Federal government launches $10 million anti bullying campaign

The Australian Government has launched a 10 million dollar national campaign in direct response to the 2025 Anti-Bullying Rapid Review findings that more than one in four students in Years 4 to 9 reported experiencing bullying regularly and 53 percent of young people experienced cyberbullying. By the start of Term 1 2027, every Australian school across government, independent and Catholic sectors will be required to publish anti-bullying policies aligned with the National Framework for Addressing Bullying in Australian Schools. Schools will also be required to respond to a bullying complaint or incident within two school days, a rule the Review identified as central to effective bullying response and reporting pathways for students and families.

Mandatory publication and response timelines establish a floor, not a ceiling, for school duty of care. Guardii, a Meta Business Partner and world-leading AI online-safety platform, operates upstream of formal complaints by detecting cyberbullying patterns in real time as conversations unfold across platforms including Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox. The two-day response requirement presumes awareness, but bullying frequently escalates in private channels before a child or parent can articulate a complaint. Guardii surfaces sustained targeting, coercion and escalation the moment they occur, flagging hostile contact before it reaches the target and alerting parents, schools or professionals to a child in crisis without waiting for a report. The platform blocks harmful messages at the point of contact and enables immediate escalation to the appropriate authority, addressing the underlying harm through targeted detection rather than relying solely on retrospective complaint mechanisms.