Debate resumed from 12 November 2009.

The Hon. ROBYN PARKER [3.24 p.m.]: I am delighted to speak on the report "Bullying of Children and Young People", another outstanding report from General Purpose Standing Committee No. 2. The committee dealt in depth with this issue, which is of great concern to society across all communities, within schools and outside the school environment because of its impact on children in their homes and on their lives generally. Sadly, we continue to hear stories about the impact of bullying. This report was tabled in November 2009. It is now March 2010. We look forward to the response of the Government to incredibly good and sound recommendations from General Purpose Standing Committee No 2. The committee received very interesting evidence during this inquiry. A great number of the expert's evidence and submissions came from other States of Australia. The committee considered it needed evidence of a greater focus than was available in New South Wales. However, the New South Wales community is very focused on bullying.

It is no surprise that bullying is rife in our communities when so many parts of society are demonstrating less empathy than ever before. Video footage of bullying victims is entertainment on YouTube and social networking sites. We are feeding the flames with the constant development of new technologies, judgemental reality shows and audience judging on funny home videos. Unfortunately, bullying has become acceptable and standard behaviour in some forums. We must discuss and debate what needs to be done to combat an increase in bullying among schoolchildren, particularly with the emergence of cyber bullying. We must consider it as an issue that is not geographically limited to the playground. We must consider it in the context of society as a whole. Years ago my parents generation would say, "Ignore the bullies", "A bit of teasing helps", "Suck it up". But evidence presented before the inquiry clearly indicated that bullying is considered a social issue, not just a personal predicament.

Bullying has a profound, traumatic and damaging impact on all involved, that is, the targets and the perpetrators, their families, their schools and the wider community. Bullying is often difficult to detect. It is a widespread behaviour that can have harmful and long-term effects on children's and young people's self-esteem, mental health, school performance and wellbeing. The committee was alarmed by the prevalence of cyber bullying. While both bullying and cyber bullying are deeply negative experiences, cyber bullying is more insidious by nature, having a heightened impact due to its ability to reach into the private domain of children and young people. The inquiry clearly demonstrated that the New South Wales Department of Education and Training has to take action to address bullying and cyber bullying across the education system. It has to put a concerted effort into addressing bullying, particularly given the tragic consequences of bullying, which in the most extreme cases can result in the loss of young lives to suicide. School communities need more support and guidance if schools are to develop and implement successful evidence-based responses to bullying and cyber bullying.

The committee made a number of recommendations to support school communities, and to give teachers and parents the tools they need to understand bullying and the best methods to combat it. In providing better assistance to schools in identifying evidence-based anti-bullying programs, the committee recommended that a blueprint program be established to give schools a research base on cost-effective anti-bullying programs and that teachers receive better training to ensure they are equipped with the knowledge and tools to prevent and intervene in the incidents of bullying.

The committee felt very strongly that it was no good having an anti-bullying policy if that policy was no to be implemented. A policy that sits in the drawer is useless. Schools need more assistance to enable them to respond effectively to cyber bullying. The committee was concerned that the National Secondary School Computer Fund did not provide schools with support or professional development on cyber bullying. The committee was of the view that the Commonwealth Government should step up and properly support the rollout of technology to ensure that students are able to learn safely in the online environment.

The committee felt that to effectively address bullying and cyber bullying, proactive anti-bullying education should be embedded in all aspects of the school curriculum as part of a focus on overall student wellbeing. We saw examples of some excellent programs. The most successful programs had good leadership and were conducted across the schools in every aspect. Parents must be provided with more information about what schools are doing to address bullying, and protocols have to be put in place for schools to report on effective bullying prevention policies. A program on greater social awareness must be implemented to focus the attention of schools, parents and the wider community on this most critical issue.

The committee recommended the observation of a community-wide, anti-bullying week focusing on schools and TAFE. One of the committee's our most significant recommendations was that the New South Wales Department of Education and Training seek annual feedback from children and young people on anti-bullying initiatives. That means asking children and young people—a revolutionary measure it seems sometimes—about what is happening in their schools, to ensure that anti-bullying initiatives are informed by, and respond to the needs of, children and young people. The committee undertook to consult with children and young people quite broadly. I congratulate the committee secretariat—Beverly Duffy, Madeleine Foley, Cathryn Cummins and Kate Mihaljek—on resourcing us so brilliantly for this inquiry, which, like many inquiries conducted by General Purpose Standing Committee No. 2, was imaginative and broad ranging.

