Kylie Lang: Suicide of kids still can’t get government to act on bullying
Queensland children are dying by suicide while the ‘action plan’ against bullying promised by Education Minister Grace Grace is nowhere to be found, writes Kylie Lang
Kylie Lang
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How many children will die before this sad excuse for a State Government genuinely addresses bullying in schools? Suicide cuts short beautiful young lives and decimates families and communities but despite this being brought to the government’s attention – with front page stories and extensive coverage in this newspaper, no less – inaction rules.
Education Minister Grace Grace has promised plans to deal with the bullying crisis, so in the words of Tom Cruise – show me the money!
Where is the big policy announcement and accompanying boast about funding? There isn’t one. All we get is cheap talk.
Last Friday Mrs Grace responded to an August 23 question on notice from Shadow Minister for Education Christian Rowan.
Dr Rowan asked the minister to advise what programs specifically addressing bullying were being funded by her government in schools, including the amount of funding each program would receive in 2023-24 and the funded amount for each over the next four financial years.
The minister’s answer was, to be kind, 714 words of waffle.
We learned nothing new, because there is nothing new.
Mrs Grace harped on about the department’s Equity and Excellence vision to realise the potential of every student. No doubt you’ve heard of it before because it’s reliably trotted out to explain away everything from plummeting academic results to soaring disciplinary suspensions – oh, and why teachers are burning out and leaving the profession in droves.
In her response to Dr Rowan, Mrs Grace also put the onus back on principals.
She said they had “the autonomy to make decisions about programs offered in their school to deliver locally responsive and integrated strategies” and “funding allocated to their delivery is not collected centrally”.
She said every state school had a student code of conduct outlining approaches staff use to help kids meet behaviour expectations.
A fat lot of good strategies and codes are when they don’t work. Some schools do better than others in tackling bullying but many are utter shockers. Mrs Grace knows this because the worst performers have been explicitly pointed out to her.
Further dodging Dr Rowan’s question, she said the Palaszczuk government had implemented all 29 recommendations from the Anti-Cyberbullying Taskforce – she told us this already in August – and the three-year $106.7m student wellbeing package announced in 2021 and would bring in hundreds of psychologists and wellbeing professionals. More old news.
Ask loved ones of children who’ve suicided if they think the government’s current tactics are effective, and they’ll grade them a fail.
Ivy Lambert is disgusted by Mrs Grace’s latest response. She’d hoped for – and been promised – much more.
After Ms Lambert’s adored sibling Onyx Rose suicided at age 13 on July 16, the family set a cracking pace to drive meaningful change.
They staged rallies outside Beaudesert High School where the culture was widely slammed as “toxic”, including by the mother of another bullying victim, Lilly Osborne, who suicided 20 months earlier.
They organised a forum attended by parents and education department officials, and they took their fight all the way to what they thought was the top – Grace Grace and her department’s director-general Michael De’Ath, who met them in Beaudesert on August 18.
“That meeting came to nothing and I am disgusted and irate,” Ms Lambert told me this week.
“They promised an action plan and to review existing policies but all they’ve done is rehash the strategy they brought out in 2021,” she said.
“Getting all these psychologists to come in is a silent admission the bullying problem is out of control but instead of bringing in people after the damage has been done, they should be knocking it on the head now.”
Back on August 21 Mrs Grace confirmed to The Courier-Mail her department was working on an “action plan” that would take in ideas raised by the Lamberts and other families. One of these was for bullying complaints to be taken seriously and not treated as hearsay by teachers.
Mrs Grace said bullying was not something schools could eradicate alone – and I agree – but when a government promises change but is incapable of delivering it through funded, effective policies vulnerable Queenslanders will continue to suffer.
LOVE
Daniel Andrews, Victoria’s longest serving premier, knowing when to go.
“When it’s time, it’s time,” he said on Tuesday.
“There’s an old saying in politics: Go when they’re asking you to stay.”
Pity Annastacia Palaszczuk fails to see merit in Mr Andrews’ move.
LOATHE
Yet another survey on daylight saving.
The latest from a UQ academic shows 67 percent of people are in favour of it.
That’s because the greatest number of Queenslanders live in the south-east.
Don’t forget those in our north and north-west.
They are dead against it.
Kylie Lang is associate editor of The Courier-Mail
Kylie.lang@news.com.au
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