Book 8 - Parliament of Victoria

CRIMES AMENDMENT (BULLYING) BILL 2011
1560 COUNCIL Tuesday, 31 May 2011
and of course many people are in a similar situation in
this country and in many countries around the world.
As young people grow there is also the need to belong
to their peer group — they need that sense of
belonging — and the need to establish their own
identity. Safety and security intersect and graduate into
the urge to belong. When you belong there is a
corollary, which is that some cannot or do not belong.
When young people establish a group of friends and a
sense of belonging there is always someone who does
not belong. How people have learnt to interact with the
world will very much determine how that manifests and
how people cope with it.
I am fortunate that my son is a very strong-minded
individual who is also very sensitive, especially to those
who are victimised and bullied. As a new immigrant —
having migrated to Australia as a 10-year-old — I was
beaten up every Friday at school by a girl called
Melanie. That happened throughout grade 6, because I
was a weedy little kid, but at the end of the year I was
given the courage and encouragement to stand up for
myself. I pushed the aggressor into the rubbish bin, and
she never a lifted a finger against me again.
Unfortunately this sort of thing happens all too often. It
is very sad that we have to use the legislation to send a
very strong signal about it. This is only one of the many
measures with which we as a society, trying to deal
with a whole range of issues involving people from a
vast range of backgrounds and who have had a vast
range of experiences in lots of different circumstances,
can somehow make our expectations of what is
acceptable, what is tolerated and what is not, more
explicit. The introduction of this legislation, which
recognises types of serious bullying as an indictable
offence, is a very strong message we are sending to our
community, and it will hopefully go some way to
protecting the rights of people who are victims of
bullying and in particular victims of serious bullying.
I would like to make some comments on some
initiatives I have seen as being very important both
from the general community perspective and in
particular in relation to education. First and foremost
the Baillieu government saw community safety as a
very important priority at the recent election. As part of
its agenda, the government has announced the
employment of protective services officers and transit
police. Every day people are bullied and are the
subjects of violence. There are people who have given
up on reporting such events. Hopefully we will turn that
around, and people will have the right to feel safe as
they move about their everyday business.
We have empowered school principals to offer greater
support to students by, for example, searching students
for weapons so that schools are safer, and that is very
important. There was a vigorous debate in this place
about that. I remember as a schoolteacher being on yard
duty and seeing one group of year 7 students being very
violent and aggressive. I reported it to the principal at
the time and said, ‘There’s something going on there.
They are either doing alcohol or drugs. We need to do a
locker search and get to the bottom of it’. The situation
was ignored, and the principal said to me, ‘You are just
being Stalin-esque. These are just kids’. Several weeks
later we found out that those children had been bringing
bottles of alcohol to the school and drinking during
lunchtime, and there were some very severe
consequences. The use of alcohol and drugs
exacerbates other issues and increases the incidence of
bullying. As adults and employers with a duty of care
we must exercise that duty at all times, be vigilant and
make it known what sort of behaviour is acceptable and
what is not.
We have also launched an inquiry into Victoria’s
vulnerable children and proposed laws barring certain
persons from licensed premises. We have announced a
$14.5 million Stamp Out Bullying program which
includes $10.5 million for cyberbullying in Victorian
schools. My mother re-established contact with a
distant relative on Facebook; she would never have
imagined she would be able to do that. Very soon they
came to discussing, via Facebook, some old emotional
baggage, and the reasons why they had lost contact
were resurrected. In her wisdom my mother turned
around and said, ‘This Facebook is really not all it’s
cracked up to be. Basically it means we can argue 24/7,
and there is no reprieve’. I thought that was a fairly
wise comment from a 76-year-old woman.
The Crimes Amendment (Bullying) Bill 2011 is just
one additional step in the process of making our
community safer. I will not go through the various
types of bullying; everyone knows what it is. It exists
throughout our community — in schools, workplaces,
family homes, sporting clubs and even the various
levels of government. There is a difference in degree
between vigorous conduct within the confines of one’s
role and behaviour that crosses those boundaries.
Bullying does not respect those boundaries.
This legislation tries to draw a line in the sand to make
it clear what we will not tolerate. It is about enhancing
community safety and offering protection to people by
providing serious consequences for those involved in
the bullying of others. It will ensure that wherever
bullying occurs it is treated seriously. It strengthens the
criminal law by amending the stalking provision in