The committee undertook an online consultation with children and young people, using the very social networking medium with which they are familiar. The response was quite significant. It was certainly a first for a New South Wales committee and an approach I would recommend other committees adopt to ascertain what children and young people think. The committee saw some very good programs in some schools and its members consulted with representative groups of children and young people throughout the inquiry.

Bullying is an ongoing problem; it will not be resolved overnight. Having said that, however, to assist in the battle against bullying the committee's recommendations must be adopted by the New South Wales State Labor Government immediately. I have no idea why the Government is taking so long to respond to our recommendations; some of them are no-brainers. For example, incredibly, the Kids Helpline, which receives so many calls from children reaching out for help, gets funding from other States but not from New South Wales. The Kids Helpline service in New South Wales receives calls from an overwhelming number of children and young people. In fact almost half of the contacts made to the helpline are from children and young people in New South Wales, yet not one cent of funding comes from the New South Wales Government to provide support. The committee recommends recurrent financial support for the New South Wales Government to the Kids Helpline.

All members should read this report. Bullying is an ongoing issue and bipartisan support is required to address it. As parliamentarians we must set an example to the rest of the community. We need to show children and young people, parents and teachers that we acknowledge the long-term effects of bullying, that we acknowledge the need to provide support and advice and that we acknowledge the need to resource children, teachers, parents and young people to reduce the impact of bullying. Bullying of children and young people has lifelong consequences; bullies in the playground may well end up being bullies in the workplace or in the home environment by engaging in domestic violence.

The committee made 25 recommendations, including the employment of additional school liaison police and school counsellors; a blueprint for schools to determine the suitability of anti-bullying programs; an assessment of the legal framework to determine the appropriateness of bullying-related offences; recurrent support for the Kids Helpline; the implementation of uniform procedures for collecting information from New South Wales schools; and the publication online by all schools of anti-bullying policies. I thank all committee members for their contributions and for a report of which we can all be proud. I look forward to the Government taking on board the committee's recommendations as a blueprint to enable it to pick up its act and do better, which it certainly needs to do. I look forward to hearing the contributions of other members and to the Government's response to our recommendations. I commend the report to the House.

The Hon. MARIE FICARRA [3.37 p.m.]: First, I wish to thank the committee Chair, the Hon. Robyn Parker, for her zeal and for her understanding of the changing nature of bullying and its adverse effects on young persons. I also acknowledge and thank the committee secretariat—Beverly Duffy, Madeleine Foley, Cathryn Cummins and Kate Mihaljek—for their professionalism and patience. Bullying in our society requires a zero tolerance approach, especially when it involves children and young people. Schools should incorporate proactive anti-bullying education in all aspects of their curriculum in a whole-of-school approach to addressing the issue.

Ongoing psychological damage to the victims of bullying and their families, violence in and out of school, attempted self-harm and tragic incidents of suicide have sharply focused public attention on this serious societal problem. Long-lasting harmful effects of bullying on young people's self-esteem, mental health, school performance and wellbeing can manifest itself into adulthood. The National Centre Against Bullying defines "bullying" in the following terms:

Bullying occurs when a student or group with more power repeatedly and intentionally uses negative words and/or actions against another student or students that cause distress and create a risk to well being. Bullying can be physical, social, verbal, electronic or reputational.

Last year the National Kids Helpline received more than 600,000 calls about bullying. A recent Wesley Mission report, entitled "Give Kids a Chance: No One Deserves to be Left Out", identifies that seven out of every ten adults who were victims of bullying suffer low esteem, a lack of assertiveness and difficulties building relationships based on trust, with many suffering depression into their adulthood. We are only now starting to understand the enormity of the problem of cyber bullying created by the misuse of an otherwise wonderful learning and communication tool that we know as the Internet.

