Bullying is set to become a crime for the first time in Australia as concern grows at the rise of abuse that has destroyed lives and driven workers and teenagers to suicide.
(Wrong. Bullying has always been a crime. Just not a punishable one.)
Victorian Attorney-General Robert Clark is expected to introduce amendments to stalking laws in the state Parliament tomorrow, placing workplace and cyber bullying under the Crimes Act.
The new legislation will provide penalties of up to 10 years' jail.
It follows the 2006 suicide of 19-year-old cafe worker Brodie Panlock, who was subjected to "merciless" bullying by four colleagues at Melbourne's Cafe Vamp.
She was abused, spat upon, had fish oil poured over her and, after one failed suicide attempt, was laughed at and advised to try rat poison before jumping from a multi-storey carpark.
Her abusers, head waiter Nicholas Smallwood and waiter Rhys MacAlpine, with chef Gabriel Toomey and cafe owner Marc Da Cruz, were fined A$337,000 ($432,337) under occupational health and safety laws in what the dead woman's father, Damian Panlock, described as a "slap on the wrist".
No criminal charges were brought because bullying is not a crime anywhere in Australia, and is instead covered by workplace, compensation, discrimination and similar legislation.
Last year a Sydney security guard was awarded a record A$1.9 million in damages after bullying that included threats of violence, financial penalties, racial and sexual abuse, and excessive and unpaid working hours.
But until Victoria's new move, governments have been reluctant to include serious bullying in criminal law, despite research estimating that one in four employees is likely to suffer from it at some stage.
(Is casual bullying OK? Or comic bullying? Wake UP! Bullying is bullying, and trying to fence off serious bullying is a mistake.)
Workplace bullying is also estimated to cost Australia between A$17 billion and A$36 billion a year in lost productivity, damage to mental health and staff turnover.
The new Victorian legislation will also cover cyber-bullying, another area of increasing concern, especially among teenage students.
(And you're going to police this how? A recent attempt to introduce software enabling parents to monitor their kids mobile phone communications was greeted with howls of horror and cries of 'controlling behaviour', 'invasion of privacy' and 'violation of civil liberties' by the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties spokesman Batch Hales - see http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10714812)
Last year Victorian police used stalking laws to convict a 21-year-old man who hounded a teenager to suicide - but the cyber-bully was sentenced only to community service.
(Isn't that the teeniest bit like sentencing a paedophile to working in a nursery? Isn't the point that the bully has HARMED the community?)
A three-year survey of 16,000 children by Edith Cowan University found that during the period of the study the number of victims grew from 15 to 25 per cent of respondents.
(No. The number hasn't grown. The children have just learned that there are no repercussions, so they're willing to talk)
Clark said yesterday that under the new legislation - already known as "Brodie's law" - serious bullying would be treated as a crime if it could cause someone physical or mental harm.
(OK. Now just HOW are you going to go about defining serious bullying. Is there non-serious bullying? Where's the line?)
Mr Panlock told a press conference yesterday that the new law was better late than never.
"If someone else can be protected from scum like these people, and they know that they are going to be charged, and they are going to have jail time, they might think twice," said Mr Panlock.
(Yes, because that deters SO many murders in the States and so many child abusers and killers in New Zealand. Grow UP!)
And on a sadly related note:
Hail-Sage McClutchie
??/11/07 - 27/09/09
RIP
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