Senator Catryna Bilyk and members of the Joint Select Committee on Cyber Safety will visit two indigenous schools in Brisbane tomorrow to discuss cyber bullying with students and teachers.
The visits are part of the Committee’s Inquiry, which began on 20 March 2013, into issues which affect indigenous Australians such as online racism. The Inquiry is particularly interested in how this affects young people in remote and rural communities.
The committee will visit Southside Education, a secondary school for young women, and Aboriginal and Islander Independent Community School which teaches primary and secondary students.
According to Senator Bilyk, a report will be presented to federal parliament making recommendations for further inquiry before the next federal election on 14 September.
The Committee is also running an Inquiry into Cyber Safety for Senior Australians.
Speaking before the Committee in Canberra during March 2013, AFP cyber crime manager Commander Glen McEwen discussed the law enforcement’s education program called ThinkUKnow which is designed to educate Australians in both rural and urban areas.
On 4 March 2013 the Northern Territory Police announced that it had joined the ThinkUKnow program which aims to educate children, parents, carers and teachers about the risks faced online.
Prior to the NT Police joining the program, the AFP Cybercrime Prevention team ran a number of education sessions during 2011-12 with NT indigenous elders about how they could assist in protecting young people online.
“The elders were provided with a presentation outlying the dangers and there were discussions after the presentation to further assist in their education,” McEwen said.
AFP High Tech Crime Operations crime prevention team co-ordinator Dr Jenny Cartwright, who also appeared before the committee, said that these meetings were backed up with the ThinkUKnow website where people could view an online version of the cyber safety presentation.
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