Book 8 - Parliament of Victoria

CRIMES AMENDMENT (BULLYING) BILL 2011
1556 COUNCIL Tuesday, 31 May 2011
people from the sort of behaviour that Brodie Panlock
endured prior to her tragic suicide several years ago. I
take it that nobody in this house has any sense that it is
regrettable that we should be considering this
legislation, but we are here because of a particularly
high-profile incident.
As regrettable and tragic for the family and for society
as that particular incident was, it is regrettably only a
public indicator — the public face — of what goes on
in society pervasively. It seems to me that a lot of
antisocial behaviour, within which the definition of
bullying falls, is deeply rooted in a tradition of bullying
that is about imposing one’s individual will against the
good order of society and the rights of others —
whether it is hoon driving and tearing up the bitumen or
gravel road in front of someone’s house or whether it is
something like a 30-strong brawl in the township of
Lakes Entrance at 11.45 p.m. on a Tuesday night, as
was reported in one of my local newspapers, the Lakes
Post of 25 May. It is just unbelievable that that could
happen — and on a weeknight.
A report in East Gippsland News of 18 May, headlined
‘Teenagers film attack on netballer’, tells the story of a
13-year-old girl who was beaten up in the change
rooms before going to play netball. While she was
halfway through changing a great mob of other girls
grabbed hold of her and started beating her up. Not only
did they beat her up, but they filmed it and posted the
film on the Net. That sort of behaviour, frankly, brings
me to the point of wondering why we as legislators
bother. Do we really think that legislating is going to
change that sort of behaviour? It is not; it is clearly not.
I guess the trigger for this bill, which is an important
bill in its own way, is in fact a lack of civility in society
today, which I have spoken about before. I remember
speaking about this type of incident a few years ago,
when I described what happened to the family of a
police sergeant based at Sale in my electorate. The story
was quite prominent in the Melbourne media at the
time. The son was attacked in a nightclub in Sale
simply because he was the police sergeant’s son. He
was attacked from behind, he was hit across the back of
the head and he received severe injuries.
That was the story I told in Parliament. I remember
speaking about how terrible it was. But that was not the
end of the story. The next chapter was that the family
was subjected to incredible harassment when that case
went to court. When the assailant was actually
convicted there were a number of incidents — in an
environment of bullying — of the sister of the victim
being threatened. Again, that was simply because she
was the sister of the victim of an incident about which
there had been a conviction and because she happened
to be the daughter of a police sergeant.
On what basis can anybody living in a society expect
any respect for themselves if that is the way they
behave? You wonder if there is not something more
fundamentally wrong with our society today. It does
seem to me that that is the case. There is something
very wrong. I would use as a premise the idea that
society needs to understand four words; society needs
to understand the need for dignity, integrity, pride and
respect. They are very simple words and they are very
simple to understand, and they should be the basis on
which society governs itself — without regulation,
without legislation — and the basis of the way that we
respect each other and behave towards each other.
We do not have a majority of practising Christians in
our society today. We have a majority of people who
claim some allegiance to a Christian faith, but the
reality is that so few people worship today that very few
people remember all of those good lessons that are
taught as a fundamental part of our religious ethic.
Mrs Peulich — The Ten Commandments.
Mr P. DAVIS — Yes. You do not even have to
know what they are, but most people, even those who
profess atheism, know what the Ten Commandments
are. The Ten Commandments are a simple code by
which society regulates itself — or ought to regulate
itself. I am not here to give a sermon, but I am here to
say, in a secular way, without reference to my own
faith, that as members of the society in which we live
we should all respect each other.
I have kids who are not much older now than Brodie
was when this terrible tragedy took place, so on a
personal level, as a father of daughters who have
worked in the hospitality industry, who have worked in
cafes, I related very much to this story. My daughters
live in cyberspace. I cannot understand, frankly, how
they find the time to send all the texts and messages and
do all the Facebooking — —
Mrs Peulich — They are girls. They can do two
things at the same time.
Mr P. DAVIS — The interjection is that they are
girls, so they can multitask. It is true. I have actually
seen them texting, talking on the phone and emailing all
at the same time — whilst listening, by the way, to very
loud music, which I cannot bear.
Having said that, I come back to the central point: why
we are here. We are here because we feel as legislators
a need to pass a bill to address something that occurred