'Destroy people's lives': Scott Morrison promises online trolls will be held accountable

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has lashed out at online trolls, calling them cowards and bullies and promising their actions will have consequences. 

ABC News reported on Thursday Morrison described social media as a "coward's palace" that is allowing keyboard warriors to harass and bully with no repercussions. 

"Social media has become a coward's palace where people can go on there, not say who they are, destroy people's lives, and say the most foul and offensive things to people."

Morrison told ABC News everyone is responsible for the things they say and do. 

"Cowards who go anonymously onto social media and vilify people and harass them and bully them, and engage in defamatory statements, they need to be responsible for what they're saying." 

Morrison's comments came after Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce said it was essential the Government pushed tech companies to crack down on misinformation. 

"We now have companies that make billions of dollars, but they don't own responsibility for what is happening on their platforms," he told RN Breakfast. 

But it's Joyce's own experiences that sparked his mission to take down online trolls. 

"From my own personal experience of recent times, you get to a point where you say enough is enough." 

Joyce's daughter has been the subject of malicious rumours online, which he says is every parent's worst nightmare, ABC News reported.

"If you go to any school and talk to any parent, this is one of the greatest fears: the destruction of their children by innuendo, by slur." 

ABC News reported Morrison wanted to add his voice to what Joyce had said urging tech giants to take more responsibility.

"The lack of accountability that sits around it is just not on, you can expect us to be leaning further into this." 

Joyce is urging his colleagues to consider a fix to the problem promptly, pointing to the congressional inquiry that is taking place in the United States. 

"There's a congressional inquiry in the United States looking into this, I think Australia should looking into this."