Chhour KarenKAREN CHHOUR (ACT): It's a pleasure to stand here today and thank you Mr Speaker for giving me the opportunity. I'd like to start off by thanking Louisa Wall. A lot of the reasons why I came to Parliament myself were to make a difference for victims and to make a difference for people who don't have a voice. Often this can be quite hard because the conversations are quite awkward and people don't like to talk about these kinds of things. Unless we acknowledge there's a problem and unless we dig deep and actually have these hard conversations nothing's ever going to change and I really appreciate Louisa Wall bringing such a hard topic to the House.I'd also like to thank the committee that took this on. Sitting and listening to personal stories like that mustn't be easy and I know there are times that even sitting on a jury a judge will give you a set amount of time to not come back to a jury because it can be quite harmful even listening to the stories. So I appreciate the time the committee took to hear the concerns. And to the people that made the submissions your bravery is appreciated. It'll make a difference to a lot of victims in the future. We got to hear the harm that it causes the lifetime of inside scars because not all victims wear their scars on the outside. Scars heal—the scars you see on the outside—but sometimes on the inside those scars will never heal and people can't see them so they don't know they're there. And often victims suffer in silence. And so I really appreciate everybody that came forward and told their story.I stand on behalf of the ACT Party to support this bill and there's a few reasons behind it. My focus today and I will be speaking on behalf of young people and as a parent—I have four children and it would be my worst nightmare to have one of my children have an image or a video of them posted online in a vulnerable moment. We parents try to teach our children about safety online but unfortunately technology has advanced so fast over the years our young people do not understand the consequences of the decisions they make. They don't think before they do something and in an emotional moment sometimes the perpetrator of the harmful digital communication has not thought through the consequences of what might happen.So some of the work that needs to be done is not just here in Parliament not just by us here but by society and by parents teaching our young people that there are consequences for the behaviour and the way we treat others. Society will never change if there are no consequences for this kind of behaviour and acknowledging that you cause harm when you do these things. Technology is fantastic when it's working how we intended but unfortunately these days technology can be used as a weapon. And when it is used as a weapon this is just unacceptable and our laws need to keep up to protect people from harm.This is a good bill. It keeps our children safe. It also having this conversation makes people aware that this is actually a problem because when I first heard about this bill I thought How bad is this problem?" You know you don't hear about these things. It sounds terrible but how often does it actually happen? So I was quite surprised reading through and finding that 288 children and young people in the three-year period from 2018 to 2020 were proceeded against by the police for a harmful digital communication problem. That shows that this is something that is growing. Hopefully we have caught it in time before it gets worse.I listened to some of your talk on what was missed out and what you may want to add in later on and I am sure we will look forward to having a discussion on those intentions. Deep fakes or digitally altered or created images or synthetic images or visual recordings are just as harmful. We can take a picture send a picture think nothing of it—we've given consent at that time but what we haven't given consent for is that person using that image or that recording in any other way and I think sometimes that what we see as consent really needs to be looked at. I understand that you couldn't change it right now and that you did have a discussion around consent but I do feel that this may be an issue we need to look at later on because if you consent once is it consent for everything or do you have to consent each and every time? There could be some confusion on whether the consent was given or not. But I understand we couldn't go that far.It is very hard to remove an image from the internet. Even with a take-down notice even if you get it very quick somebody's taken a screenshot somebody's shared it and then it goes on and on and on and this does not take long. So I appreciate the fact that you no longer have to wait for a court decision before you can start the process of a take-down notice because the quicker you get this the better the result might be. There is nothing worse as a victim than thinking that everybody's looking at you. They may not be but if you know your image is online you know people are sharing an image of you especially an intimate image your self-esteem and everything about you changes. You can go inside of yourself depression sets in social isolation and the shame thinking you did something wrong. And what we need to understand is no matter what kind of victim you are whether it be physically or whether it be a harmful digital communication the harm is the same the hurt is the same. We don't heal magically. Even if we do get it down in time there is still the knowledge of the people that have seen an intimate image of you. There's still the voice in your brain that says "I wonder if that person walking towards me has seen that image." It may not be a correct way to think but when you have become a victim you don't think logically; you just think worst-case scenario. And I would hate to think that we end up with a lot of people hurting themselves or harming themselves because we haven't kept our laws up to date with technology.So ACT will be supporting this bill and I would like to congratulate Louisa Wall again for such a good piece of legislation."