Transcript - Today with Alison Piotrowski & Tim Davies

ALISON PIOTROWSKI: More now on the sweeping reforms coming to every Australian school and this is all part of a major bullying crackdown.

TIM DAVIES: Yeah. Under the changes, schools will have 48 hours to act on complaints and teachers will receive specialised training. For more, we're joined by Education Minister Jason Clare. Minister, nice to see you. A lot of welcome changes here, but when can parents actually expect to see them rolled out?

JASON CLARE, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION: Well, I think this is something that every mum and dad worries about when your children go to school, that they're going to be bullied. And the truth is, it's not like it was when we were at school. A lot of bullying now happens online on platforms like Snapchat and Instagram. So, the changes that we're making to crackdown on social media for young people under the age of 16 that start on the 10th of December will really help, but it's not going to do everything. And that's what this plan's about. Parents have told us that they think it's really important that we nip this in the bud where there's a complaint that bullying has happened at school, that the school needs to take action within the first 48 hours to get to the bottom of what's happened and to take action to stop the harm from happening. And that involves talking to the children, but it also involves talking to the mums and dads, the parents of the child that's been bullied and the parents of the child that's been doing the bullying. So, we want that to happen, and we want it to roll out as quickly as possible.

PIOTROWSKI: This all sounds really promising, Minister, but teachers have so much on their plates, they have such a heavy workload. Who's going to be responsible for training teachers? How is that going to work?

CLARE: Yeah, you're right. Hopefully what this does is help our teachers. We're going to allocate $5 million to provide some tools for teachers. While parents have told us they want action earlier, parents have, sorry, teachers have told us that they need the tools and the training so that they can do the job properly. There's a lot of great plans and programs that are already out there that are being used by some schools. We're going to put all of those online in a hub so that schools can go to one place to get the best tools and the best programs to roll out in their schools. But we're also going to provide more resources, not just for teachers, but for parents too. So, if you're a mum or a dad and you're told that your child's being bullied at the school, there'll be resources for you about what to do. But also, parents who have been told by their school that their child is the bully are asking us, what do I need to do as a mum or a dad to take action at home to make sure that it doesn't happen again as well. So, we want to provide resources for them too.

DAVIES: What implications are there for children in terms of punishment if they are bullying other students? I know we've got a lot of training happening here for the adults. What about the kids and the ones that are bullying others?

CLARE: Well, it can involve suspension, it can involve expulsion in the most extreme circumstances. Hopefully what happens here is that if you act early, you can stop the harm from repeating, you can stop the action from reoccurring. We know that if kids are bullied, massive mental health issues, but not just that. It can mean that children fall behind at school. It can sometimes mean that children don't turn up to school at all. So, that's why we're taking this action. It's really serious for our kids. We heard yesterday when we were briefed, all Education Ministers, by the eSafety Commissioner, that this has got to the point now where it's not just kids bullying other kids. Artificial intelligence means that we've got AI chatbots out there now that are bullying other children, telling them they're losers, telling them to kill themselves. We've had cases overseas where children have killed themselves because an AI chatbot has told them to do that. I don't think I've heard anything as terrifying as that. That's why we're taking this as seriously as we are. I'm not naive. I'm not assuming that there's never going to be bullies or that we can stop bullying entirely. A lot of it doesn't happen at school. But schools are places where we can act. And so we're trying to set in place some standards, some rules and some tools to help, to take action to help our kids.

PIOTROWSKI: Alright, Minister, let's move on. The troubles for the Opposition keep on coming. I wanted to find out, what do you make of Barnaby Joyce's possible move to join forces with Pauline Hanson and One Nation?

CLARE: I don't know what's in Barnaby or Pauline's head. You know, if they get together, that's a matter for them. The Liberal Party and the National Party are in a world of pain at the moment. I'm not going to get distracted by that. Our job is to focus on the things that matter for mums and dads that are watching right now, things like taking action to protect our kids that are bullied at school. But not just that. The other big issue we focused on yesterday when Education Ministers met was about how we fix the curriculum, particularly for the teaching of mathematics for kids in primary school, those first three years of prep or kindy in year one and year two. We made the decision yesterday that we think work needs to be done on the maths curriculum. Maths is so important for success in life and the first three years of maths are critical to make sure that you get the basics. And so we made a decision yesterday to do work on that part of the curriculum. So, that's an example of what we're doing. We're focused on the things that matter. We're not focused on the what's going on with Barnaby or what's going on with Pauline.

DAVIES: Yeah, well, that action on bullying certainly can't come fast enough. Minister Jason Clare, we appreciate your time on Today. Thank you.

CLARE: Cheers.