Scott Morrison is slowly building a powerful international coalition to crack down on violent terror acts shared on social media platforms.
The Prime Minister, who vowed to take on global giants Facebook in the days following the Christchurch attack, urged the world’s most influential leaders of the need of unity on the issue in Osaka.
Mr Morrison has won the backing of Japan, France and Canada and hopes were rising of a consensus after the PM said it was not about limiting free speech, but zeroing in on terror propaganda.
The Federal Government’s world leading crackdown on violent extremism content in December — leaving social media executives criminally liable if they fail to remove content — had been used by a handful of nations as a trigger for new laws overseas.
The PM said he did not seek to legitimise censorship, even of objectionable views.
“What we are not doing is seeking to constrain free speech,” Mr Morrison said.
“It is about the internet being weaponised by violent terrorists in the same way that they can pick up a more standard weapon, this is now part of the armoury of terrorists and the G20 has an opportunity to send a strong signal about that to those who govern the internet.”
Backed by Japan’s Shinzo Abe, French president Emmanuel Macron and Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, Mr Morrison said the world’s biggest economies ultimately believed in an “open and free” web and he was not seeking to change that.
He said while countries could go ahead with their own legislation, the internet went beyond borders and it was up to forums such as the G20 to make a statement.
Mr Morrison said while he celebrated technology and its positive applications, what happened in Christchurch in March was a “chilling wake-up call” to how platforms can be weaponised by the “most heinous evil”.
Australia has prepared a statement to support protections, in a bid to win the majority of support of the Group of 20 leading economies so the internet is not used as a recruiting tool for terror groups.
He said the Christchurch attack, which left more than 50 innocent people dead, might have happened in New Zealand but the stream was about weaponising the internet to spread the attack around the world.
It comes as Mr Morrison told Chinese leader Xi Jinping in a face-to-face meeting that his nation’s ongoing trade stand-off with America was hurting the global economy.
The Prime Minister said it would be “unrealistic” for the two nations to sort out their difference in the coming days, but Australia was not the only nation which had raised concerns about the impacts the tensions were having on global trade.
The US-China tensions dominated the opening day of the Group of 20 leading economies in Osaka as with as new tensions in the Middle East over Iran.
Mr Morrison said Australia would press ahead with its own new trade deals, talking up the prospect of sealing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership deal with the 10 ASEAN countries by the end of the year.
He said Australia soon hoped to clinch a free-trade agreement with the European Union, saying trade deals remained critical to creating and sustaining local jobs.
He said the country could have “some influence” on the issue and raised the issue with his Chinese counterpart in a brief conversation today.
“I’m aware that there are real, substantial and difficult issues to be resolved,” Mr Morrison said.
“There is a strong awareness and realisation about what this means but ultimately it is for those two parties to resolve the issues.”