Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a career supporter of choice and faith based education and values, many of us in Brisbane were shocked by the actions of Citipointe Christian College last week. Brian Mulheran's notion of gender contracts is just revolting, and I'm glad that they were consigned to history. More broadly in the scope of the Religious Discrimination Bill and these competing notions, I'm strongly supporting the role of faith based education. But I will be guided in my vote by the experience of a family in my own electorate who today travels one hour across my city and back, twice a day, to find a school that will accept this child who was not accepted at a local school. The current provision that expulsion of these young children struggling with gender issues shall be prohibited is simply not enough, because these students are usually not expelled. Too often, they're bullied out of schools by a range of other tactics that allow a school to say, 'We never expelled them.' It's incredibly tragic.

Let's remember for a moment, in this great tension between parents seeking a faith based education and board members and schools maintaining what they believe they stand for, that schools are not necessarily a place of delivering faith as much as a place delivering education for those students who are there for the right reasons. They deserve to complete their education without being forced out of schools in the absence of these protections.