An Australian police commissioner suggested people could use a smartphone app to consent to sex

• An Australia police commissioner wrote an op-ed suggesting creating a smartphone app to consent to sex.
• Politicians and sexual assault advocates blasted the idea, saying it would make it harder for women to prove rape.
• Amid the backlash, the commissioner said the app could be a "terrible idea."
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

An Australia police commissioner has suggested people use a smartphone app to record consent to sex, BBC News reported.

In a Thursday op-ed in Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper, New South Wales police commissioner Mick Fuller compared the idea to using apps to check into bars and restaurants during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Just as we've had to check-in at the coffee shop to keep people safe, is there a way consent can be confirmed or documented?" Fuller wrote.

He added in the op-ed that only "a tiny percentage" of reported sexual assaults end up with a successful prosecution.

"We need a discussion about innovative solutions and how we can gauge positive consent," he wrote.

The police commissioner's article provoked immediate backlash from politicians and sexual assault advocates who said the idea of a consent app was simplistic rather than innovative and that it would protect the accused rather than victims.

Rachael Burgin, cofounder of Rape and Sexual Assault Research and Advocacy and a law lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology, said Fuller's proposal showed "a lack of understanding" about sexual violence.

"The reality is people consent or agree to sex because they are coerced, forced or there is violence involved," Burgin told ABC, Australia's national broadcasting network. "An app doesn't capture the nuance of true consent."

Tanya Plibersek, a politician in Australia's Labor Party, told the Guardian that the app idea was flawed because consent could be withdrawn.

"So the fact that you've signed up, in the beginning, doesn't mean that you're up for everything that your partner suggests," Plibersek said, adding, "We really need to be teaching consent to our kids, as part of a respectful relationship program that's age-appropriate, in our schools, in our homes."

A freelance journalist wrote on Twitter that such an app's utility would be "that a person with power can later use it as 'evidence' against a rape allegation, ignoring context, coercion, withdrawal of consent, etc. It's designed by men to make it harder for women to prove rape."

The day the op-ed was published, Fuller already seemed to backtrack on his proposal for a consent app.

"The app could be a terrible idea, but maybe in 10 years' time that will be seen as the normal dating [method]," he said in an interview with Sydney radio station 2GB on Thursday, per the Guardian. "If you swipe left and right and there's another option if you want to have intimacy."

Fuller could not be reached for comment for this story, and the New South Wales Police Force's public affairs director did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Another #MeToo in Australia

The police commissioner's controversial suggestion for dealing with issues of consent came three days after thousands marched across Australia in protests against gender inequality and sexual violence and harassment.

Last month, former Liberal Party staffer Brittany Higgins said an older male colleague - who has not been publicly identified - raped her at Parliament House in a minister's office in 2019. Four other women have since accused the same man of sexual assault or harassment.

And Australia's Attorney General, Christian Porter, has been accused of raping a 16-year-old girl in 1988, when he was 17. The woman died by suicide last year. Porter has denied the allegations and filed a defamation lawsuit against the journalist who reported on them.