THINKUKNOW LAUNCHED IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA
6 May 2010
Media Conference - Linden Park Schools, Adelaide
Subject: ThinkUKnow in South Australia
QUESTION: Minister, can you tell us about the importance of this program.
BRENDAN O'CONNOR: I'm at Linden Park Primary School today launching the ThinkUKnow program. This is a very important program. It goes to the cyber-safety and protecting our children.
What we know is that we need to make sure we build a bridge between parents and teachers on one hand, and children on the other, in discussing the virtual world. The internet is a wonderful tool, it's fantastic for education, and it’s a great arena where people can socially engage. But the internet is not a benign playground and, unfortunately, we know there are incidences of cyber-bullying. We also know that there are predators that would seek to groom or procure children and therefore we have to be alert to the risks.
This program brings together parents, teachers and carers. It says to them - you need to build up confidence and trust with your children so they can discuss any concerns they may have when they're in the virtual world.
We need to tear down that wall between adults and children so they feel comfortable in alerting their parents or teachers to anything that makes them feel uncomfortable, whether it's instances of cyber-bullying or people seeking to prey on children.
QUESTION: How does this program do that? How does it build up the lines of communication?
BRENDAN O'CONNOR: Firstly, it's a fantastic user-friendly website which has information about how adults can engage with children, build a level of confidence and, at the same time, ensure that they are alert to potential risks.
What we have here is the website which is very user-friendly. We also have the school conducting seminars, which are face-to-face meetings, so that parents, teachers and carers can learn about the best way to build a relationship with students when they talk about the virtual world. We piloted this program and those that participated found that they knew a lot more about the potential risks as a result of that seminar.
We need parents to ask their kids not only what they did at school today, but also who they're talking to in the virtual world. We need to make sure kids are likely to alert parents or teachers to anything that makes them feel uncomfortable.
This is a very important program. I thank the Linden Park Primary School for being a leader in this state, and I want to see more schools in South Australia be part of this very important initiative.
QUESTION: So it's about teaching the parents about the internet, basically?
BRENDAN O'CONNOR: It is. We can only do so much to protect people by forms of censorship and I think the community wants to have a balance in relation to any restrictions of material.
As we know, even with filtering of certain refused classification material, there are means by which people can get around that. Therefore, it's not just about preventing access because that's not going to work in the long-run. What we need to do is ensure that students understand some of the dangers and feel confident that they can contact an adult, whether it's their parent or a teacher, to say I felt uncomfortable, I'm in a chat room and people are asking me inappropriate questions.
We need to get them alerting parents or teachers about these risks at an early stage because we know in some dire situations it's gone too far and it's led to some very tragic circumstances.
QUESTION: Will this program be rolled out nationally? How widespread will it go?
BRENDAN O'CONNOR: We've now got 100 or so schools that have expressed an interest. There are 11 already in South Australia that have enlisted, and we need to see more schools engage because effectively the schools are the meeting places of children and adults. I therefore call upon schools of South Australia to engage with the Australian Federal Police, Microsoft, and indeed the Federal Government in order to protect our children. These are the most vulnerable members of our society. We need to provide them sufficient information but we also need to build a bridge between the virtual world and the real world, between parents and teachers on one hand and children on the other, to protect our children.
That's why this initiative is so important and I therefore ask all schools to get involved.
ENDS
Contact:
Belinda Cole 0438 595 567
AFP National Media (02) 6275 7100