Cyber bullying is insidious and deeply negative, with its ability to spread so rapidly and to enter personal domains under the guise of social networking. More cyber safety education is needed as part of a proactive prevention and protection approach within our schools. Federal Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, in rolling out new technology as part of the National Secondary Schools Computer Fund, must provide urgent support for professional development in dealing with cyber bullying in schools. To have overlooked such a critical online health and safety issue is negligent.

Indeed, Internet service providers can show greater responsibility and leadership in the area by working with all levels of government to better protect children and young persons while they are in their online environment. Their responsiveness to the concerns of parents, teachers and students could be increased and strengthened. The committee recommended that the Commonwealth's Consultative Working Group on Cyber-Safety develop a cooperative agreement with local Internet service providers to implement international best practice for user protection from cyber bullying.

The committee's 25 recommendations address the issue of more support and guidance for schools, teachers, parents and young persons to combat bullying. Evidence-based initiatives need to be financed by both the New South Wales Government and the Federal Government. The Department of Education and Training should collect information on the effectiveness of school anti-bullying policies to form the basis of accountability structures that will apply to schools reassessing their performance in handling bullying within their school communities. Teachers need better training to prevent and intervene early in incidents of bullying. Bullying must be addressed as a compulsory component of early teacher training and included in the mandatory professional development program for practising teachers.

The employment of additional school counsellors will provide much-needed support to teachers and students. The counsellors will assist with the development and implementation of anti-bullying initiatives. High-quality counselling and support services both within schools and externally, such as the Kids Helpline, should receive recurrent funding because they provide anonymous and powerful support in a manner to which young people can relate. Parents need more information on what their children's schools are doing about bullying with related policies published on school websites and distributed in hard copy to families, and that should include transparency about areas that need improvement. School websites should also include contact information for school liaison police and other support services such as the Kids Helpline.

All members of school communities, including parents, need to understand their responsibilities when it comes to preventing and lessening school bullying, whether in or out of school or online. The Attorney General will be asked to review the ability of the existing legal framework to deal with bullying-related offences and to determine whether any protective strengthening is needed. The Minister for Police will be encouraged to employ additional school liaison police, who are crucial in the prevention of bullying behaviour and in building student resilience and confidence. Parents should have the progress of their complaints reported to them regularly and they should be provided with information on their rights if they are dissatisfied with their school's response. The Department of Education and Training has been asked to investigate the possibility of a student's history of bullying being transferred between schools to assist in their personal development. The department should also develop measurable protocols for schools to report annually on the effectiveness of their bullying prevention policies. Those schools underperforming should be assisted by immediate direct departmental intervention.

The committee recommended that a system of random audit of schools' anti-bullying policies be conducted by the department commencing in 2011. The committee believes that the community at large would support a social awareness campaign across New South Wales focusing on schools, communities and the TAFE sector. A community-wide anti-bullying week could be a proactive initiative and it should be supported.

All members have much more respect for young people's feedback about programs and resources used in the campaign against bullying as a result of this inquiry. The committee has recommended that annual feedback provided by the department be made public so that educators, legislators and counsellors can be better informed of progress in the area. In particular, the committee recommended the implementation of annual reporting—at least—including online student consultative feedback, as a means of involving young people in identifying issues and solutions. The New South Wales Department of Education and Training and all registered training organisations have a duty of care to ensure that apprentices and trainees learn in an environment free of bullying. To better understand the extent of bullying that presently occurs, TAFE and other training institutions will be required to collect bullying-related data to assist in developing appropriate strategies.

My participation in this inquiry was a learning experience and, like my committee colleagues, I hope that this report makes a difference. We certainly hope that this Government implements all of the committee's recommendations. As the Hon. Robyn Parker said, not to do that would be a no-brainer. Bullying of children and young people is responsible for much emotional, physical, social and financial damage to students, teachers and parents, and it leaves lasting scars on victims and their families and often the perpetrators. This report sends a message of zero tolerance of all forms of bullying inside and outside schools. By targeting our young the message will extend ultimately to our workforces, communities, families and lives.

