The government has responded to a three year-old report on cyberbullying, saying many of the requests the committee made were included in the country’s controversial Online Safety Bill which passed the House only last month.
The federal government has said it is taking a comprehensive approach to cyberbullying by pursuing a range of measures, and considers that education, victim support, and civil avenues are just as important as recourse to criminal law to effectively address cyberbullying. The comments were made in its response to a report on the adequacy of existing cyberbullying laws tabled by the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee on 28 March 2018. The report [PDF] made nine recommendations. Three years later, the government « supported in principle » five of them, « supported » a further three, and the remaining one was « noted ». The committee was charged with looking into the adequacy of existing offences in the Commonwealth Criminal Code and of state and territory criminal laws to capture cyberbullying. Among its recommendations was the request that social media platforms be held to more account by the Australian government than they were in 2018. In its response [PDF], the government focused on existing measures, and education, as being sufficient enough to tackle the issue of cyberbullying. « Early intervention measures such as education, harm minimisation, and encouraging the safe and responsible use of technology are proactive measures that can prevent cyberbullying conduct escalating to criminal behaviour and prevent or minimise the harm resulting from cyberbullying incidents, » it wrote. « The targets of online abuse and bullying should not be forced offline. Instead, technology platforms, governments, and other users must all play a part in making the internet safe.
