Speaker 1: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda
Speaker 1: Bunjelung Cargoton woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges
Speaker 1: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Speaker 1: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Speaker 1: Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the
Speaker 1: first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Speaker 2: Good morning and welcome to the Daily oz It's Friday,
Speaker 2: the first of September. I'm Sam Kazlowski, I'm Zaras Sidelin.
Speaker 2: The government has stopped short of setting an age limit
Speaker 2: for online pornography, saying the technology just isn't quite there.
Speaker 2: This is despite the fact that, according to a safety research,
Speaker 2: more than seventy five percent of Australian adults support the
Speaker 2: idea of the government creating some sort of age control
Speaker 2: for porn. So what's led to this conclusion and what
Speaker 2: will it mean for the safety of young people on
Speaker 2: the Internet. We'll let you know in today's Deep Dive.
Speaker 2: But first, as news from Australia's biggest airline.
Speaker 3: Yesterday, Quantus has scrapped its end of year deadline for
Speaker 3: customers to redeem their COVID travel credits. This is of
Speaker 3: course what we did a deep dive on earlier this week,
Speaker 3: so we will chuck that in the show notes. But
Speaker 3: the decision does follow recent scrutiny over the airline's handling
Speaker 3: of canceled COVID flights. Quantus customers with a credit balance
Speaker 3: can now request a cash refund instead, while Jetstar, which
Speaker 3: is owned by Quantas, says customers can use their COVID
Speaker 3: vouchers indefinitely. It coincides with news that Australia's consumer watchdog
Speaker 3: is suing Quantas for allegedly advertising flights it had already canceled.
Speaker 2: Police are investigating the cause of a fatal crash on
Speaker 2: a Victorian highway yesterday. Four people were killed when the
Speaker 2: car they were traveling in collided with a truck. The
Speaker 2: truck driver was hospitalized with non life threatening injuries.
Speaker 3: Gambling signage outside New South Wales pubs and clubs has
Speaker 3: officially been banned from today. Gambling related signs things like
Speaker 3: VIP lounge or Golden Room, and images of dragons, coins
Speaker 3: or lightning motifs must be removed or concealed. Liquor and
Speaker 3: gaming New South Wales will now begin compliance inspections, promising
Speaker 3: a zero tolerance approach from December one. That's when eleven
Speaker 3: thousand dollar fines will be handed out to venues who
Speaker 3: fail to adhere to the change.
Speaker 2: And today's good news. The eighth season of the AFL
Speaker 2: Women's Competition begins today. Defending aflw Premier's Melbourne will take
Speaker 2: on Collingwood in the season opener tonight. Round one will
Speaker 2: continue throughout the weekend and include local rivalry games in Sydney,
Speaker 2: Adelaide and Perth. According to E Safety Research, seventy five
Speaker 2: percent of sixteen to eighteen year olds have seen pawn
Speaker 2: online now. Of that group, nearly one third saort before
Speaker 2: the age of thirteen, and then another half between the
Speaker 2: age of thirteen and fifteen. So what we wanted to
Speaker 2: look at today is how the government's been considering limiting
Speaker 2: the access Australians under eighteen have to porn.
Speaker 3: Online pornography aside, we know that regulating online spaces is
Speaker 3: extremely difficult, and then when you add the layer of pornography,
Speaker 3: I imagine it's even harder. What's the government been considering
Speaker 3: in this space? How do you even begin to regulate this.
Speaker 2: Okay, So at its most simple level, what's being proposed
Speaker 2: is a process of age verification to stop under eteens
Speaker 2: from accessing porn on the internet.
Speaker 3: How do you do that, Like, what does that even
Speaker 3: look for?
Speaker 2: Well that's where things get a little trickier because the
Speaker 2: how and the what it would look like and the
Speaker 2: back end of it is actually really hard to work out.
Speaker 2: So the government asked the a Safety Commissioner and that's
Speaker 2: Australia's independent regulator for online safety, to kind of figure
Speaker 2: it out.
Speaker 3: You're going there ready to the solutions. I think before
Speaker 3: we've really highlighted what the issue here is. What are
Speaker 3: the issues that we're talking about here in relation to pornography.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a few concerns here. So E safety has
Speaker 2: done some research which unsurprisingly found that exposure to porn
Speaker 2: was one of the top concerns for parents of children
Speaker 2: age two to seventeen. Now, another point brought up by
Speaker 2: E safety is that, while the research into this space
Speaker 2: is complex, some studies suggest an association between adult consumption
Speaker 2: of mainstream porn and gender based violence. E Safety says
Speaker 2: that some of the studies have characterized the nature of
Speaker 2: mainstream porn as normalizing depictions of sexual violence and degrading
Speaker 2: sexual narratives about women. So with all of this context,
Speaker 2: the E Safety Roadmap suggests that limiting access to this
Speaker 2: content before somebody is eighteen would actually make someone better
Speaker 2: equipped with critical reasoning skills and context in order to
Speaker 2: interpret what they're seeing and minimize potential harm.
Speaker 3: You've said them minimize what they're seeing. But you know,
Speaker 3: a fourteen year old logging on somewhere in Australia might
Speaker 3: be seeing something very different to thirty five year old
Speaker 3: logging on elsewhere in the country. And we're using the
Speaker 3: catch all phrase of pornography. But not all porn is
Speaker 3: the same.
