environmental laws. We are moving quickly to establish the Environment Protection Agency and Environment Information Australia. They are crucial elements of our plans to create a Nature Positive Australia and we want to get them in place as soon as possible so they can begin their really important work.

As I say, the EPA is an important part of delivering the government's Nature Positive Plan. In passing this legislation, we can get on with the actual work of setting up the new EPA before it is asked to administer new environmental laws so it is a smoother transition of responsibilities from the department to the agency. We're doing all this to better protect nature. We will have a truly national environmental regulator that we can all be incredibly proud of that will be responsible for a wide range of activities under Australia's environmental laws, including in relation to recycling and waste exports, hazardous waste, wildlife trade, sea dumping, ozone protection, underwater cultural heritage and air quality. And we are investing in our people, our planning and our systems to speed up development decisions, essentially to deliver quicker yeses and—when necessary—quicker noes by having that much faster system in place. The fact is the EPA will be the tough cop on the beat, enforcing our laws through new monitoring, compliance and—really important—enforcement powers.

Of course, we did have the Samuel review, and we know that that found that the regulator was not fulfilling their necessary function in terms of the monitoring of our environmental laws. Professor Samuel also found that serious enforcement actions are rarely used and that penalties need to be much stronger. Again, it showed us that the current system is just not working. Our bills respond to those findings of the Samuel review. As I said, stage 3 will continue our broader efforts to halt and reverse environmental decline and, of course, to protect nature. That is our objective.

These bills also set up the Head of Environment Information Australia, an independent position with a legislative mandate to provide environmental data and information to the EPA. It's so important to have this independent position to transparently report on different changes in the environment. Both of these are major initiatives that we do absolutely need to see in place.

As I've outlined already, the Albanese government is doing more than ever to protect our environment and act on climate change. We know how important it is to have a whole range of programs, policies, actions and reforms all in place to do that. We do that because we are a party that's committed to preserving the environment. We believe in climate change, and we act responsibly. That is the essence of all that we do when it comes to protecting our environment. This is an issue that I know many people in my area, northern New South Wales, feel strongly about, as well as people right throughout the country. It is one that we have consistently raised here and, indeed, at many elections.

We don't deny the science, as those opposite often do, or stand in the way of sensible progress, like the extreme Greens political party always do. We've seen on many occasions, particularly of late, that the opposition and the extreme Greens political party are all about the headlines. That's all they're about—the headlines, not the hard work of reform and implementing sensible and effective changes that actually protect our environment and also secure our future energy sources. It's so important that we transition to renewable energy but at the same time keep the lights on. We have to do that sensibly, and we are doing that, absolutely. But particularly we see the opposition and the extreme Greens just chasing those headlines.

Even last week, it was quite hard to believe that, in the Senate, we saw the Greens teaming up with One Nation to try and delay the Senate inquiry in relation to setting up the first national environment protection agency. There you've got the Greens with One Nation trying to delay the protection of our environment. As the member for Blair and the member for Cunningham pointed out, when members of the extreme Greens spoke, including the leader, the member for Brisbane and the member for Griffith, they didn't actually address anything in the bill at all. They just spread a lot of misinformation, as they often do. They referred to a recent approval, claiming that there was no protection for koala habitat, whereas, as the minister said here in question time, there were very strict conditions. There was no koala breeding or foraging habitat that can be cleared in relation to that.

We constantly see misinformation from the Greens political party. They claim they want to conserve forests, but it wasn't that long ago that we had a Greens senator who was proposing to bulldoze koala habitat to build three luxury investment properties. It was outrageous, and people are still outraged, as we often see that hypocrisy from the party of protest—the extreme Greens. We see it with the environment. We see it again and again with housing. They'll block every initiative when it comes to housing that they can. It is absolutely unbelievable. It's certainly an issue that people raise with me locally about how extreme the Greens are and how they hold up any good reforms that are in place.

But, of course, we also see the Liberals and Nationals. Let's look at their record. When the Albanese Labor government was elected, the minister released the official five-yearly report card on the Australian environment, the Australia state of the environment 2021report. It had been previously hidden by the previous Liberal-National government. It was just horrific—a catalogue of horrors! It shows how much damage in a decade the opposition did in terms of their neglect when it comes to the environment.

