Australia's attorneys-general have made no concrete plans to restrict access to Facebook for under-18s.
South Australian Attorney-General John Rau yesterday said it was not unreasonable to give parents assistance to protect and supervise their children in an environment that was largely unregulated and unsupervised.
But today, there was just an undertaking by one state to investigate options.
"The Commonwealth will have a look at the issues that we are raising and get back to us at a future meeting," South Australia Attorney General John Rau told SBS.
Federal Justice Minister Brendan O'Connor said the government was loath to legislate where legislation was not going to work.
"I think education is the key," he said.
"We need to make sure young people are informed about the potential risks.
"The cyber world is a magnificent place, it's a fantastic educational tool, it's a fantastic place for people to engage socially.
"But the internet is not a benign playground. There are potential threats to young people in particular."
Mr Rau said Australia was going through a revolution in the way people consumed and generated information.
"That is a technologically driven change that is way ahead of the legal system and probably the thinking of most governments around the world and certainly in this country," he said.
"We are grappling with changes that are moving more quickly than most people would have thought possible only a few years ago."
SA's proposals are likely to include a provision to raise the age for Facebook users and to also require the site to seek proof of age.
They will also consider allowing greater parental access. Facebook currently requires users to be aged at least 13, but there is no requirement to provide proof of age.
A SA mother found recently that her teenage daughter had uploaded inappropriate pictures of herself to her Facebook page but the mother was prevented by Facebook from removing them.
Mr Rau said that case highlighted the concerns of many parents, while Mr O'Connor said more needed to be done to educate and inform young people of the dangers associated with posting material online.
"People need to think carefully about what they upload, what they put onto their Facebook and social websites," he said.
The Attorneys-General did agree today to introduce an R18+ rating for computer games.
They say it'll bring Australia into line with other countries.
Today Australians have also been hearing about a high-speed broadband service for four years now but today came the first indication of what it'll cost to access it.
Internet service provider Internode released its pricing structure - between $60 and $190 per month.
"To try to make it possible for people to kinda step sideways to the new world without paying more," Simon Hackett from Internode told SBS.
"In a lot of cases you'll get significantly better performance because fibre just works better than copper does - more reliable, more consistent in its delivery of speed, less of what's called latency, the delay between one end and the other, so even things like this - video conferencing - will work much better with even the slowest NBN speed".
The federal opposition declared the National Broadband Network an expensive white elephant.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy was delighted with Internode's pricing, saying it's in line with expectation.
"What you're going to see is a whole range of other plans come into the market place to drive competition and ultimately drive cheaper prices for consumers," Mr Conroy says.
