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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (5 September) . . Page.. 3125 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

Recently the issue of corporal punishment has been raised. I indicated publicly, Mr Speaker, that I would be introducing legislation in this house to deal with the issue of corporal punishment in all Canberra's schools after the Attorneys-General reported on the issue. Their report, as Mr Humphries pointed out, actually did not advocate more corporal punishment, but said that where corporal punishment occurs it should occur only with the express written permission of the parents. However, that creates a situation where the community has condoned a formal form of violence by one person to another in the form of corporal punishment. Not only is it a formal acknowledgment of violence; it is also acknowledging that the violence can take place without due process. It is interesting that even our courts, after due process, do not allow that type of violence to be administered. It is a quite long time since we have had that sort of violence in our society, other than in specific schools.

It seems to me that we have a great opportunity in Canberra. It was my belief that no school administered corporal punishment, although I do note that the report refers to second-hand information, in that a number of academics from the Canberra University state that there is still violence in a small number of schools in the ACT in the form of corporal punishment. It seems to me that the notion that you can, on the one hand, say that we want to do what we can to prevent violence in schools and on the other hand allow corporal punishment is nonsense. It further exposes a view taken by both the Government and the Opposition that we cannot interfere with private schools on this issue of corporal punishment. It exposes them because, on the one hand, we are going to demand mandatory reporting of violence to children. Does that mean that if a teacher delivers some corporal punishment there is a mandatory requirement for other teachers to report them? I really think there is an inconsistency in the approach taken by the Government.

We are prepared to interfere, quite clearly, with what independent schools do. We are prepared to interfere, quite clearly, even in families when we have a violent situation. We already interfere with independent schools because we are going to mandate the teachers. I think Mr Stefaniak is in the process of mandating that teachers must report violence. If that is going to be the case, how can that be consistent with this approach?

I am using this opportunity to ask the Government and the Opposition to reconsider their position on the legislation on corporal punishment that I have proposed. Let me say that I am not fixed to the particular drafting instructions that I have given. I am conscious - it is in this report - of the method used by New South Wales. New South Wales will effectively get rid of corporal punishment by the end of this year. The method they are using in New South Wales is to require all schools to have a discipline policy, and that discipline policy must exclude corporal punishment. So there is a method there that forces this archaic teaching method out of our schools. As I have acknowledged publicly, not only have I been the victim of corporal punishment, I also administered corporal punishment as a teacher in my early days of teaching. It was interesting, Mr Speaker, that after a meeting the other day I was walking through the Canberra Centre and somebody stopped me and said, "Oh, you were one of my old teachers. I heard you on corporal punishment today". I had taught this chap back in the early 1970s at Daramalan. I said, "Don't tell me, don't tell me; I know", and he said, "Yep". He had indeed received a couple of swipes from me, and we laughed about it.

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