Page 4133 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 24 October 2018
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failed to address the underlying problems affecting teacher and student safety in ACT schools and must be addressed as a matter of priority;
(b) apologise to staff, students and families for failing to provide them with a safe school environment;
(c) report to the Assembly by the last sitting week in November 2018 on its plan to implement the enforceable undertaking it gave to the Work Safety Commissioner; and
(d) update the Assembly on a quarterly basis on the progress of the implementation of measures to protect Canberra’s teachers and students.
Last Monday, 15 October, the education minister held a media conference in which she was supported by the general secretary of the ACT Education Union. The purpose of the media conference was to advise Canberrans that for the last two years WorkSafe ACT had been conducting an investigation into activities within the ACT Education Directorate. It found systemic and repeated failures to ensure the safety of an unknown number of teaching staff at an unknown number of ACT government schools. The WorkSafe report, called an enforceable undertaking proposal, has a publication date of 28 September 2018. Presumably, it is the date that the minister and/or the Education Directorate was handed the WorkSafe report or its contents were made known to them.
The WorkSafe report found that between February 2016 and October 2018 the territory did not comply with its primary health and safety duty, pursuant to section 19 of the Work Health and Safety Act, in that it did not do all that was reasonably practicable to ensure the health and safety of its staff by applying inconsistent or inadequate controls to workplace hazards associated with student behaviours, failing to adequately adjust controls following incidents and failing to provide adequate training to staff.
The WorkSafe report then goes on to say that, as a result of those failures, staff were exposed to risk of injury. By way of supporting evidence, the WorkSafe report provides examples of incidents where staff were exposed to risk of injury, including injuries of staff in three schools. Madam Speaker, we may never know how many staff were injured; we may never know how many schools were involved.
What we do know is that, for at least the last two years, WorkSafe has been investigating injuries, and what we do know is that the problem of teacher abuse and injury has been known to the Education Directorate and to the union, and perhaps to the minister, for much longer than that. There are no words strong enough to condemn what has been allowed to happen under the watch of this education minister. Equally, there can be no excuse for why this was allowed to occur, not just once, not just at one school, not just to one teacher, and not just for one period of time, but to a number of teachers on a number of occasions at a number of schools.
If we go to the scant evidential examples outlined in the WorkSafe report and focus on just one case in school A, it tells us that over a period of months in 2016 a staff member, a learning support assistant referenced under the pseudonym of “Melanie”
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