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Parliamentary Questions


Question Without Notice No. 794 asked in the Legislative Council on 17 October 2012 by Hon Lynn Maclaren

Parliament: 38 Session: 1

SCHOOLS — HOMOPHOBIC BULLYING

794. Hon LYNN MacLAREN to the Minister for Education:

(1) Has the minister been briefed by the Commissioner for Equal Opportunity following the publication of the report ''Discrimination and Bullying on the Grounds of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Western Australian Education''?

(2) What is the minister's response to the research findings that as Australian LGBTIQ students increasingly come out, they are actually experiencing more abuse at school than in previous years?

(3) How does the minister respond to the research finding that only 12 per cent of LGBTIQ students were taught that homophobia is wrong, the lowest result across all states in Australia?

Hon PETER COLLIER replied:

I thank the honourable member for the question. I also thank the honourable member for giving me some preliminary notice that the question was coming.

(1)–(3) I have not been briefed, I have to say. I am aware of the report and I have not actually read the report. I again thank the honourable member for providing me with a copy of it. I will take the time to have a look at it. I will say, and I have said it quite consistently, that bullying in our school environment or anywhere in the work environment is completely and absolutely unacceptable. It is unacceptable to me as a former teacher and it is unacceptable to parents, to teachers and to students themselves. In terms of homophobic bullying, the Equal Opportunity Commission has actually established a steering committee—I am not sure whether the member is aware of that—to establish guidelines for schools. The education department is actually a component of that steering committee, so will have input, which is specifically to deal with homophobic bullying within our school environment, and I will follow the progress of that steering committee closely. As I said, and I state quite categorically: bullying across a raft of areas and a range of different strategies that the bully actually uses within school environments is unacceptable. We have injected tens of millions of dollars over the last four years to assist in pastoral care and support mechanisms, and to help schools come to terms with the fact that there are people who basically get a great deal of pleasure, unfortunately, out of intimidating their peers. So, we as a government are doing as much as we possibly can not only to reduce that but also to eliminate it altogether.