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.