Program
The inaugural Trust & Safety Festival Sydney is a global gathering designed to bring together the full ecosystem of professionals working to create a safer, more inclusive, and more resilient digital world.
The Sydney 2026 program is currently taking shape. Session details, timings and speakers will continue to be updated as they are confirmed.
Wednesday October 7, 2026
Opening reception
(by invitation only)
Day 1 - Thursday October 8, 2026
Focus – Understanding the system à framing the problem à illuminating the strategic issues à looking ahead
08:00 - Registration / Tea Coffee
08:30 - Opening remarks by Dr Jenine Beekhuyzen OAM
08:40 - Video Message by Julie Inman Grant, Office of the eSafety Commissioner
Ten years at the coalface – emerging technology, adaptive regulation. A short video message from Australia's eSafety Commissioner, reflecting on the arc of technology development over the course of her decade-long tenure as the world's first dedicated online safety regulator.
08:45 - Welcome to Country by Michael West
08:55 - Keynote by Lorraine Finlay, Australian Human Rights Commissioner
Building systems that centre humanity – rights and abuses in the age of AI takeoff. Australia's Human Rights Commissioner, Lorraine Finlay, will map the ways in which new and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, are falling short of human rights expectations – and how create systems that are centred on humanity.
09:30 - Keynote Panel: Defining the Trust & Safety Landscape
Hear some of the region’s most thoughtful leaders in technology, age assurance, and safety by design reflect on what trust and safety as a discipline actually is, and what it should achieve.
• Madeline Shepherd, Microsoft
• Michael T McDonald, 3 Steps Data
• Jeff Wu, K-ID
• Nina Bual, Cyberlite
• Edward Wee, Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore
10:20 - Panel Discussion: Not just ‘digital’ harm – how online risks and threats produce real human consequences
The distinction between what is online and offline, ‘real world’ and digital, are false binaries in today’s environment of embedded digital services. Listen to some of the most compelling voices in online safety discuss how the online and offline worlds have merged to produce a continuous harms landscape.
• Sienna Parrot, Teach Us Consent
• Colm Gannon, ICMEC Australia
• Sophie Murray-Farrell, NSW Premier's Department
• Francis Ng, Online Safety Commissioner, Singapore
11:05 - Hon Dr Andrew Charlton MP, Assistant Minister for Science, Technology for Science
11:25 - Coffee Break
11:45 - Fireside Chat with The Hon Victor Dominello, Future Government Institute
In Bytes We Trust? What’s needed to win public confidence and consent for essential digital services – and how to deliver
How can be build systems that are trusted by those who rely most on them? In a world where it feels as if the fabric of shared reality is slipping, governments and authorities have never faced a more urgent challenge in providing digital services that win and maintain the confidence of users The Hon Victor Dominello MP built a global reputation on doing just that, and he joins us to talk about what needed to bring people to the digital revolution.
12:30 Lunch
13:30 - Panel Discussion: Policy and regulation in practice – how can we best move from principle to enforceability?
Governments are moving increasingly quickly to name and control online harms through sweeping reforms that go well beyond social media services – often with strong public support. However, speed to legislate can create a range of unintended consequences, and raises questions about public consent. What is the best approach to create new public law about digital harm?
• Kelly Tallon, Office of the eSafety Commissioner
• Ben Au, Snap
• Dr Jenny Duxbury, Digital Industry Group Inc. (DIGI)
• Jordan Benavidez, Match Group
• Zoe Hawkins, Tech Policy Design Institute (TPDi)
• Felipe Batiwale, Fiji Online Safety Commissioner
14:30 - Panel Discussion: AI, Agency and Our Human Future
"Absolutely, let's dive into that!" Artificial intelligence, agency and our human future. Is your p-doom number climbing every day? Feeling like your cognitive machinery is grinding to a halt? Worried about what you'll do with your bag of zero days now that Fable 5 is on the hunt? Find your people in this panel of our smartest thinker and critics of AI and new technologies. We'll be sure to end on a positive note, promise.
• Jon Rouse APM, ChildLight UNSW
• Joel Kalmanowicz, Canva
• Maryam Shoraka, Airtrunk
15:15 Coffee Break
15:35 - Panel Discussion: The era of Scams Prevention: The Scams Prevention Framework and Beyond
With the advent of the Scams Prevention Framework (SPF), tech platforms, telcos and banks will be subject to new scams prevention obligations from March 2027. In anticipation of the release of finalised SPF rules and sector codes that will set out the detailed obligations on regulated entities to comply with the SPF, this session will cover scams in Australia, measures that the sector will need to adopt, how scams complaints will be dealt with and the key roles of regulators and industry in combatting scams. Speakers will also share perspectives from abroad, and overseas scams compensation and prevention models.
• Michael do Rozario, Corrs Chambers Westgarth
• Kuan Chia, Panel Member, AFCA
• Alex Meaney, NASC
• Natalie Faulkner, FTI Consulting
• Caroline Marshall, Corrs Chambers Westgarth
16:20 - Panel Discussion: Around the sun? Dispatches from the Splinternet on trust and safety
Is the fragmentation of the internet a foregone conclusion? If so, what does that mean for trust and safety, and is there any realistic hope of creating global communities of practice? If we are arguing over the definitions of fundamental freedoms – of speech, of participation, of expression – can we ever agree to a shared ethical framework for combatting online harms?
