Press conference - Canberra

JASON CLARE, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION: Thanks for coming along this morning.

Today is Early Educators’ Day, and can I take this opportunity, like I do very often, to thank the hundreds of thousands of people who work in our early education system right across the country. Over the course of the last few months parents in Victoria and elsewhere across the country have been living the nightmare of the revelations that have allegedly happened in Victoria.

The people who work in our centres have been living that nightmare, too. They’re hurt by everything that’s been revealed, allegedly revealed, and I want to use this opportunity to again thank them, our early educators, for the work that they do. The truth is they’re our best asset in keeping our children safe. So today and every day I want to thank our early educators.

While I’ve got this opportunity can I give a quick plug for an event that’s happening at Parliament House tonight – it’s the Schools Plus Teacher Awards. There are no jobs more important than the work that our teachers and our early educators do, and that event in the Great Hall tonight is an opportunity to shine a light on our fantastic school teachers right around the country.

I’ve brought you here today to talk about bullying in our schools. And bullying in schools isn’t just what happens in the playground. It can happen outside as well. It’s not just the push and shove in the playground and stealing lunch money; bullying today can follow you home. And the internet means that you can be bullied now day or night and that everyone can see it and it can last potentially forever.

In the world of AI it can be even worse. And we’ve seen examples of that over the last few months with the use of AI where a student might crop a head of another student and put that on a naked body and use that to hurt and humiliate and harm other students and, in some cases, school teachers as well. This leaves scars that you can’t see and scars that sometimes never heal. The result is that sometimes teachers will leave the job that they love. And in the worst of all worlds, it sometimes means that students take their own lives, and we’ve seen evidence of that.

I want to thank the Minister for Communications for the action she’s taken around some of these AI apps that can be used maliciously to hurt and harm students and teachers. And I want to thank schools for the work that they’re already doing in this area, but there’s more that we can do. And earlier this year in February education ministers across the country agreed to commission a rapid review of bullying in our schools – what do schools do really well, what can they do better, what sort of best practice should exist to help schools grapple with bullying right across the country.

And we appointed Dr Jo Robinson and Dr Charlotte Keating to lead that work for us, and they’ve been very busy over the last few months. They’ve received about 1,700 submissions from mums and dads, from teachers, from students, and they’re criss-crossing the country at the moment talking to ministers, talking in some cases to mums and dads who’ve lost their children because of bullying, talking to everybody that wants to be heard here to make sure that we get this right.

And they’re here at Parliament House today to talk to members of parliament who I know worry and care as deeply about this as I do, as the whole country does. And after Question Time today we’re organising a cross-party briefing for all members of parliament on the work that they’re doing.

Very soon, next month, they’ll present their findings and their recommendations to Education Ministers. But I thought it would be a great opportunity for Jo and for Charlotte to talk to the media today about the work they’re doing, what they’ve found so far and what comes next. So I’ll hand over to Jo and then I’ll hand over to Charlotte.

JO ROBINSON, EXPERT CO-CHAIR, ANTI-BULLYING RAPID REVIEW: Thanks, so much, Minister. Thanks, everybody.

As the Minister said, we have been very busy since we were appointed back in February to do this work. And we’ve conducted over 110 consultations with a whole range of different stakeholders. So we talked to education professionals, we talked to families, we talked to young people. And we are extremely grateful for the time that everybody has given us. We’ve had over 1,700 submissions to the online submission process, and we’ve heard a whole range of things.

We’ve heard certainly that bullying is a very complex and pervasive problem. We’ve heard that it is often amplified by things like the broader societal pressures that families are experiencing across our diverse country. But they are also amplified by the online world. And, again, as the Minister said, we are seeing those impacts of bullying occurring and they don’t just occur in the school playground anymore – they can follow you home and they can be hard to escape from.

So we’ve heard a lot about the complexity of bullying and its nature, but also that some of those solutions don’t necessarily need to be as complex as we might think. So we’re certainly very grateful to all the people that have contributed to the review and who have shared their stories with us, in particular, those young people and families who have experienced those very tragic consequences where young people have ended up taking their own lives in connection with bullying.

I suppose some of the other things that we’ve heard is a really strong support for national leadership and guidance around this issue. So the work that we’re doing will lead to some recommendations around what a national standard could look like for bullying across the country. And, again, all those stakeholders that we’ve spoken to, we’ve heard really strong commitment to tackling this problem but also towards the development of that national standard and what the commonwealth government can do in terms of providing guidance and leadership but whilst also allowing for schools and school systems to implement those recommendations, I suppose, with some flexibility and some nuance given the context of the local schools and local communities.

