Facebook Community Guidelines

Why Council has Facebook pages

Council has the following Facebook pages to actively engage with the community, serving as a place for discussion, enquiries and an active exchange of ideas.

Moderating our Facebook pages

Townsville City Council welcomes honest, friendly and open conversation within our Facebook pages. However, it is our responsibility and reserved right to remove public comments or discussion posts which stop this from happening. We also reserve the right to permanently remove users who are continually detrimental to others enjoyment of this.

We welcome your comments and do not discriminate against any views. We encourage you to discuss and share opinions with others and Council via our Facebook pages.

In order to ensure our pages are friendly and welcome for all visitors, we do moderate where needed.

We reserve the right to remove comments which:

• are considered likely to disrupt, provoke, attack or offend others;
• are racist, sexist, homophobic, sexually explicit, abusive or otherwise objectionable;
• contain swear words or other language likely to offend;
• could break the law or condone or encourage unlawful activity (this includes breach of copyright, defamation and contempt of court);
• are seen to impersonate someone else;
• include contact details such as phone numbers, postal or email addresses;
• describe or encourage activities which could endanger the safety of well-being of others;
• are considered to be 'spam' (posts containing the same message posted multiple times);
• are repeatedly off-topic for the discussion to which you are posting;
• do not relate directly to Townsville City Council services, programs or enquiries; or
• are purely commercial in nature and promote a product or service which does not relate to Townsville City Council.

By commenting on any of our pages you are indicating that you have read, understand and agree to abide by these rules laid out above.

Privacy on our Facebook pages

Townsville City Council (Council) is committed to handling your personal information in accordance with the Information Privacy Act 2009 (Qld) and the Queensland Privacy Principles (QPPs).

QPP 5 obliges us to advise you of certain matters when collecting your personal information.  This collection notice sets out those matters, and explains how we will manage the collection, use, disclosure and storage of your personal information from our Facebook pages.

All information (including personal information) on our Facebook page (including on Facebook Messenger) is captured immediately when posted.  The purposes for which your person information is collected are:

• to enable us to respond to complaints and customer service requests; and
• to comply with legislative record keeping obligations.

Council does not usually disclose your personal information collected from our Facebook page to other agencies or entities. However, your personal information may be disclosed to another agency or entity if:

• you have given us permission;
• we are required by law; or
• we reasonably believe the disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary for one or more enforcement-related activities conducted by a law enforcement agency.

Our privacy policy explains how you may request access to and/or correction of your personal information.  Our policy also explains how you can complain to us if you consider we have breached our obligations to manage your personal information in accordance with the QPPs, and how we deal with privacy complaints. View our Information Privacy Policy.

If you have questions regarding how your personal information will be handled, contact us on 13 48 10 or enquiries@townsville.qld.gov.au.