Transcript - Weekend Sunrise with David Woiwod and Monique Wright

DAVID WOIWOD, CO-HOST: Good morning. Welcome back to Weekend Sunrise. Well, the Federal Government has today written to every school principal in the country, urging them to support the rollout of next month's first social media ban and anti-bullying reforms. And for more, we are joined live by Education Minister Jason Clare. 

Good morning to you, Minister. First off, we're two and a half weeks away from the start of this ban now, and we are still seeing new platforms like Twitch being added. That has happened in the past 24, 48 hours or so. Why hasn't this been sorted yet? This is starting to feel like policy on the run. 

JASON CLARE, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION: Well, this is going to be dynamic. You're going to see different platforms have this applied to them. As different platforms are created or young people move to different platforms, you can expect that we'll impose the ban or the delay on those platforms as well. 

Fundamentally, what this is about is protecting our kids, giving them a little bit more time when they're teenagers to prepare before they're thrown into the cesspit of social media. As you say, this is only a bit over two weeks away. This is a big deal. We're the first country in the world to ever do this. We're doing it because parents around the country have told us how important this is to get their kids off social media, and we want principals and teachers to help us, too. That's why I'm writing to principals across the country this week, giving them a bit of information that they can share with teachers and share with students across the country to let them know that this is coming. 

MONIQUE WRIGHT, CO-HOST: And part of the reason why you're doing this is to try and stop bullying happening online. But I want to talk to you about stopping bullying before it starts. There's lots of reasons, of course, why a child might start to bully. And one of those reasons is that child could have faced trauma or a lack of control at some point in their life. 

Now, as I see it, often, our schooling system then labels that child as naughty, and they can often get a whole lot of negative attention. I'm wondering, whose responsibility is it at that point to intervene in a positive way and try and guide that child away from bullying, away from feeling they need to get control over another person in a negative way? Is it your responsibility? Is it a parent's? Is it teachers’? Because schools and teachers seem to be pretty overloaded at the moment. 

CLARE: The truth is, Mon, it's all of us. It starts at home, it starts with mum and dad, but more often than not, you'll find that a child who's bullying another child is a child who's got problems at home or problems in their own life. There might be kids that are falling behind at school as well. Part of the investment that I'm making in schools across the country is not just investment to help make sure that kids can learn to read and write and count, but also investments in health and mental health and wellbeing. The sort of health supports that you might find with a doctor on site, or a nurse on site, or a psychologist on site. All of these things help to stop it at the start. 

WOIWOD: So, then, Minister, from your perspective, what does a gold star response from a school to these changes actually look like?

CLARE: For bullying, what we want is for schools to take action within the first 48 hours of a complaint being received. All of the advice that we've got is that if schools wait too long to act, then the consequences can sometimes be tragic. And so what we're writing to schools about this week is we've given them the bullying report from experts that tell us that we need to act quickly. That means contacting parents. It means taking action to stop the bullying from happening, and in some very serious situations, contacting the police as well. 

WRIGHT: Are those experts also telling you that you need to be spending more money? You just mentioned psychologists there to be in schools, because they're not in all schools. 

CLARE: Part of what they're telling us... No, they're not. And what they're telling us is we need more resources. Teachers say they want to know what best practice is. When somebody is being bullied what should we do. Now there are some terrific resources and some terrific programs. We're going to put all of that in one hub online for schools. But parents are also telling us, what should I do if my child's being bullied? Other parents are telling us that if my child is alleged to be the bully, what should I do to make sure that that doesn't happen. So, we're putting together resources for parents as well. 

WRIGHT: And when will that be available? 

CLARE: We'll do that for next year. All the states and territories are now working on an implementation plan for this anti-bullying strategy. But before that gets put in place, and we'll have that plan in February, I'm writing to principals to let them know that we've got this report from the experts and we're working across the country, but we also want to work with principals and teachers to get this plan done. 

WRIGHT: Well, there's a lot more to go in this area, as I know you know, Jason. Thank you so much for being with us this morning. 

CLARE: Absolutely. 

WOIWOD: Thanks, Minister.