Australia’s IGF: connecting local to global

The 2024 Australian Internet Governance Forum (auIGF) took place in Melbourne over 28-29 October, bringing together Australia’s internet governance community to share their views on the most pressing internet governance matters for Australians.

Formerly known as NetThing, this year’s auIGF was held in a hybrid format with more than 160 attendees, approximately 80 in person and 80 online, and representation across the multi-stakeholder community. The forum, held in the lead up the global IGF in December, will enable considered, aligned national contributions to global debate and future regional IGFs.

The auIGF commenced with an address from the Australian Minister for Communications, the Hon Michelle Rowland MP, who set the scene for rich and insightful discussions. The Minister highlighted the importance of, and the Australian Government’s ongoing commitment to, the multi-stakeholder model of internet governance. She noted the strength of the multi-stakeholder approach is that “no one stakeholder group has a stronger voice” than any other and reiterated the Government’s commitment to working collaboratively with the Australian community to achieve “the internet we want”.

auDA CEO Rosemary Sinclair AM, moderated the opening plenary discussion – just one of the many sessions throughout the forum. She was joined by Johanna Weaver from the Australian National University’s Tech Policy Design Centre, Jennifer Chung from DotAsia Organization, Ram Mohan from Identity Digital and Ian Sheldon from the Australian Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts.

Reflecting on the auIGF 2024 theme “Connecting local to global”, the panellists agreed on the importance of bringing local perspectives to bear in shaping global internet policies. Jennifer emphasised the need for two-way relationships to ensure local experiences enrich global discussions and vice versa. Ian supported this, outlining how the Australian Government takes forward the voice of the Australian community to Asia Pacific and global forums and, importantly, brings the regional and global perspective back to the local level.

Ram highlighted the need for internet policies and practices that are “globally consistent and locally relevant", and asserted that open, inclusive dialogue is the only way to bring this about. He cited examples such as investing in digital literacy locally, which has a significant impact globally, and protecting national internet infrastructure to build a stronger and more resilient global system.

Key challenges facing the multi-stakeholder community include the ongoing threat to the multi-stakeholder model itself and the rapid pace of technological change. As Jennifer said, “Without ongoing support and advocacy from all stakeholders, we risk a backward slide toward unilateral control by powerful actors.”

According to Johanna, the solution – at least in part – lies in clearly articulating the value of the multi-stakeholder model to build greater support and engagement for it. She noted there is disproportionate government effort directed towards Artificial Intelligence (AI) compared to internet governance on which AI relies. She said, “The internet underpins everything we do, it deserves equivalent resources.”

Ian too spoke about the importance of clear communication to encourage participation. He said, as a community, we will benefit from better explaining how multi-stakeholder processes work and sharing knowledge to invite people into the space.

The panel also explored the distinct contribution Australia’s multi-stakeholder community can make to local and global internet governance. The panel encouraged the auIGF community to continue sharing success stories as examples of best practice, continue working to scale local initiatives into regions, to leverage our pragmatic, solution-focused approach and continue to fund broad and inclusive participation in multi-stakeholder processes.

The opening plenary was followed by two days of discussion, with more than 53 speakers, from 40 organisations, contributing to 19 sessions. Topics included:

• Online safety, digital rights, and children on social media
• Internet governance
• Cyber security and privacy
• Critical infrastructure
• Climate change and the internet
• Digital inclusion and web accessibility
• Digital availability, access and affordability for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
• Misinformation and disinformation.

For the first time, the auIGF Multi-Stakeholder Steering Committee (MSSC) developed a Position Paper setting out a consensus view from the Australian internet governance community that can be used to feed into discussions in future regional and global forums. The inaugural Position Paper focuses on the 20-year review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+20) in 2025. A draft Paper was available for feedback in the lead-up to the auIGF and discussed at two Town Hall sessions during the forum. It garnered a strong consensus and was deemed agreed at the end of the auIGF.

Discussion on the Position Paper led to the MSSC opening a community input process on a “Food for Thought” addendum to the Position Paper allowing for additional input. The MSSC will consider feedback and publish a consolidation of the inputs received in early December. The final Position Paper will be published in November 2024.

All sessions at the auIGF were recorded and are available online. We encourage you to catch up on any sessions of interest that you missed.

auDA was proud to sponsor the auIGF and thanks Annaliese Williams, auDA Specialist Policy Adviser for her work as Chair of the MSSC, and Michael Lewis, auDA Manager Industry Relations, who led the auIGF Secretariat.

To learn more about auDA’s internet governance work visit our website, and for regular updates on events and internet governance activities and forums, become a .au member today.

You can also sign up to attend the 2024 global IGF, taking place online and in Saudi Arabia on 15-19 December. Register for the global IGF 2024.