International Justice Mission (IJM) Australia welcomes the independent report by Ms Delia Rickard PSM into the Online Safety Act (2021), tabled today by the Minister for Communications, Hon Michelle Rowland MP.
In line with IJM's submission to the review, the report makes key recommendations to protect children from livestreamed child sexual abuse by Australian perpetrators, including by increasing obligations on tech companies to prevent child sexual abuse material on their products and services, and introducing a stronger enforcement regime to encourage industry compliance.
CEO of IJM Australia, David Braga, said "Australia has a moral obligation to address this harm because we are consistently ranked as a high consumer of this material. According to a recent study by Childlight, 1 in 55 Australian men have engaged in sexually explicit webcamming with a child, and about the same number have paid for online sexual interactions, images or videos involving a child."[1]
Mr Braga, continued "IJM supports the recommendation that an overarching digital duty of care should require online service providers to consistently take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harms, including the risk their services could be misused to create, access or distribute child sexual abuse material."
"A comprehensive digital duty of care must include obligations for tech companies to undertake risk assessments and mitigation measures, and to continually monitor the effectiveness of those measures to prevent livestreamed child sexual abuse material on their products and services," Mr Braga said.
Diana*, a survivor of online sexual exploitation of children in the Philippines, who was 13 years old at the time of abuse, stated "I want to legislate the cessation of online sexual exploitation such as livestreams on Facebook or any app … Every person performing this abuse must be stopped or monitored."
Platforms designated 'high reach or risk' could be required to regularly conduct risk assessments and produce transparency reports, however this requirement should also apply to smaller platforms to avoid offenders seeking out smaller less regulated online services to commission livestreamed child sexual abuse.
IJM welcomes the recommended component under the digital duty of care to issue enforceable codes for services; require responses to reporting notices; and require 'high reach or risk' services to be subject to independent audits.
"The digital duty of care should apply equally to all online services, regardless of the reach of the service or apparent level of risk, to make online safety standards essential to operating in the digital age and remove safe havens for offenders to exploit smaller or seemingly less risky platforms," Mr Braga said.
IJM supports the recommendation to enhance penalties and enforcement powers by raising penalties to make them proportionate to the scale of services and potential severity of harms, streamlining removal powers, and better empowering the regulator to require remedial action.
"Penalty amounts under the Act should be increased to 10% of annual turnover, to be consistent with comparable regimes in Australia and with online safety regulation in international jurisdictions," Mr Braga said.
IJM welcomes the recommendation to recognise the role of online safety related services and technology in detecting child sexual abuse material, which is in line with our recommendation to establish a process of accreditation for safety technologies that can prevent and address child sexual exploitation material, and maintain a public register of accredited technologies.
IJM also supports the recommendation of a cost recovery mechanism to appropriately resource the regulator to administer the Online Safety Act.
"IJM now urges all parliamentarians to commit to swiftly implementing a digital duty of care to protect children from online sexual exploitation and abuse on Australian screens," Mr Braga stated.
*A pseudonym has been used for the protection of this survivor.
