Last week, the YMCA WA Youth Parliament passed its first bill ever with a unanimous YES! – 52 yes and zero nos. The bill was an act to criminalise the display and distribution of explicit images and videos, punish offenders, support victims, and provide vulnerable women with the legal protection they need.
Currently in Western Australia, there are no laws prohibiting the sharing of images or videos without consent involving those over the age of 16. With the rise of technology in this digital age, sexual harassment of women online is becoming a significant issue in Western Australia and across the world. The aim of this bill is to make it illegal to intentionally distribute an image or video without consent from all parties, including the receiver.
We hope that this bill will send a clear message to politicians that this is an important issue and we need to take action to try and reduce the amount of unwanted images ending up on the internet, which is having a major effect on young people’s lives and we need to take action to prevent this from happening in the future. This bill passing with a unanimous yes just shows how relevant and pressing this is to young people in WA. Let’s continue to lobby for change.
If you think this is a good step in the right direction to reduce sexual harassment online, please comment below. I would love to hear what you think about this?
Darci Miller was one of the youth delegates at the recent 2017 YMCA WA Youth Parliament.