AAWAA has made a submission to the Statutory review of the Online Safety Act 2021.
AAWAA shares growing community concerns about the real-life harms facilitated by the internet, including harassment and abuse of women. We support the purpose of the Online Safety Act managing and mitigating these harms, including the grant of powers to the office of the eSafety Commission (eSafety) to investigate and seek to remove content that is demonstrably and seriously harmful. We advocate for stronger action to regulate pornography online, to investigate and regulate industry’s use of manipulative product design, as well as age verification for adult platforms, applications and other Relevant Electronic Services. We also support a role for the Commission in promoting online safety for Australians through education. A safer online environment will help eliminate discrimination and violence against women and girls.
However, our members and those who similarly advocate for womens’ and girls’ sex-based protections and rights – along with those who question medical interventions for gender dysphoria/incongruence – have also experienced breaches of our fundamental right to freedom of expression in the name of online safety. This has been particularly egregious in the case of Twitter, which for many years maintained a secret blacklist of gender-critical feminists and critics of gender medicine. Other social media providers, including Reddit and YouTube, have also censored discussion of these important issues.
Regrettably, and pertinent to this review, we believe that misinformed and misguided actions taken by eSafety in the name of online safety, while perhaps well-intentioned, have also directly impacted our human rights. Some of these matters are currently the subject of administrative and judicial review, and we trust that the outcomes will inform and rectify future considerations.
We believe it is also imperative that Parliament addresses the systemic weaknesses in the Online Safety Act 2021 to establish a robust and balanced framework that protects both safety and fundamental freedoms, mitigating the risk of future violations.
We offer constructive suggestions to this end, aligning our suggestions broadly with the terms of reference of the review, which you can read in full, below.
