Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Right now, there is a young boy in a country town somewhere who is working out who he is attracted to. I want to talk to him. There is a girl at a high school who wants to take her girlfriend to the school formal. I want to talk to her. I want to say that every young person has a place here. Every young person belongs. If you are attracted to someone of the same gender as you, that is fine. If you do not feel like the sex you are born as matches your gender, that is okay—you are okay. There are people here in parliament and people in the community who feel the same way as you. There are people who understand. There are people—in fact, the majority of people—who accept you for who you are. There are people who can help, people like the Safe Schools Coalition. It is just a pity that our Prime Minister does not agree.

Our Prime Minister has been prepared to sell out to the conservative brotherhood that still runs the Liberal-National Party and the coalition. Our Prime Minister's commitment to same-sex-attracted people turns out to be only skin deep, because he has been prepared to place the Safe Schools program under review, not because the program was not doing its job, not because the program was running over budget but solely because the hard-right grubs in his government asked him to do so. He has sold out when he did not have to do so. And if you want to mark one of the many days when this Prime Minister has been prepared to give up on so-called progressive beliefs to keep the hard right of his party happy, you need look no further than to the day when he was willing to potentially put the welfare of young people at risk for cheap political advantage.

Now, school is tough for everyone. People know that; parents know that; anyone who has been to school knows that. But when you understand that same-sex-attracted people are 14 times as likely as other people to commit suicide when they are young, then you understand that there is a need to provide them with support during that particularly tough time. That is what the Safe Schools program does. Cory Bernardi, Eric Abetz, George Christensen, Andrew Nikolic, Andrew Hastie and Luke Simpkins—who came out today and said that somehow the Safe Schools program is bullying heterosexual people—you should all be ashamed of yourselves. How dare you use your platform as elected representatives to tell young people who are not like you that somehow they are not okay, that they do not belong and that they deserve to have abuse hurled at them?

And if you want in indication as to why we do not need a plebiscite on marriage equality and what is going to come down the line if it happens, look no further than at what we have seen so far. That is just a taste of what is to come and the message that is going to be sent to young people who need our support. All young people have a hard time working out who they are. All young people have a hard time working out what they want. So, when we know that there is a group of young people who are 14 times as likely as other young people to commit suicide because of who they are attracted to, we should be extending a helping hand and offering extra help. We should not be showing them a closed fist from this parliament, but that is what we are seeing from the hard right that still seems to run this party.

One of the worst things is that this Prime Minister did not have to do this but chose to. What kind of message is this Prime Minister sending when he chooses to single out a program that has widespread community support and has been doing its job? We have seen young person after young person come out over the past few days and say, 'Because of the Safe Schools program I felt like I belonged, at a time when I felt alone, at a time when I was considering whether I should take my own life.' And what does the government do? The government says, 'Well, that's the kind of program we think we should put under review'—for no other reason than that some homophobes in their party have said, 'We don't like the message that is being sent.' I want people to know that you have support, that you are loved.