Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1697635432809.pdf (Australia)
The Hon.
Shelley Hancock f'"1P Speaker of Lhe 1sw Legislative Assembly Member fo r Sou th Coast 7 February 2018 Committee Secretary Senate Legal and Constitution al Affairs Committee PO Box 6100 Parliament House CANBERRA ACT 2600 Dear Committee Secretary I appreciate the opportunity to make a submission to the Sen at e Lega l and Con stitutional Affairs Committee who have been charged with investigating th e adequacy of existin g offences in th e Commonwealth Crimin al Code and state and territory, in cl udin g New South W ales crimin al laws to capture cyberbullying including: a. b. c. the broadcas ting of assaults and oth er crimes via socia l med ia platfo rms; the application of section 474.17 of the Commonwea lth Criminal Cod e 'Using a carri age se rvice to menace, harass or cau se offence', and th e adequ acy of the penalty, particularly wh ere th e victim of cyberbullyin g has self-h armed or taken th eir own life; th e ad equacy of th e policies, procedures and practices of social media plat form s in preventing and address ing cyberbullyin g; d. oth er meas ures used to combat cyberbullying predomin ant ly bet ween school children and young people; and e. any oth er relat ed matter.
I wa s elect ed as Member for South Coast in th e New South W ales Legis lative Assembly in 2003, subsequ ently re-elected in 2007, 2011 and 2015.

I currently hold th e positi on of Speaker of th e NSW Legislative Assembly, elect ed in 2011 and aga in in 2015.

Prior t o my roles in Parli ament, I was a high school t eacher at Ull adull a High School on th e Sout h Coast of NSW for 27 years.
Young People and Bullying For an ext end ed period of tim e I have long ex pressed conce rn at th e preva lence of suicide in our co mmunit ies - particularly in rural and regi onal comm uniti es an d th e alarmingly increasin g rate of youth suicid e across Au stralia.
Unfortun at ely a series of reports and st atisti cs showing an increase in th e rat e of suicid e amongst those age d bet ween 15 and 24 Parliament House i\ lacquarie Stree t Syd ney 2000 Phone: (02) 9230 2.201 Fax: (0.2) 9230 28-1-6 Adequacy of existing offences in the Commonwealth Criminal Code and of state and territory criminal laws to capturecyberbullyingSubmission 33 point directly at th e impact of bullying, particularly bullying conducted on li ne over social media pl atfo rm s. Th e Parliam ent of New South Wales Library's repo rt entitled Cyberbullying of Children ex pl ain ed why yout h are vulnerable to cyberb ullying.1 The repo rt stated, 'the increasing number of ways in which people ca n co nn ect t o one another online has in creased t he potential for cyberbullying to occur.
However, this ri sk is further increased due to a generational shift in how today's youth view and use technology.'

Additionally, th e 2011 Joint Se lect Committee on Cyber-Safety explained how yo ung peop le are dependent on technology as part of their day-to-day lives.

'holistica lly': Unlike their parents/ca rers, most young people use communicating, lea rning, socia li sin g, playing, researching, and doing homework, so that their online lives blend seam less ly with th ei r offlin e lives.
There are some young people who do not have a clear demarcation between online (virt ual) world and the offline (real) world .

For them, the two worlds exist symbiotical ly.'

2 technology According to Lifeline Australia, suicid e remains th e lead in g cause of death for Australi ans aged between 15 and 44.3 Rise of Cyberbullying As a former high school teacher I am well aware of the preval ence of bullying within the sc hool playground.
Fortunately, throughout my t enure students had litt le to no access to mobile d evices and on lin e platforms had not become such an integrated part of society.

Whilst bullying st ill occu rs on th e playground, recent studies poin t to an alarming increase in the use socia l media platforms as a driver for bullying, particularly in youth.
Accord ing to the 2009 Austra lian Covert Bullying Preva lence Study conducted by the Child Hea lth Promotion Research Centre, 32 per cent of frequent school bullying occurs amongst year 5 students and 29 per cent amongst year 8 students; 83 per cent of students who bully others o nlin e also bully others offlin e; and 84 per cent of students who were bu llied onl in e were also bullied offlin e.4 Peers are present as on lookers for 87 per cent of the t ime during bullying interactions and play a centra l role in the bullying process.
Hurtful teasing was the most prevalent of all bullying behaviours experi enced by stud ents, followed by hurtf ul lies being told about them.

