Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the bubble of Parliament House it is all too easy to forget that sometimes the things we say in this building have consequences for people in our community.

After a particularly depressing fortnight spent debating the merits of the Safe Schools anti-homophobic bullying program in this place, I would like to tell any young LGBTI Australians who are out there listening not to despair. One day, I hope soon, we will not have to have demeaning conversations like this anymore. Change is coming, painfully slowly I know, but hang in there. The future of this country is not for the bigots but for you.

Hear also that there are people in this place who know how hard it can be at the moment. We hear that six in 10 young LGBTI people report experiencing verbal homophobic abuse. Around one in five report experiencing physical homophobic abuse. We have read in the research cited by the Australian Human Rights Commission of LGBTI kids who have reported experiencing public insults, explicit threats and physical abuse as a result of their sexuality. Eighty per cent of this abuse is reported to have occurred at a school.

We know that LGBTI Australians are three times more likely than other Australians to experience depression and that the suicide rate is six times higher for LGBTI Australians. We understand that these figures are not the result of anything intrinsic to being gay but that they are a function of discrimination and exclusion—the result of living in a society in which your sexuality—who you are—puts you in a minority and causes some people to hate and persecute you. That is why the previous Labor government committed $8 million to the Safe Schools program to, in the words of my friend Senator Penny Wong, 'help stop homophobia and create more inclusive school communities'. It is now in operation in more than 500 schools and 15,000 teachers have chosen to use the tools and training offered by the program. It is endorsed by the Australian Secondary Principals Association and by the Australian mental health organisations beyondblue and Headspace.

The program is saving lives—the lives of our kids—but, sadly, it is threatening to an influential and vocal minority of MPs on the other side of the house. They feel uncomfortable about homosexuality, and particularly uncomfortable about talking about homosexuality, so they would rather gay kids find their way in the world alone.

When Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull caved in to their fears and agreed to a review of the Safe Schools program earlier this week, he gave them a platform to put the mental health of LGBTI kids up for public debate. The former Prime Minister, and apparently the eminence grise of this government, Tony Abbott, said of the Safe Schools program:

It's not an anti-bullying program, it's a social engineering program.

It is as though the whole range of conservative institutions and individuals in our society trying to force LGBTI kids to be something other than they are is not a form of malignant social engineering itself. The permanently confused Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce, seemed to agree with the former PM, calling Safe Schools 'social entrepreneurship'—whatever that means. Senator Cory Bernardi has said that the program is about:

… intimidating and bullying kids into conforming to what is the homosexual agenda.

Newsflash, Cory: it is a sexuality, not an ideology. To the extent that the LGBTI community has an agenda, or is trying to engineer something for that matter, it is simply trying to be treated the same way as other Australians—surely an agenda we could all share.

The member for Dawson went further, mining a particularly odious trope, in saying that if someone proposed exposing a child to the Safer Schools material:

The parents would probably call the police because it would sound a lot like grooming work that a sexual predator might undertake.

Most improbably of all, in the context of these preceding comments, the member for Cowan, told the House:

I have never met anyone that displays an extreme or irrational fear of homosexuality.

What has been the Prime Minister's response to this cavalcade of ignorance and irrational fear? Well, he has not repudiated these views. He has not recognised the particular vulnerability of LGBTI kids, nor the value of the Safe Schools in addressing this vulnerability. He has simply said:

I encourage everybody who is discussing these issues to do so in very measured language.

In other words, he has encouraged members to use a dog whistle instead of a megaphone. It is not good enough. The Prime Minister owes it to the LGBTI kids around Australia who may be listening to tell the dinosaurs of his backbench that they are wrong, and to do it now, because this is just prelude to what we would see in a national plebiscite on equal marriage.

Malcolm Turnbull told this chamber that LGBTI Australians and their families had nothing to fear from a national campaign leading up to a plebiscite on the question of whether they are entitled to equal rights. He said that the debate would be conducted with 'decency' and:

… if there are unruly voices heard, they will be drowned out by the common sense and the respect and the general humanity of our people.

Unruly voices have been heard, Prime Minister. But LGBTI Australians are yet to see common sense, respect and general humanity from their Prime Minister in response. It is about time the Prime Minister did not just scold his backbench over the words that they use; it is about time he spoke to LGBTI Australians, told them that it is okay to be gay and that the government respects this.