So I might just wrap up by thanking all of the people – thanking you, of course, but thanking all of the people that have contributed to the review, particularly those people that have shared those terrible personal stories. Thank you.

CHARLOTTE KEATING, EXPERT CO-CHAIR, ANTI-BULLYING RAPID REVIEW: Thank you very much, Minister. We have heard what is actually working well and what we tend to hear is when schools manage to balance policies, procedures and a warm school environment, that tends to go very well. When students, they’ve told us their voice is heard, that can be very important, and when they are responded to. Parents clearly want to feel that there is transparency and communication when something is reported. And teachers dearly want to feel equipped to be able to respond in a way that can be helpful as well.

As Jo said, we’d just like to express our sincerest gratitude to all of those people who have made, incredible contributions to help us inform the work that we are now in the process of developing. So thank you very much.

CLARE: Thanks, Charlotte.

JOURNALIST: Minister, could I ask: do you have a view or a sense of the appetite amongst your state counterparts for how far reaching the national standard should be? Is everyone [indistinct] different places or different ways of implanting whatever the findings are?

CLARE: First, a quick shoutout to the Sunday Telegraph who played a critical role in the decision that the government made here initially and thank you for your focus on this really important work, because this is an issue that I think millions of Australians care about, and millions of mums and dads worry about. It’s really important.

So a lot of things cross my desk – we were talking about this earlier – that are important but don’t necessarily impact people’s daily lives, this does. Particularly if you’re a parent and you’re worried about whether your child is going to come home that day and tell you that something terrible happened in the playground or something terrible about them is now on the internet. Or if you’re a parent and you’re told by the school that your child is that child that’s the bully. What do you do, how do you fix it, how do you make sure that it doesn’t happen again?

I think that’s a view that’s shared by all education ministers across the country. That’s why they agreed to do this work. more generally, if you want to drive real reform in education and school education, then it’s important that I as the federal Education Minister work co-operatively with my state colleagues. They run the schools, they employ the teachers, they’re at the ground level. And so, the work that Charlotte and Jo are doing right now isn’t just reform; it’s with the state education ministers. They’ve met with about a handful of them already. There was a briefing at the last education ministers meeting in June to all ministers. And they’re criss-crossing the country at the moment taking them through their draft recommendations and ideas about what needs to change. And it’s also an opportunity for ministers to say this is where we think you’ve got it right, this program works in our system, it could work in other systems.

But if your question is do you think there’s an appetite to do something meaningful here to help schools, to help principals, to help teachers, to help parents and to help our children, the answer is yes.

JOURNALIST: And realistically then, when could we see this change or these standards come into place?

CLARE: The first step is the meeting that education ministers will have in Queensland on October 17. That’s when the recommendations will be presented to ministers and that’s when I’m hopeful because of the good work that Jo and Charlotte are doing and as well as the consultation they’re doing right now that ministers will agree to those recommendations. And then we’ll have to set out the plan for how we implement them.

JOURNALIST: Out of those consultations so far, what have stakeholders said about what is and isn’t working when it comes to cyber bullying specifically?

CLARE: Maybe if I ask Charlotte to talk a little bit about that.

KEATING: The issue of cyber bullying actually and the issues that the minister raised before around AI, deep fakes and pornifying apps came up really early on. I think when things work well it is generally when schools do feel equipped to tackle a problem and when they’ve got good policies in place and they feel able to implement those policies. I think one of the challenges with technology is it’s moving fast and it’s often moving faster than policies can keep up with. We’ve been working closely and talking closely with the office of the eSafety Commissioner because we recognise that there’s a lot of parallel work that’s going on in the technology area as well, so we’ll certainly be leveraging examples of good practice that have been happening, you know, in other areas of government as well.

But I think certainly when you’ve got a culture in the school where young people feel able to share what’s happening for them to report bullying including cyber bullying and when it happens and when they feel heard and listened to and when the school feels equipped to respond, that’s when things work well.

JOURNALIST: Either for Jo or Charlotte, with all of these conversations you’ve been having about possible solutions, what’s the biggest concerning trend that you’re seeing with bullying specifically?

ROBINSON: I think that probably the most concerning trend for,parents, young people and teachers would be, again, the evolving space of technology, AI, deep fakes. There’s a real challenge in trying to stay ahead of what’s required in order to be able to respond effectively to it, and that work with the eSafety Commissioner on the development of opportunities for collaboration will be continuing.

JOURNALIST: And is it more – is it mainly you’re hearing about that from the kids’ perspective or is there a growing number of teachers as well as getting caught up in that?