In 2016 a report und ertaken for the Australi an Department of Education and Tra ining by the University of South Australia entitled Th e Prevalence and Effectiveness of Anti-Bullying 1 https://www .parliament.

nsw .gov.au/research papers/Documents/ cyberb u llying-of ch i Id ren/Cyberbu I lying%20of%20Chi Id ren.
pdf 2 Joint Select Committee on Cyber-Safety, note 11, p 30.

3 https://www.lifeline.org.au/about-lif eli ne/ lifeline-information/statistics-on-suicide-in-australia 4 https://www .parliament.

nsw .gov.
au/ research papers/Documents/ cyberbu llyi ng-of- child ren/Cyberbu llyi ng%20of%20Chi I dren .pdf https://docs.ed ucation.gov.au/system/fi les/doc/other/au stra lian covert bullying prevalence study execut iv e summary.pdf Adequacy of existing offences in the Commonwealth Criminal Code and of state and territory criminal laws to capturecyberbullyingSubmission 33 Strategies Employed in Australia Schools identified the strengths and limitations of how bullying in schools is currently being addressed and provid es an account of how schools are responding to school bullying.
5 The report, the first of its kind in Aust ralia, outlines the most commonly perceived forms of bullying involved the spreading of malicious rumo urs "to make other kids not like me", with 30.7 per cent reporting that t his happened quite often or very often at their school.
The percentages of students perceiving other forms of bullying as happening quite or very often were: being mad e fun of or teased in a mean and hurtful way (26.3%); being ignored or not allowed to join in (19.5%); being hit, pushed around (14.9%); being made afraid of being hurt (12.2%); cru el things said online (12.2%); hara ssing of students because of their race (10.5%); harassing texts or emails (8.9%); sexual harassment (3.8%).

Th e playground is the leading place wh ere bullying occurs (79 .8%).
Alarmi ngly, 29.2 pe r cent of students indicated cyber as the second leading place th ey were bullied.

Notably, a high er proportion of girls often felt unsafe following cyber bullyin g. The study shows that half of all stud ents in Australian governm ent schoo ls have been bulli ed at least once in a given year and one in five are being bullied every few weeks, or more often.
Methods for Cyberbullies In its 2014 di scussion paper on children's onlin e safety, th e Commonwealth Department of Communication s ex plained how cyb erbullying occurs through social media platforms:6 On soc ial media sites cyber-bullying ca n be co ntent-driven, such as posting embarrassing or harmful photos, videos, or rumours relating to an individu al.
Th ese are often exace rbated by other social media f eatures (such as 'comments' , 'shares' and 'likes' ) which serve to actively prom ot e and spread th e harmful content at a rapid rate, and to a wide audi ence.
7 An lllawarra based market resea rch er, IRIS Resea rch was commissioned to conduct research to estim at e the prevalence of cyb erbullying report in Australi an Schools on behalf of the Commonwea lth Depa rtm ent of Communications and identify methods used by schools to dea l with the cyber-bullying behaviours.

A survey was condu cted on line in February and M arch 2014.
In total, 384 responses w ere received from principals, or thei r nom in ated delegate from Australian primary and second ary schools.8 In t he IRIS report, the most common social media and communication platforms through which cyberbullying occurred were identified.
Facebook was used in 55.6 per cent of t he case exa mpl es given for creating hate w ebsites and/or social med ia pages and 58.4 per cent of t he case exa mples of creat in g fake intern et and/or social networking accounts.9 5 https://www.unisa.edu.au/Global/EASS/EDS/184856%20Anti-bul1ying%20Report-FINAL-3large.pd f 6 7 Depa rtm ent of Communications, note 1, p 3.
8 https://www.commun ications.gov.au/sites/g/fil es/net301/f/lRIS Report.pdf 9 https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/ resea rchpapers/Documents/cyberbul lying-of- Adequacy of existing offences in the Commonwealth Criminal Code and of state and territory criminal laws to capturecyberbullyingSubmission 33 lnstagram was identified from the case studies as the next most popu lar network used for cyber-bullying behaviours, with 20.6% of the case examples for private and/or personal information being posted on biogs using this network.
This was followed by posting inappropriate images or video and/or inappropriate image tagging (includ ing fa lse tagging) where ln stagram was used in 19.4% of the case examples.

