Five years ago, we had a different Monarch, a different Governor-General and a different Prime Minister.

It was also in 2018 that it was revealed Barnaby Joyce was expecting a baby with a former staffer and a Sri Lankan family were removed from their family home in Biloela in an early morning raid and taken to Christmas Island.

Steve Smith was suspended, you could still bag your groceries in plastic and Michelle Guthrie was still managing director of the ABC.

Five years is a long, long time. And for Education Minister Grace Grace to argue now that the reason mobile phones will not be banned in Queensland schools is because a 2018 State Anti-Cyber-bullying Taskforce didn’t recommend it is simply preposterous.

It is also ignorant and down-right dangerous.

I was chair of that taskforce. And I voted against a ban, when others fought for it.

Given the chance, five years on, I’d change my vote – and fight for others to change theirs also.

We need to stop the ongoing suicide attempts, of children as young as 10.

We need to halt the porn being handed around by boys who inadvertently fall across it at lunchtime.

We need to slow the sextortion attempts which are seeing 12-year-olds masturbating for someone who is holding them to ransom from the other side of the world.

We need to teach our children to socialise again, post-Covid, so they can look a person in the eyes and have a personal conversation.

None of that was needed five years ago, Minister.

Each week, I get emails from parents whose daughters are in hospital because they’ve cut themselves 1000 times, trying to be someone else.

That wasn’t raised, once, in our deliberations – because it wasn’t happening.

Dolly Everett killed herself in 2018, and was top of mind for all of us. It was an international story.

Now, we don’t even know how often a child suicides or attempts suicide. But it’s too common, and their parents are desperate to stop it, Minister.

If you don’t believe me, pick up the phone and I’ll tell you about some of the cases I know about.

Social media is how our children communicate, and used properly, it can be a boost their education, provide valuable information and create a stack of entertainment.

But the last five years has also shown the big tech providers are not willing to change. They have the AI to help our children, and chose profit over privacy. They know children who haven’t turned 10 are using their platforms, and they do nothing to check their identities.

The rate of growth in social media and smart phone use has skyrocketed exponentially in recent years, and to use a report prepared five years ago to confirm a blatant political decision is unfair.

Since then, almost every other state has issued a school ban, with NSW now to join that list.

Only two years ago, new rules came into play in Queensland to say you could’t use a mobile phone while driving. Five years ago, we didn’t even consider that.

And we never even contemplated a pandemic that has stolen the futures of so many of our children.

As adults – parents and policy makers and politicians – we need to find a way to gift them back what COVID19 took away.

The ability to socialise. To develop judgment skills. To articulate a position. To live in a real world where anticipation brings smiles and instant gratification is muted.

We need to change the trajectory where rates around school refusal and self-harm and cyber-bullying and suicide are all rising.

Economist John Maynard Keynes was once challenged over changing a viewpoint. This was his response: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, Sir?’’

The facts have changed.

Banning phones – and there is a dozen different ways in which that is already being done in some clever strategic Queensland schools – is just the start.

And for an Education Minister to use data that is so out of date and that she knows is no longer relevant is poor form, and unlikely to gain any pass in any of the schools she runs.