Liberal MP Scott Buchholz has lashed online trolls who posted fatphobic abuse on his social media, saying their behaviour raised troubling questions about how they treat the people closest to them.
During a week in which political argument centred on Labor’s digital duty of care legislation, Buchholz used Instagram to take a different tack. Rather than focus on the proposed laws, he called on Australians to check in on people around them for R U OK? Day.
In a video posted on Instagram, the Queensland Liberal MP read aloud a series of comments left beneath his posts, including some that used a pig emoji. “Too long at the trough,” reads one. “Did you eat Scott Morrison?” says another. “More chins than a Chinese phone book.”
“Check in on the authors of this rubbish – see how they’re going,” he said in the video.
“I don’t know any of them. But if they’re prepared to write this crap about someone they’ve never met, I can only imagine what they’re saying to the people who they live with, how they’re treating their wives, how they’re treating their kids, how they’re speaking to their peers, so clearly coming from a security deficit.”
Across politics, Labor MP Matt Smith also used parliament to confront online abuse, focusing on threats and misogynistic attacks directed at female MPs from government, opposition and the crossbench. Speaking to the House of Representatives on Thursday, the far north Queensland MP recited several of the messages.
“Silly little girls, you belong at home,” he quoted. “Hang your head in shame, f-wit penis taker … Get yourself a rope, you effing traitor. Kill yourself before someone else does.”
Smith said men should intervene when they see gendered abuse. “[The recipients of these messages] are our colleagues, and … our friends. My social media doesn’t read like that. These comments are made by gutless cowards who weaponise gender to bully and threaten,” he said.
“When men allow this to happen, it allows other men to go further. But there are good men, and it takes just one good man to call out these cyber warriors. It takes just one good man to tell a mate that he is heading down a dark path. It takes one good man to break intergenerational cycle of violence and trauma.
“So today, I ask the men of this place and the men of Australia to please stand up and be that one good man.”
MPs have been speaking out more often about online abuse, while both major parties have acknowledged that stronger protections are needed for children exposed to harmful material spreading on social media.
The Coalition said on Thursday it would not support Labor’s digital duty of care, arguing the proposal amounted to an attempt at censorship and expressing concern about the powers it would give the minister to add new harms.
Misogynistic material has also come under sharper scrutiny after consent advocate Chanel Contos called on the government to better protect young boys from being sucked into the online manosphere, as well as in the wake of a series of high-profile sexual assault cases around the country.
