Schools must act on bullying complaints within 48 hours of incidents being reported.

The review acknowledges the devastating impacts of bullying on our schools and that students who are bullied are three to six times more likely to experience depression, as well as entertaining thoughts about self-harm and suicide.

The review found that 53 per cent of young people reporting being cyberbullied, with 13 per cent of them revealing that they were told they “should die”.

The review should be welcomed not only because of its recommendations but because it reflects sensible good government.

Australia’s cumbersome and labyrinthine federal system with eight governments and parliaments with eight education ministers and systems for a relatively small national population, creates wasteful duplication as well as unnecessary confusion.

When my family moved interstate, it was problematic which grades my sons would be in. I had to re-register as a teacher in our new state and subjects that I taught in Victoria did not exist in our newly adopted state. 

This is as absurd as having different rain rail gauges in different states. 

This farce, of course, can be traced to our development as a nation which had our founding fathers create a horse and buggy constitution which is simply obsolete in the space age.

So, bully for Jason Clare and those education ministers who swallowed their hubris and, rather than boasting that their education system was superior, agreed to a national approach to bullying.

One can only hope this new federalism proliferates in the future, until we have just one minister for education and one education system for all of Australia!

However, there should be little celebration of the new bullying regime on the grounds that it is laughably so overdue and that it exposes the inexcusable liability of schools and teacher-training institutions to effectively tackle this insidious cancer in our classrooms and playgrounds, and now in the digital age, outside of school grounds.

Sixty years ago, I was hospitalised by the school bully, and the incident was swept under the carpet and dismissed as ‘boys will be boys’.

More recently, bleeding hearts have advised us to focus more on the bully who, by and large, is misunderstood and in need of our care and attention rather than punishment.

The review should be a source of embarrassment for schools who have not implemented effective anti-bullying programs.

Similarly, universities are failing their preservice teachers by not already including their courses the training that the review is prescribing.