• Paul Ash, Christchurch Call Foundation
• Edward Wee, Infocomm Media Development Authority Singapore
• Sean Lyons, NetSafe New Zealand
• Felipe Batiwale, Fiji Online Safety Commissioner
17:05 - Reflection Session by Dr Jenine Beekhuyzen OAM
Evening reception
(by invitation only)
Day 2 - Friday October 9, 2026
Focus – Paradigm challenge à driving action à giving practitioners the tools
08:15 - Registration / Tea Coffee
08:50 - Welcome and opening comments by Dr Jenine Beekhuyzen OAM
09:00 - Opening Keynote by Catherine Fitzpatrick, Diversity Coundil of Australia
When the system becomes a weapon: Tech-facilitated abuse, coercive control, and fighting back one process at a time. What happens when an abuser seizes control of a partner's electricity plan, or their mobile phone account? Perpetrators of domestic violence often turn the online services relied upon by their victims against them. Everyday tools, such as banking transactions, are weaponised. Learn from one of Australia's foremost Safety by Design practitioners about how banking, utilities and telecommunications services are abused by offenders, and how companies can fight back.
09:30 - Panel Discussion by Cyber CX
10:15 - Coffee Break
10:30 - Parallel Tracks
Cook Room: Panel Discussion: When moderation is not enough: Building trusted communities online.
Those who create and maintain online communities often need to play multiple roles at once: facilitator, traffic warden, moderator and police officer. How are the best communities constituted and run, and is it correct to say that they are managed, or cultivated?
• Venessa Paech, Australian Community Managers
• Jess Wilson, Good Things Foundation
• Ishtar Vij, Discord
Parkview Room: Workshop: Safety by Design by eSafety Commissioner
Ibis Room: Panel Discussion: Beyond the Report Button: Youth Safety, AI Companions and the Limits of Platform Policy
Young people are increasingly turning to AI chatbots and companions as trusted confidantes, friends and even romantic partners. What are the consequences of this shift in social relations, and is it really as bad as we are being led to believe? If this is the future, what should companies be expected to do to limit the harms, and what is needed beyond platform policies?
• Nina Bual, Cyberlite
• John Livingstone, UNICEF
• Anju, UNICEF Youth ambassador
• Professor Amanda Third, Western Sydney University
• Edward Wee, Infocomm Media Development Authority Singapore
11:30 - Cook Room: Workshop: Behind the Chat: AI Companions, Young People and Trusted Adults
• Michelle Yao and Nina Bual, Cyberlite
Ibis Room: Fireside Chat -- Singapore Online Safety Commissioner
• Dr Jenine Beekhuyzen OAM
• Francis Ng, Online Safety Commissioner
11:45 - Ibis Room: Panel Discussion: Smart Glasses, Consent and Trust & Safety
Google Glass introduced smart cameras to the mainstream conversation in 2012. More than a decade later, Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses — and, increasingly, lower-cost alternatives now available to consumers — are making this technology more accessible than ever. What was once an emerging technology is quickly becoming an everyday consumer product.
Their potential is significant: hands-free technology can support accessibility, independence,
communication and new ways for people with disabilities to interact with the world around them.
However, putting cameras, microphones and increasingly sophisticated AI into something that looks
and feels like ordinary eyewear also changes the dynamics of consent.
As Trust & Safety professionals grapple with image based sexual abuse (IBSA) and the creation and distribution of non-consensual intimate imagery, smart glasses introduce a new potential pathway
for capturing, creating, and instantly distributing content — potentially without the knowledge or
consent of those being recorded.
• Sean Lyons, NetSafe New Zealand
• Felipe Batiwale, Fiji Online Safety Commissioner
• Dr. Milica ‘Milly’ Stilinovic, University of Sydney
• Caroline Humer, Survivors & Tech Solving Image Based Sexual Abuse (STISA)
12:00 - Parkview Room: Workshop: Online safety certification by Online Safety Exchange
Online safety is becoming a profession. On the front line, educators, helpline staff, caseworkers, investigators, community managers and NGO responders work to prevent and respond to online harm. They have collectively built up specialised knowledge about how risk and harm are generated and mitigated online. That knowledge has not yet been translated into standards that define a profession.
That is the work for this workshop. Participants are asked to bring their knowledge, and we will collectively work to answer the question — "What should every person operating as an online safety practitioner know?" A standard we are all held to should be one we all had a hand in setting.
The workshop will be run under the Chatham House Rule. Contributions will be captured live, written up as an open baseline document shared back to participants, and fed into the Online Safety Exchange's Online Safety Foundations and Practitioner courses (currently in pilot).
• Martin Cocker, Online Safety Exchange
13:00 Lunch
14:00 - Parallel Tracks
Ibis Room: Panel Discussion: People write the code: Safety by Design as moral leadership
Technologies are made by people, and the design choices they make about functions and features are an expression of specifics values. Safety by Design is an idea whose time has well and truly come. For companies that embrace it as a core ethos, what does it say about a company’s moral compass – and is there any realistic alternative?
• Colm Gannon, ICMEC Australia
• Caroline Wall, Commonwealth Bank
• Jordan Benavidez, Match Group
• Björn Böhme, ReachOut
Cook Room: Workshop: Community Management for Repairing Online Social Spaces
• Dr Venessa Paech, Australian Community Managers
15:00 Coffee Break
15:15 - Keynote with Michael Outram: “Complex and ambiguous”: defining the modern border and the challenges of digital sovereignty
16:00 - Closing remarks by Toby Dagg
Closing reception
(by invitation only)
Last updated 21 September 2026
