Lockdown hasn’t stopped Newhaven College students advocating for compulsory empathy training surrounding sensitive issues for Victorian Police, at the YMCA Victoria Youth Parliament.

The Newhaven College team wrote a Bill to establish the Sensitive Issues Training of Police (SITOP).

This will implement training for police by addressing the “problem through education, aiming to elicit empathy and understanding from police officers, leading to appropriate management of sensitive issues they encounter”.

The students, Anna Scott (18), Laura Vivian (17), Nick Thomas (17), Ella Beasley (17) and Coco Hosken (16), said they created the Bill in the hope it would create “a safer environment, particularly, for people protesting, because it is one of our rights to be able to protest”.

By Samantha Wheeler and originally published with Phillip Island and San Remo Advertiser