Gus Worland

5th August 2024

Much-loved Australian media personality and founder of Gotcha 4 Life, Gus Worland, has joined the campaign as a Stop it at the Start ambassador.

Speaking about the new and hidden forms of disrespect young people are being exposed to everyday online, Gus acknowledges the challenges parents and carers face.

“I think it's really hard for parents at the moment to understand the type of world that some of their kids are in. Unfortunately, with social media, they're one click away from a world which must be very, very confusing for them,” he said.

Encouraging proactive conversations about the online influences impacting young people and how they form ideas about respect is vitally important – but not always easy to do.

“As adults, parents and carers, we need to be vulnerable and brave ourselves, to have tough conversations with children. We must speak up at every opportunity and play a role in breaking the cycle of disrespect.”

Gus is also on the judging panel for the Respect Competition which gives students in years 4 – 9 the opportunity to create an animation storyboard about what respect means in their world. The winning submission to be turned into a professional animation and receive a $500 gift card for themselves and one for their school.

Find out more about the Respect Competition

Gus Worland joins as campaign ambassador

There's many different conversations at the moment, that need to be had in Australia, and gender disrespect is absolutely one of them. And that's why we're talking about this right now.

My name is Gus Worland, I'm the founder of Gotcha 4 life.

I think it's really hard for parents at the moment to understand the type of world that some of their kids are in, and unfortunately, with social media, with the fact that kids have phones so much younger, pornography being a big thing; now, they're one-click away from a world, which must be very, very confusing for them. It's a tough situation to actually know what your kids are looking at, because they're with their phones pretty much 24/7. You're not there 24/7.

We have to be better at understanding what they're seeing every single day. There's no doubt in the world when I go into schools and I hear some of the language and how they talk to each other and stuff, it's just a different world to the world that I know. And I believe there's no excuses for that disrespectful behavior.

But what I do hear out there is like “I'm only joking” or “I'm only having a laugh” but... really... that might be what some people think it is. But for a lot of young kids, that's super, super damaging.

We need to be able to talk about the important stuff, which is affecting teenagers now much more than it did when I was growing up. I think the younger, probably the better. As long as it's done in the correct way.

For me, it's all about normalizing the conversation.

For too long, we have been scared to talk about things that are super important because we don't quite know how to start the conversation.

It all starts with sitting down and having a conversation, and trying to understand, and being curious enough to try to work out exactly what's going on.

You can't just be left to one teacher, in one classroom, talking to one set of kids.

It's got to be an all-school approach. And I think that way, you're feeling like you're part of a community, making a real positive difference.

Violence against women has to stop, right here, right now.

We need to stop it at the start.

To find out more, go to respect.gov.au