The report told us that Australia's environment was in a very bad shape and getting worse. It's quite staggering when we actually look at some of the details of what it found. It found that Australia has lost more mammal species to extinction than any other continent. It found that for the first time Australia has more foreign plant species than native. It found that habitat the size of Tasmania has been cleared. It found that plastics are choking our ocean—up to 80,000 pieces of plastics per square kilometre. And it found that flows in most Murray-Darling rivers had reached record low levels.

It is fairly confronting when we look through lists like that and we see the absolute neglect by the previous government when it came to the environment, right across the board. There was a lot of work for us to do in terms of that decade of neglect. With a lot of the initiatives that we've brought forward, we've certainly heard from many people that they're very pleased that we are in government and we are taking this decisive action.

We also listen to other experts. In fact, Professor Graeme Samuel said that the government and the minister are doing everything exactly as they should be, and 'I don't underestimate the complexity of what has to be done.' ACF said:

ACF welcomes the government's announcement that it will set up an agency to enforce environmental laws—something previous governments failed to do.

The Australian Marine Conservation Society said, 'These new institutions are essential and welcome.' These groups know how important it is to be proactive when it comes to protecting our environment. In fact, the Business Council of Australia said that the government is taking the right step, because business needs certainty as well. It's vitally important. The Urban Development Institute of Australia said, 'The minister is doing the right thing.' The National Farmers Federation said:

Our members have said for years that the current Act is broken. It's hard to engage with producers who want to do the right thing, and in some instances it's preventing best practice management of the landscape.

We are addressing all those concerns, right across the board, by the establishment of these particular agencies. We know that it is absolutely the right thing to do, and that's because we, on this side of the House, understand how important it is to address all the complexities when it comes to protecting our environment. It's about addressing climate change and environmental protection through our really decisive action, while also, of course, examining the economic and business realities, as well.

I know that the minister, and many of us on this side, has been working with many different groups in our communities and hearing firsthand, as we have for years, about the action that needs to be taken. We have done a lot by establishing the Net Zero Economy Agency to have a focus on economic opportunities for the regions, which is important. We've set up our National Electric Vehicle Strategy. We're also rolling out 400 community batteries across the country. It's really important to have that in place, too.

The fact is that these bills that we're looking at today, the three nature positive bills, represent a really groundbreaking step towards our commitment to preserving our incredible landscapes and what is, as we all know, our very unique biodiversity and our very rich ecosystems, which we are so fortunate to have in this country. But it takes time, commitment, investment and a long-term vision to make sure that this is all in place. That's why we have had so many ongoing stages when it comes to the reform. We need to make sure it's all in place. It really is a new era of environmental conservation.

We also recognise the urgent need to act longer term as well, to ensure that all of those challenges are met, particularly when it comes to addressing climate change. A lot of work has to be done because we've had so much environmental degradation under the previous government. That's why there is an urgency about starting all of this.

But we, those of us in the Albanese Labor government, are very proud to be taking this decisive action. We went to the election, put it to the Australian people, and they elected us so that we can take action on a number of fronts. And one of those absolutely includes taking action on climate change and addressing the needs of our environment. That's exactly what we're doing and we're very proud to be doing that. I commend all of these bills to the House.

Mr WILLCOX (Dawson) (19:13): I rise today to speak on the Nature Positive (Environment Protection Australia) Bill 2024 and the two related bills. As a farmer by trade, I know thing or two about working the land. I know a thing or two about being environmentally savvy. I also know a thing or two about what it takes to protect the environment and to leave the land better than when you found it, which is something the Albanese Labor government is simply not doing. This Albanese Labor government will have the Australian public believe that those who worked the land are the problem. You can see this in all of their rushed legislation that they're trying to bring in or have brought in. Right across Australia they've attacked our farmers, they've attacked our fishers and they've attacked our logging industry, which I know is a major cause of concern for my colleagues down south. Those opposite say they want a future made in Australia, but the Albanese Labor government are MIA when it comes to Australia's future.