10 Facebook (35.3%) and SMS/instant messaging (11.8%) were identified as the main networks used for the case examples provided for sexting resulting from coercion, intimidat ion, blackmail or sharing revealing images and video without authorisation of victim.
11 Youth Suicide and Bullying In September 2017, the Australian Bureau of Statistics released its 2016 Causes of Death, Austra li a report which showed a year-on-year increase in suicide rates for males between 15 - 24 years and females 20 - 34 years.12 Of all causes of death, suicide accounted for 35.7 per cent of deaths among 15 - 19 year old males and 38.0 per cent of deaths among 20-24 year old mal es in 2016.

For fema les the figures aren't that much better.


Suicide deaths represent 28.3 per cent among those aged between 15 - 19 and 32.5 per cent for those aged between 20 - 24.

What this tells us is th at rough ly a third of all deaths of our youth are due to suicide.

In New South Wales we have taken some important steps in an attempt to ta ckle the damaging effects which cyber bullyin g, cyber sta lkin g and cyber harassment cause.
Since 2015 all NSW police officers have been trained how to investigate cybercrime.

Additionally, there are fines of up to $11,000 and prison t erms of up to ten years in certain circum stances.

Comments of Committee's Terms of Reference th e effectiveness of existing measures under current I do welcome the investigation by th e Senate Lega l and Const itutional Affairs Committee into legislation and both Commonwealth and State/Territory crimina l codes.
It is my strong bel ief th at as legis lators, we need to do more to protect the vuln erabl e in our co mmunit ies who suffer the effects of relentl ess cyberbullying.

A submi ssion to the Committee from the Carly Ryan Foundation req uest ing invest igation of the provisions for police to ban perpetrators who utilise social media platforms such as Facebook and lnst agra m from the very wea pons th ey utili se to bully victims are worthy of consideration.
children/Cyberbullying%20of%20Chi ldren.pdf 10 iBid 11 iBid 12 http://www.abs.gov.au/Causes-of-Death Adequacy of existing offences in the Commonwealth Criminal Code and of state and territory criminal laws to capturecyberbullyingSubmission 33 Importantly, the Foundation also highlighted the need for additional educational programs which teach those who utilise social media to bully that their actions can have a dramatic effect on their victim, which can often lead to tragic circumstances.
At a minimum, education should be provided to offenders, who inflict significant pain on their victims through social media platforms.

In many circumstances perpetrators have little to no knowledge of the damaging effects which their actions have upon victims.

Additional resources are required in our schools to assist teach ers and education providers combat the effects of use of social media platforms, particularly during school hours.
Further, consideration should also be given to bans of personal mobile devices on school grounds and restrictions of social media platforms on school computers and tablets.

Further deterrents are required in circumstances where the victim of cyberbullying has self harmed or taken their own life.

Recent examples of those who have suffered at the hand s of cyber bullies, and in certain circumstances, ended their lives are simply unacceptable.
Amy "Dolly" Everett, a 14-year-old girl from the Northern Territory who took her own life after being relentlessly bullied on social med ia tragically paid too high a cost, and t hose who inflicted such hate and vitriol on an innocent child remain unpunished.
Considering current arrangements see State and Territory police having primary carriage of investigating cyberbullying matters, as a member of the NSW Pa rliam ent, I am certainly the interesting in consideration of this matter by th e Council of Australian Governments is appropriate.

A national approach is required to tackle what is a national issue which is not defined by state and territory boundaries.

the investigations of the committee and its report.
Add itionally, I once aga in appreciate the opportunity to make a submiss ion to the comm ittee and await its reco mmendation s. Yours sincerely The Hon Shell ey Han cock MP Speaker of th e NSW Leg islative Assembly M ember for South Coast Adequacy of existing offences in the Commonwealth Criminal Code and of state and territory criminal laws to capturecyberbullyingSubmission 33