The Hon. CHRISTINE ROBERTSON [3.44 p.m.]: I support General Purpose Standing Committee No. 2's report entitled "Inquiry into Bullying of Children and Young People" and its recommendations. As other members of the committee have said, this inquiry was very informative. Our inquiries gave us a good understanding of what is happening in the wider community and we gathered a great deal of good and diverse information. It was exciting to see the development and implementation of programs within the education sector and the work that young people, parents, teachers and education administrators are doing to address bullying of children and young people. No-one could say that the programs being implemented across New South Wales will magically make these issues disappear. The microcosm that is a school community presents a range of extremely difficult issues that must be resolved.

A great deal of the work being done in schools relates to the development of self-esteem. Young people are educated about their right to speak at appropriate times and to recognise aggressive or antisocial behaviour and to deal with it. It became clear that some very young children are the victims of bullying and that they are required to deal with complicated social structures. It was encouraging to see the different groups developing programs to deal with bullying. No-one is claiming that the problem is being effectively addressed across the board. However, work is being done in the education sector to implement programs throughout the State.

The committee's inquiry highlighted the importance of school communities developing their own solutions. That involves teachers, parents, administrators and the students themselves. It is important that individual school communities take responsibility for this issue. We cannot apply a blanket solution to bullying. We know from the work that we do as members of Parliament that all communities are different and that they must react locally to resolve issues. It was exciting to see the number of people throughout New South Wales who want these anti-bullying programs to succeed. There has been no whitewashing; people acknowledge that we still have a huge problem—as we always have had.

When the inquiry commenced I had difficulty dealing with the issues. I recalled my individual way of dealing with bullying when I was at school. I thought: What was wrong with that? It turned me into what I am today. Then I thought: Maybe that is not such a good thing. Perhaps it is wise to have some perception of normalcy about what should be done to us as we are growing up. I still have a problem defining the term "normalcy". I presented a report dissenting to the report of the committee. It was no massive dissent; it related to a procedural issue. I should have put questions on notice about policies relating to TAFE policies, student discipline and mandatory procedures and the code of conduct. Material on all these issues came to me after the report had been put together, and I brought it to the deliberative process. There was general agreement that it would have been handy to have this material earlier, but that was not possible. So, recognising the procedural problems I introduced it in the form of a dissenting report, to ensure that the extensive work being done by TAFE organisations was documented. It was most unfortunate that that information was not available to the committee at the time the report was being put together.

Reverend the Hon. Fred Nile: Why was the material not considered by the committee?

The Hon. CHRISTINE ROBERTSON: Because the secretariat advised that it would have been inappropriate procedurally to do so. Although I brought the material to the deliberative meeting, I had not put questions on notice in relation to it and, accordingly, it could not be included in the report. A ruling was given in relation to it and I accepted that ruling. It is referred to in my dissenting comments. It is just a pity that the report does not make reference to TAFE.

Reverend the Hon. Fred Nile: I thought the committee voted on it?

The Hon. CHRISTINE ROBERTSON: The committee did vote on it. One member submitted that for procedural reasons the material could not go in the report, and that is what happened. The committee members did not vote on the issue, they voted on the procedural process. I stated in my dissenting report:

In 1.5.1 the second sentence required deletion as the committee received considerable evidence of programs and schools achieving positive results with their proactive prevention and protection approaches throughout the Inquiry. This sentence discounts a lot of very good work being done by young people and their communities across the State. Work which with further support and endorsement will continue to make our schools happier and safer places.

That is what I proposed but it was not agreed to. All in all, I think the committee did a satisfactory job on this inquiry. As do other members of the committee, I look forward to some results. I thank the secretariat and other members of the committee for their assistance and for my experience on this inquiry.

Dr JOHN KAYE [3.53 p.m.]: I begin by acknowledging the importance of this inquiry and the efforts of the committee chair, the Hon. Robyn Parker, to institute it. It was her foresight that drove us to examine the issue. The more we looked at it the more we realised that this significant and serious issue has had inadequate attention from the Parliament, the Department of Education and Training and governments. As the Hon. Christine Robertson pointed out, historically there has been an acceptance of bullying in Australia as part of our culture and it is time that this Parliament and Government sent a strong message stating that bullying will not be tolerated. There is no character formation, there is nothing positive about the experience of being bullied, there is nothing positive that can be said about bullying, and it must be stamped out.

