The House of Assembly has passed an unamended bill to criminalise bullying in Tasmania - but the upper house is still yet to debate the legislation and could make a number of amendments to it when the time comes.
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Public consultation on the draft bill concluded on February 1 and a number of influential interest groups made submissions suggesting tweaks to the legislation.
The Legislative Council will be examining these submissions carefully as the bill comes before upper house members for review.
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The chief object of the Criminal Code Amendment (Bullying) Bill is to add specific bullying offences to section 192 of the Criminal Code and to make stalking an indictable offence.
The decision on whether to prosecute a person for bullying would be made by the state's Director of Public Prosecutions.
Labor and the Greens questioned the definition of bullying in the legislation during the lower house debate on Tuesday and aired concerns that protections for perpetrators under the age of 18 could be inadequate.
But Attorney-General Elise Archer said there would be protections for an alleged perpetrator not yet over 18 and other actions would be taken before court proceedings were considered.
The Tasmanian Law Reform Institute (TLRI) released a report in 2016 making recommendations to government on how best to legislatively combat bullying in the community.
Consulting on the report, the Law Society of Tasmania stressed that a legal definition of bullying needed to be wide enough that it didn't exclude specific behaviours, but also narrow enough to "establish legal liability".
In its submission through the government's public consultation process, the TLRI urged the government to allow bullying victims to apply for restraining orders.
The Youth Network of Tasmania opposed the bill altogether, saying a "social and public health approach to reducing and responding to bullying" was preferable to legislative reform.
Its submission was critical of the fact that the bill didn't explicitly define bullying.
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The Alannah and Madeline Foundation also expressed concern that clearer definitions of bullying were absent from the bill and also that it posed the "increased" risk of criminalising children.
Family violence counselling service Engender Equality argued the bill should address diverse bullying tactics, such as "third party bullying", where family violence perpetrators compelled third parties to intimidate their victim on their behalf.
It's not clear which of these submissions Tasmanian MLCs could take into account when they begin debating the bill - but it's likely they will be briefed by a number of the aforementioned groups.
