Consultation on a Bill for a new Online Safety Act

We are seeking feedback on an exposure draft Online Safety Bill to improve Australia's online safety legislation. The draft Bill includes:

• The provisions in the Enhancing Online Safety Act 2015 (EOSA) that are working well to protect Australians from online harms, such as the image-based abuse scheme;
• A set of core basic online safety expectations for social media services, relevant electronic services and designated internet services, clearly stating community expectations, with mandatory reporting requirements;
• An enhanced cyberbullying scheme for Australian children to capture a range of online services, not just social media platforms;
• A new cyber abuse scheme for Australian adults, to facilitate the removal of serious online abuse and harassment;
• A modernised online content scheme, to replace the schemes in Schedules 5 and 7 of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (BSA). The Bill will create new classes of harmful online content and will reinvigorate out of date industry codes to address such content;
• New abhorrent violent material blocking arrangements that allow the eSafety Commissioner to respond rapidly to an online crisis event such as the Christchurch terrorist attacks, by requesting internet service providers block access to sites hosting seriously harmful content; and
• Consistent take-down requirements for image-based abuse, cyber abuse, cyberbullying and harmful online content, requiring online service providers to remove such material within 24 hours of receiving a notice from the eSafety Commissioner.

The draft Bill was developed following substantial public and stakeholder consultation, including consideration of 85 submissions received in response to the public 'Online Safety Legislative Reform Discussion Paper' released in December 2019. You can find the original proposals and submissions from that round of consultation at Consultation on online safety reforms.