Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to rise to report on an event held in my electorate recently, on 30 May. It was an event hosted by Turramurra High School and featuring Facebook and Project Rockit. Project Rockit consist of two young women based in Melbourne who are very effective educators on the question of online safety, Rosie and Lucy Thomas. They led a group of year 8 students from Turramurra high in an education and information session about things that you can do to keep yourself safe online. I also want to acknowledge the important role that Facebook played in setting up this event and in providing useful content for it.

Some of the messages that were shared with the year 8 students from Turramurra High School at this event were very important. They were about things that all of us can do, but particularly children and teenagers can do, to stay safe online—this medium which is such a central part of the lives of children and adults today. Amongst the pieces of advice that were given were: do not share your password with anybody, check your privacy settings at facebook.com/privacy to see who can view your posts, and check the audience selector tool each time you post on Facebook in order to make sure you are sharing it with your desired audience.

There was some good advice given about what you can do to help fix things up when online interactions go wrong. For example, if you have shared something you should not have done, Facebook's advice is that the first step is to ask the people you sent it to not to pass it on. If somebody else has posted something you sent them, start by asking them to take it down. Facebook also advises that, if you are tagged in a photo that you do not like, remember that a lot of photo-sharing and social networking sites may let you take your name off any pictures you have been tagged in. On Facebook you can also elect in your privacy settings to review posts that you are taken before they are posted to your time line—again, facebook.com/privacy.

There are a lot of important practical tips that were shared with the year 8 students from Turramurra High School at this event and there were some good discussions about the things that students can do, that children and young people can do, to help protect themselves online and what they should do when things go wrong online, as they will from time to time. I would like to acknowledge the work of Project Rockit as educators in online safety, the hospitality of Turramurra High School and Principal Stephanie McConnell and also Facebook in supporting this event held at Turramurra High School in my electorate on Friday, 30 May.