Ms Noeline Blackwell:

The sharing, or the stealing as one might say, of Dara Quigley's film, and the taking and sharing of the image of Jacqueline Griffin's body, should both be recognised as communications. They may not be in our law at present. The law should be much clearer that they are communications and also that they are communications that result in harmful content being shared. Many other jurisdictions, such as Australia, have come up with ways of framing that. New Zealand talks about serious emotional distress, as experienced by the Griffin family. As Mr. Power said, there does not have to be a death to cause serious emotional distress but it can be a factor. The fact that we do not have sufficiently clear legislation to cover this as a communication and then to recognise that it is a harmful sharing or communication needs to be addressed quickly. Our figures show that it is becoming an increasing problem. We need to make sure that those things are clear because, to answer the Senator's question, the current law is not strong enough to deal with it, and it needs to be.