THE mother of a girl who was almost driven to suicide by vicious cyber bullying has welcomed the Coalition's proposal to make Facebook accountable for removing malicious content.
The woman, who did not want to be named, said her daughter was just 13 when she was mercilessly attacked for several weeks by bullies from her school in Victoria, who relentlessly posted nasty messages on her Facebook page.
"They wrote things like 'you're fat, you have no friends, everyone hates you, I hope you get hit by a train,','' she said.
"They called her a slut and posted her mobile number for all to see, and she got about 30 abusive calls a day because of that.''
The mum said despite reporting the bullying "every few days'' using Facebook's reporting system, she never got any response from the social network.
"I could never get in contact with anyone via Facebook to get things taken off, to get sites shut down, I got zero response,'' she said.
"You feel like why do I even bother, because no one's listening.''
She welcomed the idea of a cooperative regulatory scheme for social media networks.
"What Tony Abbott is saying is true, we need to do that and I think it's absolutely fantastic,'' she said.
Mr Abbott today slammed Facebook for its "hands-off'' approach to online bullying during an announcement of the Coalition's online safety proposal at a Sydney school.
Under a proposal released for public discussion, he said Facebook and other social media outlets would be required to provide an officer as a single point of contact for parents to more easily have offensive content removed from their sites.
The announcement comes just days after a News Limited special investigation revealed students at almost 500 Australian schools were using Facebook pages to bully each other and post offensive messages and images.
The messages included pornography, racist jokes and references to Hitler and Nazism.
Facebook refused to review the list of 500 schools provided by News Ltd.
Mr Abbott said sites like Facebook were not responding quickly enough to complaints about offensive content.
"We hear too many concerning instances where complaints are not responded to and we believe the scheme will give the community the certainty it would expect,'' he said.
"We are going to insist that the hands-off approach which has largely been adopted until now cannot continue.
"We believe major social media outlets will be held to account.''
In the discussion paper, titled Enhancing online safety for children, the Coalition reports parents and schools overwhelmingly did not know where to turn when their children were bullied online.
It proposes "a cooperative, regulatory scheme, underpinned by legislation'' that would be developed in consultation with school and parent communities, ACMA and social media companies.
Mr Abbott said there would be a range of punishments for cyber bullies that would vary according to the gravity of the offence.
"I suppose you would deal with them the same way you would with bullies generally,'' he said.
"Sometimes a stern talking to is enough, sometimes if bullying slips into harassment it can become a criminal offence.
"The important thing is that the purpose of today's discussion is that bullying must stop.''
Mr Abbott stressed that the online safety proposal was not about internet censorship.
"The thing about the online world is that it's anonymous, it's permanent and it's everywhere,'' Mr Abbott said. ``And that's why protection is very very significant.''
"About 90 per cent of Australian high school students have a Facebook account.''
Opposition communications spokesman, Malcolm Turnbull said that if bullying and harassment of children was unacceptable in the playground, "then it must also be unacceptable online''.
The Coalition's discussion paper said it would be seeking industry and community input into whether there may be scope to improve the level of coordination with law enforcement to ensure children's online safety.
They also proposed establishing an independent "Children's e-Safety Commissioner'' charged with coordinating a national response to online safety as well as creating guidelines for schools parents, children and internet providers.
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