News & Current Affairs
18.05.17
Revenge Porn Bill in ACT Legislative Assembly
Shadow Attorney-General Jeremy Hanson will be introducing a bill to the legislative assembly for “revenge porn” laws.
These proposed new laws, to be introduced by the Canberra Liberals, could see offenders facing up to two years’ imprisonment for distributing images and up to a year for threatening to distribute images.
This announcement follows a recent RMIT study showing that one in five Australian’s have had revealing images of themselves shared online without their permission.
‘We believe this is a serious problem,’ Mr Hanson said. ‘It is unacceptable that this is occurring so commonly, and it is unacceptable for us not to respond.’
Mr Hanson is releasing his draft legislation for comment before tabling it, most likely in June, the Canberra Times reports. The Bill contains key provisions, similar to existing Victorian legislation, stating that a person commits an offence if:
- the person intentionally distributes an intimate image of another person to a third person; and
- if a reasonable person would, in all the circumstances, consider distributing the image to be an indecent invasion of privacy.
The legislation doesn’t require malicious intent for a prosecution, but it provides a defence if the person posting the image believed they had consent to share the image, providing the person photographed or videoed was over 18.
‘The law has not kept pace with technology,’ Mr Hanson says. ‘No one was thinking about these laws ten years ago because they weren’t needed, but clearly they are now.’
Currently, there are specific laws only in Victoria and South Australia that criminalise the distribution of an intimate or ‘invasive’ image without consent.
Nationally, the charge of ‘using a carriage service to cause offence or to harass or menace another person’ under Commonwealth telecommunications legislation could be used to respond to image-based abuse.