Social Media Policy: Expectations of Fair Conduct and Appropriate Behaviour

Whilst we all want to visitors to our website and the social media channels we use to comment and engage in an open and uncensored manner, there are occasions where groups and/or individuals over-step the boundaries of what is typically deemed to be appropriate.

We have adopted a ‘positivity in politics pledge’ which means that comments designed to be nasty, mean spirited, intended to troll, or just pointlessly aggressive will be deleted. Fair, open questions and legitimate inquiries are welcome.

On 3rd party channels, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, the official terms of use of those services are always the overarching authority. However, we reserve the right to take additional actions.

In instances of disagreement, conflict and complaint, we will endeavour to seek a resolution that primarily encourages participants to reflect upon their post, and edit what they have written to make their argument/comment/statement more appropriate, so that the public debate may continue.

Where individuals or groups engage in the examples of the behaviours below cited below, or when participants have complained about the behaviour of other users, their comments will be reviewed by site administrators. These comments may be subsequently edited, deleted, and the participant suspended or blocked from being able to comment on the page, website or social media channel:

  • Profane, defamatory, offensive or violent language;
  • ‘Trolling’, or posting deliberately disruptive statements meant to hijack comment threads or throw discussions off-track;
  • Comments meant to harass, threaten or abuse an individual;
  • Hateful or discriminatory comments regarding race, ethnicity, religion, gender, disability, sexual orientation;
  • Links or comments containing sexually explicit content material;
  • Spam, link baiting or files containing viruses that could damage the operation of other people’s computers or mobile devices;
  • Acknowledgement of intent to stalk an individual;
  • Comments or posts by political activists seeking to disrupt genuine debate or hijack page visitors;
  • Statements that are untrue or intended to mislead; or information that has been doctored;
  • Accounts that appear to be fake.

To allow open dialogue between genuinely engaged residents we reserved the right to ban commentators who have a disclosed affiliation with another party and whose comments are clearly designed to stifle debate, create political mischief, or misdirect visitors.

We retain the right to regularly review and update our social media terms where necessary.

If you have a complaint, contact us using the “Contact Us” page on our website, which is at this link.