Cracking down on youth crime and online notoriety on the Gold Coast

The Hon Peter Dutton MP
Leader of the Opposition
Federal Member for Dickson

Angie Bell MP
Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education
Shadow Minister for Youth
Federal Member for Moncrieff

JOINT MEDIA RELEASE
Cracking down on youth crime and online notoriety on the Gold Coast

25 March 2024

Youth crime is out of control in many parts of our country and more needs to be done to combat it.

This week, the Federal Coalition introduced the Crimes and Online Safety Legislation Amendment (Combatting Online Notoriety) Bill 2024 into Parliament that seeks to crack down on youth crime by making it illegal to post social media material that glamorises violence and criminal activity.

The Bill also provides the eSafety Commissioner with specific powers to require such videos and material to be taken down.

Federal Member for Moncrieff and Shadow Minister for Youth, Angie Bell, said the escalating rates of youth crime on the Gold Coast require urgent attention and decisive action from this Government.

“Labor’s failure to address youth crime under Anthony Albanese is a matter of grave concern for those in my community, and sadly, the problem is getting worse,” said Ms Bell.

“Labor is leaving young people behind and as a result, Queensland is in the midst of a youth crime crisis.

“Early intervention programs and strategies are needed to prevent youth disengagement and the Government must act now to keep the community safe.”

Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton said, the Federal Government had a role to play, and it was incumbent on the Government to show some leadership and play its part in cracking down on this behaviour – which glamorised violence, and kept the cycle of crime going.

“We are putting forward a proposal to deal with this scourge. We need to do all we can to keep our community safe and deter young criminals from doing the wrong thing,” Mr Dutton said.

“This is the perfect opportunity for the Government to get on board and support us on this important, commonsense policy, which will keep our community safe.”

The Coalition’s Crimes and Online Safety Legislation Amendment (Combatting Online Notoriety) Bill 2024 will:

• Introduce a new Commonwealth offence to deal with the increasing use of social media to promote or publicise criminal activity. In particular, the Bill will make it an offence to post material depicting violence, drug offences or property offences for the purpose of increasing a person’s notoriety (or that of the persons shown in the material), punishable by up to two years’ imprisonment.
• Include a sentencing measure in the Crimes Act to ensure that as part of the sentencing process, courts are able to prohibit persons who have been convicted of the new offence from using social media for up to two years.
• Amend the Online Safety Act to specifically empower the eSafety Commissioner to order the removal of such videos from social media and other digital platforms. The changes we are proposing would make it explicit that the Commissioner has a mandate to deal with complaints on this issue, in a similar way that the office responds to reports of cyber-bullying and cyber-abuse.

It’s time for Labor to show up at both levels of government and demonstrate a morsel of the leadership needed to keep our communities safe.

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