Mr HARDGRAVE (6:41 PM) —We are used to the Labor opposition in this place exercising opposition for opposition's sake in its speeches. We also acknowledge some in the industry saying all of this is all too hard. It is amazing—a can-do industry saying clearly it cannot. Tonight, in the abridged version of the contribution I get to make on the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Bill 1999 , I want to note a sector of the industry which is saying, `It can be done.' In Queensland the Asia-Pacific International IT&T Awards people are all saying this bill should be seen as a call to action to our innovative young Australian developers to once again lead the world and set new standards with regard to the Internet. This is the sort of positive can-do approach which we on this side of the chamber like to hear more of.

Even if Australia spends hundreds of millions of dollars today in trying to overcome the censorship issue with regard to the Internet, there is no doubt this amount would be just a fraction of the cost to be levied on the community into the future if our society is allowed to evolve and become censorship free. What we have at the heart of this issue is a broadcasting system; it is not private correspondence. The Internet is not private. Mr Deputy Speaker Mossfield, if it were just you communicating with me and sending images which you and I might consider fine, it would be an another matter. But the fact of the matter is: people can trip across matters to which they do not want to have access.

The member for Hinkler highlighted my nine-year-old daughter's search of the web on the words `Spice Girls'. I want to update the House because, after typing in the words `Spice Girls' on the Yahoo search engine, about 10 or 20 different sites turn up; out of the first eight of those sites, six are totally unpalatable for a nine-year-old girl. So maybe with today's technology we are not going to wipe those things out. But if you say `we can't', do you mean `we won't'; and are we therefore protecting those who are deliberately trying to prey on people like my nine-year-old daughter?

I want to celebrate the fact that Paul Phillips, the founder and the international Deputy Chairman of the Asia-Pacific International IT&T Awards for Excellence—an organisation which is celebrating the growth of a $1.6 billion industry in Queensland, a 60 per cent growth rate industry in the past 12 months, with all sorts of awards and prizes for innovation in the past—is tonight saying, `We should look at some sort of incentive prize.' Mr Phillips has promoted the idea of a prize of $1 million being offered to any individual home based business, SME or corporation which successfully develops an Internet censorship solution which proves to be workable and reliable—again, a can-do approach. An assessment committee could be made up of all stakeholders of the Internet industry, government and community. In fact, the Asia-Pacific IT&T Awards people are well suited to perhaps run this sort of award scheme. They are a reputable entity, and they are already an application based entity, incorporating all industry sectors. Such a competition would completely turn around the parlous debate we are getting opposite on Internet censorship.

Those opposite are now standing up for freedom of individuals but they are the great controllers. The Australian Labor Party are by tradition the great controllers of individuals, but today they say that they are championing a further relaxation of censorship.

All in the IT&T sector would rush to be the first to make a `previously touted to be impossible' innovation very much a reality, and I believe more than one workable solution would emerge. Australia would then automatically attract worldwide attention from such a competition. International IT companies would focus their attention on Australia asking if they, too, could enter. International multinational corporations would be seeking to secure the rights to the winner's application. International governments would be visiting Australia to investigate how they, too, could introduce the application to their home environment.

This bill could be seen as an opportunity to once again demonstrate the capabilities and innovation of our world-class IT sector. Those who say it cannot be done should go on record as saying this—the member for Perth is one. Then, when it is all achieved, they can be revealed as the sort of Luddite types that have lost faith in the innovative youth of Australia, our new natural resource.

This bill is all about ensuring that pornography does not kill off the Internet, because parents, schools and responsible institutions right around this country are as concerned as I am that, without the sorts of safeguards this bill is encouraging out of the IT sector and the Internet service providers sector, the providers of pornography in this world who are preying on young children will kill the Net. (Time expired)