Ms Julie Ahern:

I will take the question around individual complaints mechanisms. On what an individual complaints mechanism should look like, it should, first of all, go to the platform. If the child has a problem, he or she should first go to what would the local complaint platform would be. Whatever platform it is, one should go to the local platform and make the complaint there. If one is not happy with the result, it has not taken it seriously or it has not done anything about it, then one would make the complaint to the online safety commissioner. That is how we would see it happening. There would be two tiers and, effectively, the online safety commissioner would be a safety net for when the platforms do not do their job. It would not be that everyone with a problem would go straight to the commissioner. It would be if they do not get the result from the platform.

In order for it to be child friendly, it would need to be prompt, it would need to be accessible and it would need to provide information that children and families can understand to access the complaints mechanisms. What we should be doing is putting it back on the technology platforms that their complaints mechanisms are effective in the first instance. That is what the online safety commission should also have a role in doing - making sure that they do it right first and then only that which is most egregious comes to the online safety commission. An example that the committee could look at would be something like the Ombudsman for Children where people have to make a complaint to the person first and then go to the Ombudsman for Children who sees whether it meets a certain threshold.