Transcript - Weekend Sunrise with Sally Bowrey & David Woiwod

DAVID WOIWOD, CO-HOST: Good morning and welcome back. Well, a new Education Taskforce led by Jewish business leader David Gonski will aim to stamp out antisemitism in our nation's kindergartens, childcare centres, schools and universities.

SALLY BOWREY, CO-HOST: It's part of a wide-ranging response after the Bondi massacre almost a week ago and for more on this, this morning, we're joined by Education Minister Jason Clare. Jason, thanks for your time this morning. You've been given 12 months to bring the states together on this. It's right across universities, right down to preschools. What will this look like?

JASON CLARE, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION: Well, it's about the whole education system. Preschools, as you say, schools, universities, but TAFEs and vocational education as well. The truth is, kids aren't born racist, kids aren't born antisemitic, they're not born with hate in their heart. This is something that's learnt, that's taught, and there's a lot of things that we need to do to tackle the poison of antisemitism. But the education system is one area where we can help. 

And so we announced a number of things this week around teacher training, extra resources for teachers. There's terrific programs that run in our schools to tackle antisemitism at the moment. We're going to expand those. But we also announced this week changes to the curriculum to teach children about the evils of antisemitism, about the horrors of the holocaust. That already happens, but we can do more of that, and teaching Australian children about Australian values, we can't do enough of that. 

So, that's our school system, but there's more that we can do in our universities as well. So, whilst the Taskforce will go for 12 months, action doesn't wait for 12 months. We want that teacher training to start when schools go back. We want laws in the Parliament to be able to give us the power to crack down on universities where they don't act and to act as quick as we can.

WOIWOD: Jason, you speak of the poison of antisemitism. And we know that our Jewish community and our Jewish leaders have been saying this for some time, that it has been spreading and breeding, particularly in our tertiary institutions, our universities. Do you have evidence of that? Does the department have evidence of that? And how do you tackle that directly?

CLARE: Ask any Jewish Australian, ask any Jewish student who attends our universities and they'll give you plenty of evidence of that. The truth is, Jewish students have been made to feel unwelcome in our university campuses and that is not on. 

I've said that to vice chancellors, I've told them to enforce their codes of conduct. I've told them to improve their complaint handling systems. One of the things that we don't have at the moment is the right sort of penalties to enforce against universities where they don't act and that's what the legislation that I'll introduce to Parliament is all about.

BOWREY: Can we just talk on Jewish public schools? They're being deemed safe to reopen and operate as normal. But the reality is, outside of these schools, and this will continue and it has been there for a while, we've got, you know, CCTV on it, armed security guards. That's what young children just to go to school are looking at as they walk in the gates. And obviously there's a lot of focus on that, what happens outside of the gates to keep them safe. But really, the focus, as you're saying, has to be what happens also inside the schools too. What's the impact for this next generation, do you think, on the current state of things?

CLARE: Look, no child should have to walk through security guards to have to go to school or to preschool. But that is the horrible truth. And the life that a lot of Jewish Australian children face at the moment to keep themselves safe, that tells us something about the seriousness of what we're all facing here as a nation. We've had childcare centres firebombed, being rebuilt in the eastern suburbs right now as well. That tells us there's a lot of work to do. There are 15 people dead, there are people still in hospital, people still recovering here. What we need in this country is to come together. We need a bit of love, we need a little bit of compassion, we need a bit of common sense here. Our education system is the most powerful force for good. It's not the only thing that we need to do here. You've got to get the guns out of the hands of people who shouldn't have guns. You've got to also get the poison out of people's brains that cause them to pull the trigger. And I do believe that the education system can help here.

WOIWOD: I want to talk to about the kids that have been exposed to all of these horrific images all week. Now, a number of those schools, particularly in that Bondi area, they were closed. How does the Government - how does the Education Department now wrap their arms around those kids to help them through this traumatic period?

CLARE: On Sunday night last week, the first phone call I made was to the secretary of the NSW Department of Education to see what they could do. And within an hour of the massacre happening, they had already organised counselling services at the schools in the area, as well as static security there, which I was glad to hear. The universities in the area and across the city have also organised counselling services for students and for alumni. That's just some of the sorts of things that the education system can and should do to help.

BOWREY: I mean, obviously, those schools have broken up for the year, so as they go into the new year, those teachers themselves too will need support. I'm assuming that the Government's also looking at that because it's a big burden on them to understand also how to help people as they navigate in the months to come.

CLARE: Exactly right. They live with that nightmare every single day. For all of us who are parents, we're trying to explain what happened to our children. I know I have. For those of us who had friends on the beach that day who were holding children in their arms while they were being shot at, how do you - how do you recover from that? So, whether you were there that day and survived, or whether you're a child in a school in Bondi, or whether you're just a parent watching the TV now and trying to explain it to your little child, it's going to take a long, long time for us to heal.

WOIWOD: Jason, we thank you for your time this morning.

CLARE: Thank you.