Speaker 2: There's a massive spectrum, and in the creation of the roadmap,
Speaker 2: E Safety says they've consulted all sorts of people who
Speaker 2: work to make or publish porn, and the roadmap does
Speaker 2: indeed acknowledge that in a local context, many producers of
Speaker 2: local content are female and LGBTQAA plus. Now on the
Speaker 2: other end of that spectrum, the international porn market is
Speaker 2: fairly dominated by the company minds Geek, which owns porn Hub,
Speaker 2: amongst other popular sites. All of that to say, not
Speaker 2: all porn is the same or even problematic. But one
Speaker 2: of the issues coming through in this report is that
Speaker 2: despite children not actively seeking out pornographic content at present
Speaker 2: in the wild West of the Internet, they are at
Speaker 2: risk of being exposed to it anyway.
Speaker 3: So the majority of sixteen to eighteen year old of
Speaker 3: seen pornography of some description and sometimes without meaning to.
Speaker 3: So what does the roadmap consider as the way forward?
Speaker 2: So, yeah, this roadmap was the e Safety Commissioner's attempts
Speaker 2: to see how the government could go about actually enforcing
Speaker 2: an age limit on porn and what that would look
Speaker 2: like online. Now, my first thought when I think of
Speaker 2: age verification online is when you go to order some
Speaker 2: alcohol and you just asked to kind of input your age,
Speaker 2: and there's a drop down menu and you select your year.
Speaker 2: And the issue in that situation is that you're relying
Speaker 2: on trust, which the roadmap points out is a pretty
Speaker 2: significant flaw because research shows that kids often lie in
Speaker 2: these situations about.
Speaker 3: I was going to say when we all made Instagram
Speaker 3: accounts back in the day, That's exactly what I was
Speaker 3: thinking lately. Thirteen before I was.
Speaker 2: Thirteen, definitely, And you know I also lied about my
Speaker 2: age to Facebook at some point, So we have to
Speaker 2: look at different options, and that's why the roadmap looks
Speaker 2: at a variety of different ways the technology could work
Speaker 2: a bit better, proposals around facial or voice analysis technology.
Speaker 2: There was also some mention of using government issued documents
Speaker 2: to confirm someone's age, but those also raise different issues
Speaker 2: or areas of concern, and these ones are more about
Speaker 2: privacy or bias in technologies. There is one interesting alternative
Speaker 2: model currently being trialed in Europe. It's called EU Consent,
Speaker 2: and the way it works is it issues an electronic
Speaker 2: token based on your age, and that way the verification
Speaker 2: technology isn't actually storing your personal information. It's what they
Speaker 2: call a double blind system. So the site that you're
Speaker 2: visiting doesn't know who you are, and the token issuer
Speaker 2: doesn't know what sites you're visiting. So the roadmap recommends
Speaker 2: that the government trial a lot of these technologies and
Speaker 2: see what's a good fit in an Australian context. But
Speaker 2: as well as all of that technology talk, they also
Speaker 2: insist on the investment in more education measures, which I
Speaker 2: think is really important.
Speaker 3: So you've said there that there needs to be more
Speaker 3: work done to understand what's happening in an Australian context,
Speaker 3: but I think this is one of those issues that
Speaker 3: it is a worldwide issue. It's an international issue no
Speaker 3: matter where you are. Have we seen any similar responses
Speaker 3: from any other jurisdictions.
Speaker 2: There are a few examples. I remember a couple of
Speaker 2: months ago we reported on the fact that Utah in
Speaker 2: the US had passed the law requiring porn sites to
Speaker 2: take what it describes as reasonable steps to verify users
Speaker 2: are at least eighteen years old. In response to that,
Speaker 2: Pornhub actually blocked users in Utah from accessing its content altogether,
Speaker 2: and similar legislation has been passed in Louisiana, Arkansas, Montana, Mississippi, Virginia,
Speaker 2: and Texas. The UK is also in the final stages
Speaker 2: of considering its second go at legislation that would require
Speaker 2: porn sites to verify the age of its users.
Speaker 3: So, ultimately, E Safety, who works in this space, has
Speaker 3: looked around and seen what they think is the best
Speaker 3: way for But then government actually has to do something
Speaker 3: about it, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So they kind of put these recommendations to the
Speaker 2: government about how to move forward. It's then up to
Speaker 2: the government to respond, and the government have heard E
Speaker 2: Safety recommends that they go trial different technologies and perhaps
Speaker 2: find the best way to implement them. But they looked
Speaker 2: at the concerns that E Safety raised about the limits
Speaker 2: of the technology available and ultimately made the decision that
Speaker 2: it wasn't really up to scratch. So rather than testing
Speaker 2: any of these technologies itself, the government has been said
Speaker 2: taken a position where they say they're going to hold
Speaker 2: the porn industry accountable to ensure children are kept safe.
Speaker 2: It says it will keep an eye on technology to
Speaker 2: see if anything changes, and perhaps trial it later down
Speaker 2: the line. That's all we've got time for today and
Speaker 2: this week on The Daily Oz. But if you did
Speaker 2: learn something from today's episode, we'd love to hear your
Speaker 2: reflections and thoughts in the questions box on Spotify. We'll
Speaker 2: be back on Monday morning. Until then, have a wonderful
Speaker 2: spring weekend.