Closer to home, in my electorate of Dawson, the Minister for the Environment and Water bowed down to UNESCO's 10 demands, including the bans on gillnet fishing. This is a decision that has put Australia's sustainable wild-caught fishing industry in jeopardy. The reality is though—and I say this based on decades of experience—that those of us who have made a living out of working on the land look after our rivers and our oceans. We rely on these ecosystems not only to survive but to thrive. Without these thriving ecosystems there would be nothing there for us to harvest. We would lose our ability to make a living. We would lose our ability to pay our bills, and we would lose our ability to feed our families and to feed our nation.

Aussie farmers and fishers are Australia's biggest environmental warriors. We know what it takes. More importantly, we do what it takes to ensure that our land and our waterways are healthy. Anyone who says otherwise has never been a farmer. Those opposite are persecuting us at every turn, with more and more paperwork, more regulation and even monitoring the amount of fertiliser we use, claiming that we are the problem. What an absolute joke! Anyone who thinks a farmer wastes fertiliser has never had to pay for the stuff. Farmers are nature positive, unlike this bill.

I could stand here in this House and tell you all about how lazy the Albanese Labor government are when it comes to their policy and legislation. I could tell you how lacklustre this government have been. I could tell you exactly how much they do not care about rural and regional Australia, and that the only thing they care about is putting out political agendas and marketing spin to draw on the heartstrings of those inner city voters. And yet, they make no real effort towards positive change.

I stand here and I say this and, yes, I will yell it from the rooftops if I have to: let's actually have a look at a few of the examples of how those opposite have already let the Australian public down and how they continue to let the Australian public down. I've already mentioned the minister's ban on the use of commercial gillnets right across Queensland, impacting Australia's fishos and removing 2,000 tonnes of Australian wild-caught seafood from the market. This decision was rushed and not based on science. It was pushed through by the Labor government without consultation with the local fishing industry and without any plan for if or when these men and women were going to be compensated, leaving all of them scared for their future and their families, which for most spans back many generations—all with a stroke of a pen from Canberra by a minister who, when invited to my electorate to speak with these fishers and to consult with the experts and all of the industry, just refused. Tell me how that works, Minister? Please tell me, because I really struggle with this concept. I say it again: this decision was rushed through without any scientific backing. It's a pattern that we've seen emerge from this one-term government.

What else have those opposite done that goes against protecting the environment or that goes against protecting Australia's future? As a display of hypocrisy at its best, the Albanese Labor government wants to destroy thousands of hectares of prime agricultural land and native vegetation for this reckless race to renewables. Let me be clear: I am not against renewable energy. I love renewable energy. But you have to do it sensibly and you have to do it in the right place.

Instead of clearing the plant life that naturally removes carbon dioxide from the air and turns this into oxygen through a process called photosynthesis—those opposite might want to google that and see what photosynthesis does—they want to build massive metal wind turbines that only produce energy when the wind blows—but not too much wind because they won't work then either. Those opposite want to fill thousands of hectares of land with giant solar panels that can't be recycled at the end of their life, which is only about 10 to 15 years. And then where do they go? They go straight into landfill, and then the landfill has to be monitored forever. Now, that is not very nature positive, is it? In fact, I'd have to say that's nature negative.

Instead of having a mature discussion after looking at its viability, safety and potential, the Labor government won't even talk to us about zero emission nuclear technology that would provide continuous and reliable power 24 hours a day, seven days a week; have a life expectancy of 80 years; and take up a physical footprint that is only a small percentage of that under the renewables plan. Instead, those opposite are utilising scare campaigns, with images of three-eyed fish from The Simpsons. Australia already has a nuclear industry in Sydney. Where are the three-eyed fish there?

Refusing to have a mature discussion about zero emission technology that lasts for decades and choosing to bulldoze thousands of hectares of prime agricultural land and native vegetation instead is certainly not nature positive.

Those opposite gagged debate on the family ute and car tax and rushed that legislation through without bothering to stop and consider the consequences for those of us living in rural and regional areas, where the infrastructure to power electric vehicles simply does not exist. It's nowhere to be found. In my electorate of Dawson, we are the biggest cane-farming region in Australia, we have farmers growing beautiful Bowen mangoes, we have a half-a-billion-dollar horticultural crop and we supply food for the entire nation. What this government doesn't understand is that our farmers and food producers can't use electric vehicles, because they're not fit for purpose. They can't carry the weight, they can't tow the load and they cannot travel the vast distances that we need to be able to travel. As a result, our farmers are going to be charged thousands of dollars more for their vehicles just for the privilege of feeding our nation and keeping our nation alive.

