Is Telstra’s $2m enough to keep kids safe online?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 04 February 2008 13:40

Opinion and Analysis

Telstra says that more information and an online application form is available at Telstra Foundation website, opening today, the 4th February 2008 and closing on the 4th of April ’08 with successful projects and applications to be announced in June this year.

Looking up more information on the Telstra Foundation, we learn that it was established in 2002, and comprises of two programs, the Telstra Foundation Community Development Fund and the Telstra Kids Fund.

In 2005-2006, Telstra contributed approx $4.2m in grants to 730 “not-for-profit organisations that help children and young people in Australia to reach their potential”, with Telstra saying they anticipate “a similar level of funding for future years”.

Telstra says the Community Development Fund works to “connect children and young people to their communities” while the Kids Fund “supports a broad range of initiatives and projects including education, sports and recreation, arts and culture, environment, social issues and disability programs”.

So, Telstra are already contributing millions of dollars per year to support educational and other programs for children across Australia, with some of that money likely going into some form of computer and Internet education in the past.

However 2008 is a special year, one that is seeing content filtering through the new Australian Federal Government’s prism of (effectively) compulsory filtering of content at the ISP level.

Compulsory filtering at the ISP level has not yet been brought into play, but the Federal Communications Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, announced his intention to force ISPs to filter content in early January.

He rather remarkably stated that this kind of Government filtering could not be compared to that in use by China against its citizens, simply because the Australian Government plans to use it to filter out child pornography and other undesirable sexual content, instead of also (eventually) filtering out political, news and other ‘unapproved’ content as happens in China today.

As we don’t live in a perfect world where all parents and children are fully Internet aware and cyber safe, Governments think that they can do their bit by simply censoring parts of the Internet, but wholesale censorship is not the right approach.

It certainly is wonderful to see there are a range of organisations out there willing to take the responsibility of teaching parents and children about all aspects of online safety.

And it’s great to see companies like Telstra publicly doing something about it with these kinds of programs, in addition to the Australian Internet Industry Association’s collaboration with ISPs to providing free or low cost filtering software for parents to install on their and their children’s computers.

There are also organisations such as NetAlert which have for several years now promoted cyber safety to parents and teachers online and at events like those ‘Home Shows’ across Australia.

Among much other safety information online and elsewhere, there's also a US organisation called  ‘Common Sense Media’ that has an excellent and free downloadable Internet Safety Guide that received nationwide exposure on US television using Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer from TV series ‘24’ to promote the free book.

So... the question still remains... is Telstra’s $2m enough? And what do I think is the simple answer to educating all children and parents about the dangers of the Internet and how to stay safe online? Please read onto page 3.