Senator Gerard P. Craughwell - speech from 16 Oct 2019

Thank you very much. Minister, welcome to the House. Minister, one short piece of what you just spoke about was self-regulation of the online companies. And this weekend, my own identity was stolen. And the person who stole my identity also used my photograph and my profile and copied to members of the public who were on my Facebook page some pretty horrendous messages. Right? And Facebook, when contacted, Facebook, their response was, we removed a profile that your friend reported because it doesn't follow our community standards. We let the profile owner know it has been removed, but not who reported it. That's what they said. Now, the person that stole my identity masqueraded as being me for a period of time until they were caught. I have no recourse whatsoever to find out who that person is. But for the two or three people that contacted me and told me the content of what was sent, I have no notion of what was said in my name. Now, as far as I'm concerned, and I've had similar experience with Twitter in a different guise, as far as I'm concerned, these guys cannot be trusted to self-regulate. And I think Senator Friedman has taken a step here, and I acknowledge the professor's attendance here, a worldwide renowned expert in the area. And I think we have to stop flip-flapping around with this. We have to actually move and move very quickly. We constantly hear about tragic stories of young children. And as Senator Friedman said, this is about children. But even adults can have their mental health affected by some of the stuff. And indeed, I'm looking over at Senator Noonan there, nodding her head. I've seen some of the most horrendous stuff that has been thrown at her over the last 12 months. And fair play to her. She has held her head high. And I admire everything she did. But, Minister, this has gone too far. You cannot even phone Facebook. There's nobody to send an email to. There is no human being you can contact and say, this is wrong. This was done to me. I want an answer. And indeed, I was speaking to a senior counsel on it. The very least I'd be entitled to is recourse to find out who stole my name. But I can't because I have no access to it. So I appreciate it. I don't want to make this a second stage speech, Cairlough. But I do need to put that on the record. No, I understand that.