It is abundantly clear that the Labor government are not interested in the welfare of Australia or the Australian environment. Those opposite are playing a game of pass the parcel with Australia's future, and you never know what you're going to find under each new layer of bureaucratic paper.

Now we have had these rushed nature positive bills through from Minister Plibersek, nothing about these bills is very nature positive at all, but everything about them is Australia negative. These bills are going to be bad for business, bad for the economy and bad for every Australian who is trying to work hard and get on with the job.

Let's get to the reality of the situation. If Labor get their way with this legislation, we are going have yet another environmental protection agency handed millions of dollars to do exactly what all the other environmental organisations have been established to do. The minister is handing over all the power to these organisations before even legislating how they will work—another pattern emerging from the Albanese Labor government. This is what happens when you have a prime minister that provides weak leadership; it filters down through the whole organisation. As the fishos in my electorate say, 'The fish rots from the head.'

We already have the Environmental Defenders Office, who come after legitimate projects and shut them down. But where are they when it comes to defending the environment as a Labor government is decimating thousands of hectares of prime agricultural land, native vegetation and koala habitats to put up wind farms and solar panels that all end up in landfill? There is nothing renewable about these renewables. The Environmental Defenders Office is nowhere.

As I mentioned before, the minister wants to legislate another body that is a duplication of something that already exists. But that isn't even the most sinister part of this bill. This organisation won't have to report to anyone, not even the minister. They will have all the power to walk into a workplace and shut your business down, stop your projects and hand over enormous fines, and all they will have to say is, 'We have reasonable suspicion to do it.' Whose version of reasonable is reasonable, though, Minister? Nothing those opposite have done so far has shown me that they are reasonable. This is nothing but green lawfare on business and on the hardworking Aussies just trying to do their bit and get on with their lives.

This isn't an environmental protection agency; this is an environmental union. This minister wants to give this organisation union power, and the scary thing is it is going to hurt everyone. Yes, it's going to hurt big business and, yes, it's going to hurt small business too. This environmental union will be able to walk into any business—restaurants, hairdressers, accountants, engineering shops and your local fish and chip shops—and force them to stop trading. If they want to shut you down, they will be able to do this. I will not be supporting this bill. As I've clearly demonstrated, this bill is not nature positive; on the contrary, this bill is nature negative.

Mr BURNELL (Spence) (19:27): I think that went for about 13 minutes and 35 seconds, and I'm not really sure what it was that the member for Dawson was trying to achieve—

Mr Willcox: Just telling the truth!

Mr BURNELL: I'll take your interjection, Member for Dawson—apart from running a scaremongering campaign based on the idea that, on that side of the chamber, you know farmers and, on this side of the chamber, we don't know farmers—'You're bad; we're good.' Newsflash, buddy: without a productive, safe, positive environment, our farmlands don't work, and I know that because I spent quite a lot of my youth growing up on family farms. I was also lucky that my father spent quite a long time with the Victorian Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. I had a firsthand experience of going with him on 'Take your kid to work' days. I got to see what happens when we don't take care of our environment. Soil degradation and higher salinity levels make farming harder and production drops off. It is important that we take care of our environment because, without our environment, we don't have anywhere to live and, as the member for Dawson likes to rightly point out, we can't grow crops. Yes, we need to feed the nation, but we also need lands that support that production of food and, importantly, we need an environment that is supported by good policy to ensure that that land remains productive and safe for generations to come.

That's what the Nature Positive (Environment Protection Australia) Bill 2024 and the related bills essentially go towards. It's about setting a framework where you can look to the future and know with a high level of certainty that we are going to have an environment that is habitable, that is productive for food production and where farmers are profitable. This is not about shutting down farming; this is about working with farmers, working with our agricultural sector, working with our environment. It's about having a positive environment so that we can work positively with farmers and people to live in harmony. I really have to say that the member for Dawson needs to pull his head out of his proverbial and see the sunlight. We constantly hear this rhetoric about wind towers taking up land that we can't farm on. Actually, the truth is that you can still farm around your wind towers.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Goodenough ): Order! It being 7.30 pm, the debate is interrupted.