No one backs Mick Fuller’s consent app, least of all Mick Fuller

This morning The NSW Police Commissioner suggested a consent app as the next step in protecting victims of sexual assault, and this afternoon he said it would never eventuate.

NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller. Picture: Dylan Coker

From young to old, liberal to conservative, men to women, everyone seems to think the NSW Police Commissioner’s consent app is a bad idea… even the NSW Police Commissioner.

Mick Fuller on Thursday proposed using technology such as an app to record consent for sexual activity, in order to combat a rising tide of sex assaults and low conviction rates. The technology would have users enter their personal details and accept a consent request from the person they were having intercourse with.

“The app could be a terrible idea, but maybe in 10 years’ that will be seen as the normal dating [method],” he told 2GB radio on Thursday morning. “If you swipe left and right, and there’s another option if you want to have ­intimacy.”

While Mr Fuller has been applauded for acknowledging the issue of consent, the praise has stopped there.

Consent education trailblazer Chanel Contos said the app “completely misses the mark. It’s a band-aid solution, and a bad one at that,” she told The Australian.

The app, she said, would not only be ineffective but potentially dangerous. “Girls are brought up to be empathetic people-pleasers,” she said. “If you were in a position where a guy was waggling a phone in your face to get you to consent, more likely than not you’d do it, and be unable to withdraw that decision later.”

Former NRL gender adviser Catharine Lumby echoed Ms Contos’s sentiment, adding that technology could never take the place of something that required human communication.

Former minister for prevention of sexual assault Pru Goward praised Mr Fuller as being “the greatest champion for victims of sexual violence” but said the app was destined for failure.

By day’s end, Mr Fuller had told a packed press conference his suggestion had merely been “a conversation starter” and added, perhaps hopefully: “We may never talk about the app again.”