It was the dawn of the information age, and by 2000 the Senate Select Committee on Information Technology, which I chaired, had held three inquiries into the rapidly evolving internet. As legislators, we were grappling with the appropriate regulatory response to what seemed to be the online "wild west".

One "expert witness" looked down his nose at the senate committee members before him and exclaimed, "No, no, there is no way you will ever be able to censor the internet".

Traditional media is regulated by a classification (censorship) system, covering film, television, magazines and newspapers. This was the 1970s and 1980s media and entertainment world in which my children grew up. But for my grandchildren, all born in the new century, the entertainment experience is very different.

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Today, young people are highly media savvy and know their way around the internet. In our schools, "respect" programs have been introduced. Still, society is fighting a losing battle in a world where people, primarily male, can immerse themselves in porn on the net, where women are dehumanised and treated as sex objects.

These young men are receiving a very graphic education in the disrespect of women. John Dickson, a historian, author, and presenter, offers this striking observation: "I'm convinced that in 50 years, we will look back on this period of pornographisation, of objectifying people and degrading them, as a justice issue, a human rights issue."

The disrespect of women is certainly not a new problem. As pointed out in the Newcastle Herald letters (02-04-21) by Joan Lambert of Adamstown, the good old days weren't good for women. "I am 84, and I cannot remember a time in my life when women were respected, let alone given equal rights ... Surviving victims have demonstrated that domestic and sexual violence was rife".

Australian society is now on a track to where the degradation of women is likely to worsen, as disrespect by young men is being turbocharged by online pornography. For the next generation, a higher priority needs to be given to further develop respect and consent programs in schools. This may go some way to changing the attitudes of young men towards women.

But the most significant gains can be made in the home by parents taking the time to be involved in what their children are doing, especially with their online devices. There are parental control apps, but they need to be activated and monitored. For tech-savvy kids that can still get around the app, we can now apply more sophisticated technology to limit their access to online porn.

Parental education and control of what children see and hear are paramount. This was the conclusion that the "expert witness" gave our senate inquiry into the internet "wild west" all those years ago. Today, it is still good advice. But the pornographisation of Australian culture is not only affecting the young. What has recently been revealed in Canberra about the disrespect of women in Australia is just the tip of the iceberg of what is happening across society.

The confluence of the alleged rape of Britney Higgins in a minister's office in Parliament House and rape allegations against Christian Porter have triggered a political and social tsunami. The federal government has not only been unprepared for this crisis but has struggled to articulate a credible response. People are angry about what is going on in the parliament, across many workplaces, and in the wider community.

The public revulsion at these disclosures and the fact that the issues have suddenly shot to the top of the government's agenda provide us with a glimmer of hope that disrespect for women may now be more holistically addressed in government policies and programs. This will need to go beyond the recent window dressing of creating new women's policy titles in the federal government ministry.

For legislators, used to responding to economic downturns and other crises, this is unfamiliar territory. There is also a limit to what the government can do by legislation and regulation to modify human behaviour and misbehaviour. The PM's first reaction was to invoke the rule of law and proclaim these were matters for the police, not the parliament. This might have worked in an earlier era, but not in the age of social media.

The current focus on the disrespect of women in our society will not go away. Certainly not with Australian of the Year, Grace Tame and many other outraged women constantly nipping at the PM's heels. Let's hope that the five women in the federal ministry who have been given responsibility in this area of government can devise practical policies that will make a positive difference in women's lives.