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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 9 Hansard (22 August) . . Page.. 3131 ..

MR OSBORNE (continuing):

The Australian Institute of Criminology covered the intent of this bill in depth in its report. The report strongly advocated that all states and territories specifically include electronic forms of communication in their stalking laws, as noted by the following extracts from pages 4 and 5:

In theory, there is no reason why current legislation covering stalking should not also cover cyberstalking ... Other difficulties may occur in South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory, where there is a requirement that offenders intend to cause "serious" apprehension and fear. Thus, the magistrates may dismiss cases of cyberstalking, given the lack of physical proximity between many offenders and victims ... In saying this, however, cyberstalking has become renowned for the difficulties involved in actually prosecuting it. The simple inclusion of email and Internet communications within the definition would go a long way towards easing current difficulties in prosecution, as has indeed occurred in Northern America ... While in many ways cyberstalking can be considered analogous to physical world stalking, at other times the Internet needs to be recognised as a completely new medium of communication.

The report raised another issue. Currently actions that may constitute stalking must be directed at the victim or be actions that are likely to be brought to the victim's attention. New paragraphs 34A (2) (fa) and (fb) expand the criteria to include communications to a third party. Again I quote from the Institute of Criminology report:

As with stalking in the physical world, few examples of stalking are confined to one medium. While email stalking may not be analogous to traditional stalking in some instances, it is not restricted to this format. Stalkers can more comprehensively use the Internet in order to slander and endanger their victims. In such cases, the cyberstalking takes on a public, rather than a private, dimension. In one example, a female university lecturer was stalked for some years. Her ex-boyfriend would visit her usual chat sites, and then follow her from site to site, recording where she went. He also posted false information about her in various chat sites, including both those she habited and pornography sites that he visited. Finally, he hunted down and distributed semi-pornographic photographs of her as a young girl across the net. In another example, a woman was stalked for a period of 6 months. Her harasser posted notes in a chat room that threatened to rape and kill her, and posted doctored pornographic pictures of her on the net, together with personal details.

The proposed provision, as currently written, would address the examples given in the report, which I believe should be considered stalking offences.

No justification has been given for placing electronic communication on a different footing to other modes of communication. As can be seen from the sections of the Australian Institute of Criminology report I have quoted, electronic means of communication provide an additional dimension to traditional forms of stalking. The Internet operates in real time and is able to distribute vast amounts of information to a wide audience almost instantly. A further quotation from the report reads:

What this means is that individual computer users have a vastly reduced buffer between themselves and the stalker. A cyber stalker can communicate directly with their target as soon as the target computer connects in any way to the Internet. The stalker can assume control of the victim's computer, and the only defensive option for the victim is to disconnect and relinquish their current Internet 'address'. The situation is like discovering that anytime you pick up the phone, a stalker is on-line

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