Darwin Online Safety Working Group Meeting

Yesterday I was in Darwin with the Coalition Online Safety Working Group, talking to school children at Essington School and Marrara Christian College about how they use the internet and whether they have had bad experiences online.

The Coalition Online Safety Working Group was established earlier this year by Tony Abbott, who asked me to chair it.

 We are looking at whether children are adequately protected against online risks such as exposure to pornographic or violent content, and also the risks that come with social media such as cyberbullying.  As part of our work we are consulting widely - all around Australia.

Yesterday's discussions in Darwin follow on from previous sessions with children in Hobart; in Adelaide; in Perth and in  Sydney (at Killara High School in the electorate of Bradfield.)  Later this week we will be visiting schools in  Brisbane, and we also have visits scheduled in other locations including Melbourne, Townsville and Bendigo.

Talking to children and young people - ranging in age from 8 to 17 - in many parts of Australia has been a fascinating and rather encouraging experience.  It is really impressive to see how many smart, shrewd, thoughtful, funny and motivated Aussie kids there are.

At the same time it is sobering to reflect on the challenges facing children - and parents - today which did not exist twenty years ago.  We've heard some unsettling examples.  A nine year old girl yesterday told us about doing a search on mermaids to find pictures for a school project, and  coming across a page of photos of what she described - with the distaste and disappointment showing clearly on her face - as 'naked mermaids.'  At a school in Perth  we heard about an incident in which one seven year old child bullied another on Facebook.  Another example reported to us by a concerned parent involved a twelve year old girl who had a sexually explicit image posted (without her consent, and to her shock) on the 'wall' on her Facebook page.

There's no doubt the internet is a marvellous tool for education and many other purposes.  And there is also no doubt that lots of good work is being done by schools and parents to protect the children in their care against the darker side of the Internet. A lot of the children we have spoken with are well schooled in self protection measures such as not giving their password to others, not giving away their name and address to people they meet online, not clicking on pop-ups telling them they have won a prize, and telling a parent or other trusted adult if someone is aggressive to them or threatens them online.  Indeed, the phrase 'inappropriate content' trips off the tongue of most eight year olds we have spoken too - although inevitably they do not have a very precise idea of what it means (indeed, at that age, nor should they.)

But it is also clear that the revolution in technology simply means that kids have a lot more chances to see harmful material - including of a violent or sexual nature - than they used to.  And a big part of that is the ubiquity of portable devices (such as smartphones and ipods) which can access the internet and which children are able to use when their parents are not around to supervise them.  When we ask groups of children how many of them own a smartphone - such as an apple iphone - even in a group of ten year olds we will often find that half say yes.

Our work continues.  We've met with and spoken to a lot of children, parents, teachers and other experts - including child psychologists, academic experts in cyberbullying, and police.  We have more consultations to do, and we have a growing pile of formal submissions to review.

The Coalition Online Safety Working Group is an important initiative - and one that I am pleased to be leading.  Our consultations to date have left me and my colleagues on the Working Group with a conviction that there are some serious issues here that need to be addressed - but it has also left us impressed with both the children we have met and the teachers and others charged with their care.