House debates
Wednesday, 8 October 2025
Questions without Notice
Schools: Bullying
2:55 pm
Claire Clutterham (Sturt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
My question is to the Minister for Education. What action is the Albanese Labor government taking to address bullying in schools and to make our schools safer for all Australian children?
Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I thank my friend the member for Sturt for her question. She understands this in a very personal and painful way, which she so powerfully explained to all of us in her first speech to this place. Bullying isn't just a bit of push and shove in the playground or stealing lunch money. It's a lot more awful and insidious than that. Sometimes it can leave invisible scars that never heal. Today it can follow you all the way home after school. The internet means that you can be bullied now at any time, day or night, and anyone can see it. AI, artificial intelligence, makes it even worse. We've seen too many examples of that over the last few months, where photos of students or teachers are cut and cropped onto naked bodies. That sort of bullying and harassment can sometimes lead to teachers leaving the job that they love or, in the worst and most heartbreaking examples, young people taking their own life. You can understand then why so many mothers and fathers around the country are so worried.
This is a serious problem, and it's getting worse. One in four students tell us that they've been bullied at school in the last few weeks. One in two say they've been bullied online. Thirteen per cent say that online bullying involved someone telling them that they should die. Complaints about online bullying to the eSafety Commissioner have increased by 450 per cent in the last five years. It's one of the reasons why we're implementing the social media ban for children under the age of 16. It's being led by my friend the Minister for Communications, and it starts in a few weeks.
It's also why the Prime Minister commissioned an antibullying rapid review earlier this year. That work is being led by Dr Charlotte Keating, a clinical psychologist, and Professor Jo Robinson AM, the head of suicide prevention research at Orygen. Over the last few months, they've received more than 1,700 submissions from mums, dads, teachers and students. They've also met with students and teachers and with the mothers and fathers who have lost their children because of this. Next week, they will present their recommendations to education ministers and their proposed national standard on bullying in schools. In advance of that, I thank them for the work that they have done. This is hard work, and it's getting harder. We can't be naive and think that anything we do here is going to stop bullying in all its forms or that bullying just happens at school. Of course it doesn't. But it does happen at schools, and schools are a place where we can act to help to keep our children safe. And this report will help us provide a way to do that.