One of the first things I learnt in this inquiry was what bullying is—or, more accurately, what it is not. Quite often we use the expression "bullying" to cover random or targeted acts of violence in the workplace or at school. The definitions of "bullying", especially the one from the National Centre against Bullying, suggest that that is not correct. Bullying requires three key ingredients: first, repetition of the act—that is, repeated hurtful behaviour; an intention to harm—that is, an intention to cause physical, psychological or emotional harm; and a power imbalance between the perpetrator and the victim, not just through physical size or strength but also possibly through age, status or capacity. Those three key ingredients narrow down the field on bullying, and it is frightening that the incidence of bullying is both dramatic and growing.

The consequences of bullying were described in graphic detail to the committee. A large volume of evidence showed immense unacceptable consequences for mental and physical health and self-esteem, and for individuals and school communities. It became clear to every member of the committee that not only do we need to reduce the impact of bullying but also there needs to be a far greater understanding of the causes of bullying. The overriding theme of all the evidence we took was a need for an evidence-based response to bullying. It is clear that all principals and schools have access to a wide range of programs. In many ways they are spoilt for choice, in many ways they are drinking from fire hydrants, and therein lies the problem. When principals perceive there is a problem of bullying or that they need to fulfil their obligation to implement an anti-bullying program within their school, they have a wide range of programs to choose from. But in many instances there is not enough time for those principals to make quality decisions.

One of the most important recommendations of the committee related to the need to give more assistance to principals in choosing anti-bullying programs for their schools. It is not a case of one size fits all; one size does not fit all with bullying. Different schools, different communities, different cultures will require different anti-bullying programs. What is absolutely clear is that there needs to be more guidance on the issue. The committee came up with the sensible idea of a blueprint and additional guidance on the evidence base of each of the anti-bullying programs on offer. The committee also identified that we lacked data to understand the extent of bullying and the effectiveness of available anti-bullying programs. More effort must be put into collecting evidence on the extent and the effectiveness of existing programs.

The committee inquired also into cyber bullying. Clearly there is not an adequate understanding of the nature of cyber bullying or how to deal with it. The committee made some sensible recommendations as a beginning, but what will emerge over the next five years is a need for a greater understanding of, and a wider variety of programs to deal with, cyber bullying.

We had the great pleasure to visit a number of schools during this inquiry. I was personally overwhelmed by the quality of work being done in public schools around New South Wales to address bullying, and not just when it becomes evident. Great work is being done in schools around New South Wales developing cultures and on robustness and resilience within schools, particularly focusing on individual self-esteem and understanding the consequences of actions and group dynamics. It was pleasing to see many students and school communities tackling the issue head-on and winning the battle against bullying. It is very clear that the overwhelming majority of teachers deal with bullying in an intelligent and humanitarian way. It is important that this report is responded to and that the recommendations are adopted to give teachers and school leaders more support.

I conclude by thanking my colleagues on the committee and the Chair, who conducted the committee and the inquiry with great poise and concern. We heard very difficult evidence and navigated our way through it to make some very sensible decisions. It was good to see a committee dealing with sensitive issues with just the right amount of politics. I think we all did very well. Of course, I thank our fantastic committee staff—Beverly Duffy, Madeleine Foley, Cathryn Cummins and Kate Mihaljek. I say it every time—and it is absolutely true—that so little work would happen in this Parliament if it were not for the high quality of the staff who support our actions. We do not thank them enough because we cannot thank them enough. Whatever is good in this report is their work; whatever is bad, we as politicians must take responsibility for. However, there is not too much of that here, so we should be okay. I commend the report to the House.

The Hon. ROBYN PARKER [4.01 p.m.], in reply: I reiterate my thanks to committee members for the multipartisan way they undertook the spirit and conduct of the inquiry. They supported the on-line consultation with children and young people and the school visits to look at best practice.

Pursuant to sessional orders business interrupted and set down as an order of the day for a future day.