ROBINSON: I think it is a really growing concern from the teachers that we heard from throughout our consultations across states and territories. And it’s also a challenge for young people as well, but certainly for teachers it’s a growing concern.

JOURNALIST: How much of the work that you’re doing is looking at the sort of response and management of incidents of bullying versus early intervention and education potentially [indistinct]?

ROBINSON: That’s a really good question, and I think across all of the consults that we’ve been having we’ve been hearing about the importance of prevention as well as response and what are those really important factors that you can provide for young people early on in their education to set the foundations for positive relationships, those skills that they need to navigate challenges, as they will arise, just as much the need to respond to incidents that occur and that support that’s needed for both the young person who might have experienced being bullied and, of course, the young person who may be engaging in bullying as well.

JOURNALIST: And could I ask you: some of the work you’re doing is more focused on – around the digital space, particularly more focused on high school, or are you also developing plans in the later years of primary schools as well?

ROBINSON: That’s a really good question. There are certain recommendations about when phones should be had and when certain apps should be had relative to age and readiness. But certainly we have heard throughout, you know, consultations across the lifespan of kids that it can be a challenge; it’s not just in high school.

JOURNALIST: You mentioned the need to stay ahead --

CLARE: It might be helpful. Because we caught up earlier before the press conference, we were talking about students in year 5 and 6 and some of the feedback they gave you. That was very, very helpful.

KEATING: Yes, one of the highlights for this has been – certainly for me, has been talking to some of the young people, including year five and six students in some of the different schools that we’ve gone to. And, in fact, if I might be so pertinent, we did ask them what they would do to redress bullying if they were the Education Minister for the day, and they had some terrific suggestions which we managed to communicate to the Minister.

But we also asked them about this issue around what they understood bullying to be and what they would do to address it in their school. They certainly talked about the issue around digital literacy, and there’s certainly a need, and we’ve heard that loud and clear, for digital literacy to start in the very early years of primary school and to then follow students in a developmentally appropriate way all the way through school. So we certainly heard that.

The other thing that we heard from students loud and clear was about student voice and around how students can be involved in shaping some of the solutions to this problem. They really recognise that bullying is complex and that young people engage in bullying behaviours for all sorts of different reasons, including because the bullies themselves have got difficulties going on in their personal lives. So they were were very smart about this issue, but they did also have some good suggestions about student-led initiatives and how we might work hard to create safe spaces and supportive environments for students and also for [indistinct]. So that was a terrific contribution from our youngest contributors.

JOURNALIST: And you mentioned staying ahead quite a fair bit. How far behind are we for schools to catch up in practical terms?

KEATING: The technology?

JOURNALIST: Yeah, well, you mentioned staying ahead.

KEATING: I think that really cropped up for us when it came to talking about technology and this piece around the technology moves way faster than, unfortunately, evidence can be generated and policies can be developed. So I think we do need to really foster collaboration around that issue.

I don’t know that I would say that we’re terribly far behind. I think we’re working terribly hard to keep up, and I think some of the initiatives that the government is kind of developing are going to really help. But I think we do need to keep our kind of foot on the pedal there.

JOURNALIST: Can I ask one on another topic, Minister?

CLARE: Just before we leave it, just to let you know, at that Education Ministers meeting in October, Julie Inman-Grant, the eSafety Commissioner, will also brief us. And we’ve asked Julie to come along to that meeting so she can give advice to ministers about the impending changes to social media, the social media ban for young people, and what the impact of that might be for students in schools. So education ministers are very keen to get briefed on that as we prepare for the changes that will take place in December.

JOURNALIST: Thank you. Just on migration, permanent migration figures, the figure that was released by the government yesterday, the Opposition has been asked where they would put the figure. Opposition Leader Sussan Ley said migration – your migration policies put pressure on – in her words – our way of life. Do you have a response to that?

CLARE: I would just say that Australia is the best country in the world. And one of the reasons that we’re the best country in the world is because we’re made up of people from all around the world who come to Australia and live here in harmony. And that sends a message to the rest of the world. My mother and father-in-law are refugees. They fled Vietnam. They didn’t know each other when they got here. They met on a blind date at Bondi Beach. Fell in love, got married, had kids, set up a business and there are stories like that all around Australia and they make us a better country. Go to their house and you’ll find their citizenship certificate framed and on the wall in the lounge room. They’re proud of it, and it’s stories like that that make us the best country in the world.

JOURNALIST: So, are her words not helpful, especially considering the rallies we saw over the weekend?

CLARE: I’m not going to get into the politics of this. I think for all of us around the country we should recognise what’s so great about Australia and embrace it.