Can anyone confirm or deny that the Education Act of 2006 in Victoria, Australia was enacted on July 1, 2007 with the inclusion of the provision that disallows the registration of schools, including private Independent schools, if they include corporal punishment in their disciplinary regime?

The Education And Training Reform Act 2006 was proclaimed on the 1st of July 2007, and is now law.

The Act contains a provision that would seem to disallow the initial registration or reregistration of any school that has corporal punishment as part of its disciplinary policies. It does not effect the current registration of any school, but schools have to be reregistered approximately every seven years, so, in theory, this Act could lead to total abolition of corporal punishment in Victorian schools by 2014 at the latest.

There are apparently a number of legal questions that need to be addressed before it is certain that this will happen, however, both specific to this issue, and more broadly related to the independence of independent schools.

What legal questions specifically? And what is your best guess at the outcomes?

I am not a lawyer, so I cannot speak in detail on the legal issues, nor can I be sure I am aware of all of them - but a few I know that are being raised concern potential legal conflicts between the common law duties of teachers in independent schools and any regulations that may arise out of this new act - the new act apparently allows regulations to be set that would force a teacher to ignore their legal responsibilities, without changing or removing those responsibilities. There are also issues of parents rights to choose the education they want for their child, and issues concerning precisely what limitations exist on a governments rights to impose statutory regulations on independent bodies. This new act seems to give the Minister the power to impose identical regulations on independent schools, to those in state schools, and as independent schools are in competition with state schools, there's a potential restraint of trade issue as well.

My best guess at the outcomes. Well, as I have said, I am not a lawyer, but it would seem likely to me that many of the issues that exist would have also existed in New South Wales in the 1990s, when they abolished corporal punishment from all schools, and the legal challenges against abolition there failed - so unless there are significant differences in Victoria, I would assume a similar result is likely. And even if there are differences, the state government would presumably be able to rewrite the laws and send them through Parliament again to address any legal issues, if they really want to - with seven years until the law would take full effect anyway, there would be plenty of time to do so.

What did you think of Tony Abbott's comments about school corporal punishment earlier this year?

I think he's raised a very real issue.

Whether or not, people feel corporal punishment should be part of the solution, most people who know anything about Australian schools acknowledge that there is a major crisis brewing in terms of discipline across a great many state schools - and nobody is proposing any real solutions to that problem.

Personally, I do feel reintroducing corporal punishment could be part of the solution, but as long as people are trying to come up with other solutions - that's what we really need. They need to find solutions that work because what is being done now, isn't.

Some schools do seem to have solved these problems, and haven't used corporal punishment to do so - in my view, those opposed to corporal punishment should be looking at those schools, and start supporting what works there, rather than just opposing corporal punishment. If they want to support a different solution, fine - but so many don't seem to want to support anything, they just want to oppose.

And I suppose that is where the Minister's comments have been most useful - they've forced people to accept that simply opposing certain disciplinary methods isn't enough - you have to support something as well.