Page 4135 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 24 October 2018
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
that will apparently fix all of this. Is this really something that we, as a community, should be proud of? She is quoted as saying, “We now have a nation-leading occupational violence management plan.” She does not say how embarrassed or how ashamed we are that it happened in our schools, in an education system that we claim to be superior to any other in Australia.
I see no evidence of the minister being ashamed by this, and clearly the union think the same, because they are quoted as saying that, while tackling violence against teachers would be “a difficult journey”, “we now have fewer people in schools accepting the unacceptable”. We now have, apparently, a nation-leading occupational violence management plan and we have apparently had it since July last year. Perhaps that is a good thing. It has apparently resulted in a doubling of reported incidents of violence to around 1,500 a year. But how many teaching staff were left exposed and unsupported in the interim? Fifteen months after the introduction of the policy, why do we have these horrendous incidents continuing to happen to our teachers?
There are a number of serious issues attached to last week’s WorkSafe exposure. Firstly, it was not the Education Directorate that brought this to light. It was WorkSafe. Would any of this have come to light if WorkSafe had not intervened? Secondly, the WorkSafe enforceable undertaking commits the Education Directorate to a range of actions that you would have to think should have been established practice already, particularly given we have apparently had a nation-leading policy in place for 15 months.
We are told that there will be more training of teaching staff. All staff will attend two wellbeing expositions. Schools will learn how to better report incidents. Madam Speaker, are these not procedures that should exist in an environment that has good leadership and a culture of a safe and supported working environment? There is also the Labor Party’s tried but too often not true solution of throwing more money at the problem—for sensory spaces, for developing templates for reporting and for P & C workshops raising the profile of the risk of occupational violence in the education sector. On the face of it, these initiatives are not a bad development. But the question remains: why is this necessary in the first place? Why is the education sector exposed to so much violence?
In April 2015 the issue of a student with complex needs and challenging behaviours came to the attention of the then education minister—you, Madam Speaker. You were faced with the news that an ACT school had constructed a cage-like structure to ensure the safety of the student, the teachers and fellow classmates. Unlike the attitude of the current education minister, I am told that you, Madam Speaker, were immediately on the front foot, acknowledging the problem, accepting it was a failure of the system, and setting about establishing an expert panel, chaired by Professor Anthony Shaddock, to review policy and practice.
The report that followed, Schools for all children and young people: report of the expert panel on students with complex needs and challenging behaviour, was published in November 2015 and Ms Burch took no time to announce that the 50 recommendations from the panel would be addressed and accepted by government,
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video