A witness told media that a man dressed in a military-style, camouflage outfit, and carrying an automatic rifle had started randomly shooting people in the mosque. New Zealand police were hunting “an active shooter” in the centre of Christchurch city on Friday after a gunman opened fire at a mosque inflicting several casualties. Police have not yet described the scale of the shooting but urged people in central Christchurch to stay indoors.(AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Many people were killed in a mass shooting at a mosque in the New Zealand city of Christchurch on Friday, a witness said. The Opposition Leader Bill Shorten last week said social media companies should be held accountable if they fail to properly monitor violent or extremist content.Christchurch shooting: Police attempt to clear people from outside a mosque in central Christchurch, New Zealand. He said it was 'unacceptable to treat the internet as an ungoverned space'.

The Prime Minister has also penned a letter to the chair of June's G20 summit in Osaka, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, calling for the issue of social media governance to be added to the top of the agenda. Ultimately if the offence was proved, individual social media executives could be found personally liable - provided they were based in Australia. The new laws would force social media companies to remove violent terrorist footage as soon as they are notified it is on their platform, and they would face escalating penalties, meaning the longer a platform allowed the content to remain on their site, the greater the punishment would be. The proposed legislation would be modelled on existing laws that require social media companies to take down child exploitation material, and notify police if people upload it. 'We are considering all options to keep Australian safe.' Individual executives could be found liable 'If social media companies fail to demonstrate a willingness to immediately institute changes to prevent the use of their platforms, like what was filmed and shared by the perpetrators of the terrible offences in Christchurch, we will take action. 'We need to prevent social media platforms being weaponised with terror content,' he said. Prime Minister Scott Morrison will meet with social media executives on Tuesday to discuss the laws, which would focus on videos filmed by perpetrators of extreme violence. Untold numbers choose to seek out the footage, download it, and share it in ways intended to circumvent censors.

Christchurch active shooting video