Ms Niamh Sweeney:

It has been some time since I spoke to my counterpart in Australia regarding how things are working there. Ms Quill is correct insofar as the last update I received stated that the commissioner there has never used her official powers, although there is much consultation and ongoing work with the platforms. When I last spoke to my colleague on this issue, I knew of early anecdotal evidence to suggest that the office was not necessarily operating in the way one might have anticipated. For example, some reports regarded hacked accounts rather than specific instances of harmful communication. In other instances, complaints were not first reported to the platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook in our case. Rather, the affected user went directly to the commissioner. Obviously, we would still work with the office on such complaints but the system there was not necessarily working as envisaged. The numbers there were quite low in its first year. I do not know the numbers for 2017, but they probably reflect how it played out in 2016. That said, there is ongoing interaction between my organisation and the commissioner there.