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Speaker 1: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda

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Speaker 1: Bunjelung Cargoton woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges

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Speaker 1: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the

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Speaker 1: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres

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Speaker 1: Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the

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Speaker 1: first peoples of these countries, both past and present.

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Speaker 2: Good morning and welcome to the Daily oz It's Friday,

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Speaker 2: the first of September. I'm Sam Kazlowski, I'm Zaras Sidelin.

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Speaker 2: The government has stopped short of setting an age limit

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Speaker 2: for online pornography, saying the technology just isn't quite there.

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Speaker 2: This is despite the fact that, according to a safety research,

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Speaker 2: more than seventy five percent of Australian adults support the

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Speaker 2: idea of the government creating some sort of age control

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Speaker 2: for porn. So what's led to this conclusion and what

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Speaker 2: will it mean for the safety of young people on

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Speaker 2: the Internet. We'll let you know in today's Deep Dive.

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Speaker 2: But first, as news from Australia's biggest airline.

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Speaker 3: Yesterday, Quantus has scrapped its end of year deadline for

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Speaker 3: customers to redeem their COVID travel credits. This is of

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Speaker 3: course what we did a deep dive on earlier this week,

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Speaker 3: so we will chuck that in the show notes. But

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Speaker 3: the decision does follow recent scrutiny over the airline's handling

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Speaker 3: of canceled COVID flights. Quantus customers with a credit balance

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Speaker 3: can now request a cash refund instead, while Jetstar, which

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Speaker 3: is owned by Quantas, says customers can use their COVID

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Speaker 3: vouchers indefinitely. It coincides with news that Australia's consumer watchdog

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Speaker 3: is suing Quantas for allegedly advertising flights it had already canceled.

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Speaker 2: Police are investigating the cause of a fatal crash on

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Speaker 2: a Victorian highway yesterday. Four people were killed when the

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Speaker 2: car they were traveling in collided with a truck. The

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Speaker 2: truck driver was hospitalized with non life threatening injuries.

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Speaker 3: Gambling signage outside New South Wales pubs and clubs has

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Speaker 3: officially been banned from today. Gambling related signs things like

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Speaker 3: VIP lounge or Golden Room, and images of dragons, coins

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Speaker 3: or lightning motifs must be removed or concealed. Liquor and

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Speaker 3: gaming New South Wales will now begin compliance inspections, promising

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Speaker 3: a zero tolerance approach from December one. That's when eleven

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Speaker 3: thousand dollar fines will be handed out to venues who

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Speaker 3: fail to adhere to the change.

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Speaker 2: And today's good news. The eighth season of the AFL

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Speaker 2: Women's Competition begins today. Defending aflw Premier's Melbourne will take

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Speaker 2: on Collingwood in the season opener tonight. Round one will

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Speaker 2: continue throughout the weekend and include local rivalry games in Sydney,

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Speaker 2: Adelaide and Perth. According to E Safety Research, seventy five

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Speaker 2: percent of sixteen to eighteen year olds have seen pawn

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Speaker 2: online now. Of that group, nearly one third saort before

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Speaker 2: the age of thirteen, and then another half between the

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Speaker 2: age of thirteen and fifteen. So what we wanted to

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Speaker 2: look at today is how the government's been considering limiting

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Speaker 2: the access Australians under eighteen have to porn.

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Speaker 3: Online pornography aside, we know that regulating online spaces is

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Speaker 3: extremely difficult, and then when you add the layer of pornography,

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Speaker 3: I imagine it's even harder. What's the government been considering

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Speaker 3: in this space? How do you even begin to regulate this.

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Speaker 2: Okay, So at its most simple level, what's being proposed

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Speaker 2: is a process of age verification to stop under eteens

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Speaker 2: from accessing porn on the internet.

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Speaker 3: How do you do that, Like, what does that even

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Speaker 3: look for?

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Speaker 2: Well that's where things get a little trickier because the

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Speaker 2: how and the what it would look like and the

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Speaker 2: back end of it is actually really hard to work out.

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Speaker 2: So the government asked the a Safety Commissioner and that's

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Speaker 2: Australia's independent regulator for online safety, to kind of figure

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Speaker 2: it out.

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Speaker 3: You're going there ready to the solutions. I think before

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Speaker 3: we've really highlighted what the issue here is. What are

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Speaker 3: the issues that we're talking about here in relation to pornography.

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Speaker 2: Well, there's a few concerns here. So E safety has

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Speaker 2: done some research which unsurprisingly found that exposure to porn

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Speaker 2: was one of the top concerns for parents of children

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Speaker 2: age two to seventeen. Now, another point brought up by

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Speaker 2: E safety is that, while the research into this space

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Speaker 2: is complex, some studies suggest an association between adult consumption

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Speaker 2: of mainstream porn and gender based violence. E Safety says

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Speaker 2: that some of the studies have characterized the nature of

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Speaker 2: mainstream porn as normalizing depictions of sexual violence and degrading

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Speaker 2: sexual narratives about women. So with all of this context,

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Speaker 2: the E Safety Roadmap suggests that limiting access to this

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Speaker 2: content before somebody is eighteen would actually make someone better

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Speaker 2: equipped with critical reasoning skills and context in order to

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Speaker 2: interpret what they're seeing and minimize potential harm.

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Speaker 3: You've said them minimize what they're seeing. But you know,

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Speaker 3: a fourteen year old logging on somewhere in Australia might

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Speaker 3: be seeing something very different to thirty five year old

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Speaker 3: logging on elsewhere in the country. And we're using the

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Speaker 3: catch all phrase of pornography. But not all porn is

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Speaker 3: the same.

