Both sides of federal politics are supporting a national crackdown on school bullying. Peter Dutton is backing a unified national system to respond to incidents of bullying – declaring ahead of the next federal election that he would be "the first to sign up". Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has also declared that the government is "committed to working with states and territories" after state leaders said bullying should be discussed at a national level, including in the national cabinet. Health and policy expert Professor Ian Hickie says parents need to get involved with their child's school when they see early signs.
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00:00We have a crisis in youth mental health in Australia, as in many other developed countries,
00:06of rapidly increasing rates of mental ill health, self-harm and sadly suicidal behaviour.
00:12One of the things that we know we can do most about is reducing bullying.
00:16So we've had good evidence for 20 years of its ill effects at a population level, that
00:20we've been relatively slow to action, and during that period of course it's been amplified
00:25by new social media, by new platforms, and the rates of self-harm and suicidal behaviour,
00:29particularly in young women, have increased dramatically in that time.
00:32So it's absolutely worth attention at the National Cabinet level.
00:36So is it being done via social media in the main, Ian, rather than at school itself?
00:43No bullying is not new, and most of us would know that's not new, but what's happened now
00:46is extending outside of the school period and being amplified.
00:50So social media is an accelerant on a really toxic fire that runs anyway.
00:54Of course what it does, it connects schools as well, so it's not just within a particular
00:58school, but schools within regions and young people's communities, so it's the extension
01:02beyond the schoolyard and the 24-7 nature of it.
01:05So certainly social media has amplified what was already a very toxic behaviour.
01:10Okay, so there have been many, many attempts to tackle bullying at schools.
01:15These are the latest, it's still happening.
01:17What needs to be done?
01:19What's going to make the difference?
01:20Well we've largely left this in the hands of individual schools and individual school
01:25systems, so states, private schools, independent schools, religious schools, respond differentially
01:30and often left in the hands of school principals and school communities.
01:34What we actually require are much more than just guidelines or advice.
01:38We need actually national standards for two things, promoting pro-social behaviour and
01:43making it very clear that bullying is unacceptable, and then secondly national standards for investigating
01:48specific incidents so they're not glossed over, they're not passed over, and as a consequence
01:53of that also collecting national statistics of how effective we are being.
01:57So we need to be much more serious.
01:59So there's a tendency to say look, we've all been bullied, it's happened to everyone in
02:02the past, what's all the drama about, but in truth it is one of the most toxic elements
02:06contributing to the rise in mental ill health amongst our young people.
02:11What can parents do, Ian?
02:14Parents need to be involved, so parents need to be involved and not be afraid of media
02:18and not be afraid of taking this up with schools, so parents need to get involved when they
02:22see early signs.
02:23So of course the thing is to try and pick this up early before behaviour escalates in
02:27the person who's affected or amongst the social group responsible.
02:31So parents being prepared to have these discussions about bullying, about mental ill health, about
02:36self-harm in young people, particularly in the younger age groups, 11 to 15, where people
02:40have been reluctant to discuss what's really going on, and then discuss that very openly
02:45with school communities in a productive way, in a collaborative way, to try and make it
02:49really clear we want to see pro-social behaviour and we want to stamp out this kind of very
02:53anti-social and very harmful behaviour.