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Speaker 2: There's a massive spectrum, and in the creation of the roadmap,

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Speaker 2: E Safety says they've consulted all sorts of people who

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Speaker 2: work to make or publish porn, and the roadmap does

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Speaker 2: indeed acknowledge that in a local context, many producers of

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Speaker 2: local content are female and LGBTQAA plus. Now on the

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Speaker 2: other end of that spectrum, the international porn market is

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Speaker 2: fairly dominated by the company minds Geek, which owns porn Hub,

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Speaker 2: amongst other popular sites. All of that to say, not

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Speaker 2: all porn is the same or even problematic. But one

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Speaker 2: of the issues coming through in this report is that

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Speaker 2: despite children not actively seeking out pornographic content at present

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Speaker 2: in the wild West of the Internet, they are at

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Speaker 2: risk of being exposed to it anyway.

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Speaker 3: So the majority of sixteen to eighteen year old of

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Speaker 3: seen pornography of some description and sometimes without meaning to.

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Speaker 3: So what does the roadmap consider as the way forward?

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Speaker 2: So, yeah, this roadmap was the e Safety Commissioner's attempts

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Speaker 2: to see how the government could go about actually enforcing

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Speaker 2: an age limit on porn and what that would look

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Speaker 2: like online. Now, my first thought when I think of

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Speaker 2: age verification online is when you go to order some

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Speaker 2: alcohol and you just asked to kind of input your age,

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Speaker 2: and there's a drop down menu and you select your year.

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Speaker 2: And the issue in that situation is that you're relying

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Speaker 2: on trust, which the roadmap points out is a pretty

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Speaker 2: significant flaw because research shows that kids often lie in

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Speaker 2: these situations about.

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Speaker 3: I was going to say when we all made Instagram

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Speaker 3: accounts back in the day, That's exactly what I was

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Speaker 3: thinking lately. Thirteen before I was.

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Speaker 2: Thirteen, definitely, And you know I also lied about my

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Speaker 2: age to Facebook at some point, So we have to

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Speaker 2: look at different options, and that's why the roadmap looks

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Speaker 2: at a variety of different ways the technology could work

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Speaker 2: a bit better, proposals around facial or voice analysis technology.

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Speaker 2: There was also some mention of using government issued documents

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Speaker 2: to confirm someone's age, but those also raise different issues

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Speaker 2: or areas of concern, and these ones are more about

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Speaker 2: privacy or bias in technologies. There is one interesting alternative

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Speaker 2: model currently being trialed in Europe. It's called EU Consent,

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Speaker 2: and the way it works is it issues an electronic

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Speaker 2: token based on your age, and that way the verification

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Speaker 2: technology isn't actually storing your personal information. It's what they

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Speaker 2: call a double blind system. So the site that you're

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Speaker 2: visiting doesn't know who you are, and the token issuer

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Speaker 2: doesn't know what sites you're visiting. So the roadmap recommends

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Speaker 2: that the government trial a lot of these technologies and

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Speaker 2: see what's a good fit in an Australian context. But

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Speaker 2: as well as all of that technology talk, they also

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Speaker 2: insist on the investment in more education measures, which I

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Speaker 2: think is really important.

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Speaker 3: So you've said there that there needs to be more

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Speaker 3: work done to understand what's happening in an Australian context,

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Speaker 3: but I think this is one of those issues that

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Speaker 3: it is a worldwide issue. It's an international issue no

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Speaker 3: matter where you are. Have we seen any similar responses

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Speaker 3: from any other jurisdictions.

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Speaker 2: There are a few examples. I remember a couple of

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Speaker 2: months ago we reported on the fact that Utah in

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Speaker 2: the US had passed the law requiring porn sites to

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Speaker 2: take what it describes as reasonable steps to verify users

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Speaker 2: are at least eighteen years old. In response to that,

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Speaker 2: Pornhub actually blocked users in Utah from accessing its content altogether,

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Speaker 2: and similar legislation has been passed in Louisiana, Arkansas, Montana, Mississippi, Virginia,

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Speaker 2: and Texas. The UK is also in the final stages

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Speaker 2: of considering its second go at legislation that would require

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Speaker 2: porn sites to verify the age of its users.

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Speaker 3: So, ultimately, E Safety, who works in this space, has

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Speaker 3: looked around and seen what they think is the best

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Speaker 3: way for But then government actually has to do something

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Speaker 3: about it, right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So they kind of put these recommendations to the

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Speaker 2: government about how to move forward. It's then up to

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Speaker 2: the government to respond, and the government have heard E

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Speaker 2: Safety recommends that they go trial different technologies and perhaps

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Speaker 2: find the best way to implement them. But they looked

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Speaker 2: at the concerns that E Safety raised about the limits

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Speaker 2: of the technology available and ultimately made the decision that

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Speaker 2: it wasn't really up to scratch. So rather than testing

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Speaker 2: any of these technologies itself, the government has been said

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Speaker 2: taken a position where they say they're going to hold

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Speaker 2: the porn industry accountable to ensure children are kept safe.

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Speaker 2: It says it will keep an eye on technology to

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Speaker 2: see if anything changes, and perhaps trial it later down

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Speaker 2: the line. That's all we've got time for today and

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Speaker 2: this week on The Daily Oz. But if you did

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Speaker 2: learn something from today's episode, we'd love to hear your

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Speaker 2: reflections and thoughts in the questions box on Spotify. We'll

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Speaker 2: be back on Monday morning. Until then, have a wonderful

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Speaker 2: spring weekend.