Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment and Water (Senate)) Share this | Hansard source

In starting my remarks today, I want to reflect on some of the experiences of discrimination and bullying that Australian students in our nation have, unfortunately, experienced. This quote comes from a young trans person:

If my school had been even remotely LGBTIQ-friendly, my entire life would have been different. If it had not been overtly homophobic, even that would have been a good start. But it was not and I had a very rough time and felt there was no way out. Feeling increasingly disconnected with my body and distressed by the way it was changing, in Year 10 I stumbled across a YouTube video of a transgender man and I thought I might have finally found my answer—but I also knew there was little I could do about it. I stopped eating in the hope that I could stop puberty and I was cutting myself. I cried in the back of the classroom each day, but no one noticed. In Year 12, I tried to kill myself for the first time.

When we think about these issues before the parliament today, we need to think of the educational and, even more importantly, very personal outcomes and the wellbeing of children in our nation's schools.

I'm glad that this debate has now come to the fore. It seems that, as Senator Paterson said, the government wants to wait before putting anything substantive on the table—to wait for the Ruddock review to be formally released and to release its legislative response then. On that note, I very much question why, if they want to do this in a holistic, meaningful way, they rushed out their statements regarding the protection of students, frankly, in the context of the Wentworth by-election. The government's reluctance to release the Ruddock review speaks very loudly. You've continued the covering up of the review, and, to my mind, you're trying to keep all bases covered, both the homophobic and transphobic content in the report, perhaps, and the need to keep religious organisations on side. But we now have an opportunity for a mature debate around these issues.

I note the recommendation of the Ruddock review that has been leaked. Notwithstanding the fact that it narrows the grounds for discrimination that schools might seek to apply, it does allow religious schools to continue to discriminate against students. From what I can tell from the recommendations—although we can't see them in their full context—it would allow them to expel students based on their sexuality or gender identity. As I have highlighted with the quotes from the young person that I have quoted today, students should not have to face the brunt of this discrimination based on their gender identity, on their sexuality or on any facet of their identity.

I am pleased that the government has come forward and said it will go further in terms of preventing discrimination against all these young people. Our young people in Australia deserve to have the opportunity to socialise and learn in a school environment without the fear of being discriminated against, without the fear of being bullied or harassed—and they should not be exposed to bullying and bigotry. As the quote I put forward highlights, we know that LGBTIQ children and young people suffer from higher rates of poor mental health and engaging in self-harm. This is due to the bullying they experience and the stigma attached to their sexuality and gender. As the report I quoted from just now highlights, young people themselves say that there's nothing intrinsic about being lesbian, gay or transgender that makes them feel that way; it is the prevailing views of society in regard to the way they present themselves and the stigma and discrimination they receive for their identity. So we have a very important duty of care to protect young people and not expose them to these kinds of harms.

I note that the Ruddock report also wants to provide religious schools with an ongoing ability to discriminate against staff or contractors on the basis of their sexuality or gender identity. Labor does not believe that schools should have an automatic, innate right to do this. An innate attribute should not be a ground for discrimination. I have seen many cases where LGBTIQ teachers have faced hidden and unspoken pressure to hide their sexuality lest they be found out and risk losing their jobs over their identity.

I don't want to see this debate mirror the toxic debate that came with the marriage equality debate. It stirred up a great deal of anxiety for LGBTIQ Australians, for parents and children, about whether we would ever be accepted and when those attacks would end. Happily, with the passing of marriage equality through this parliament, we did make a great step forward and we know very clearly the views of a majority of Australians on these issues.

We know that the Ruddock review was given to the government in May. It is now October. Supposedly, it's been kept from this place because it's covered by cabinet confidentiality, yet the government say cabinet has not even considered it. The Australian public deserve to know what is in that report. Why keep it a secret if it doesn't contain inflammatory and discriminatory content? The timing of the Wentworth by-election suggestions that this is a ploy by government to cling to the majority in their federal seats. You're trying to manage the potential backlash on both sides. Frankly, we just want to see this place have a mature and proper debate about the substantive issues here. Without the leaks from Fairfax we would never have known about these recommendations.

We have a Prime Minister who has ham-fistedly flip-flopped in his response to this report regarding the power religious schools would have to discriminate on the grounds of a student's sexuality or gender identity. The Prime Minister, when first asked about these recommendations, defended them. He defended them by pointing out that there are already existing laws allowing religious schools to turn away LGBTIQ students, and I take great offence at the attacks from those opposite that it was the Labor Party that entrenched this discrimination in the Sex Discrimination Act. These exemptions have existed since the Sex Discrimination Act was first put in place. They didn't exist so that religious schools and other institutions could discriminate against LGBTIQ people, because we weren't even in the act at that time. It was to allow continued discrimination on the basis of marital status, pregnancy and other attributes such as being divorced et cetera. The Prime Minister said nine times that he defended the existing recommendations of the Ruddock review. But I'm very pleased that we have moved on from that, because we don't want to see degrading legislation in our country.

I have to say many states have now moved to prevent discrimination and make it unlawful to allow schools to discriminate on the basis of sexuality or gender. Labor is against discrimination, and our laws should reflect this value. We are a tolerant and accepting nation. Discrimination against LGBTIQ people has no place in our national laws. We are, therefore, also committed to protecting LGBTIQ students and staff from being discriminated against by religious schools. Last year we voted for equality and fairness, not more discrimination. Our laws should apply equally regardless of what your faith is, where you come from or who you love.

I have, over many years, heard very real stories and experiences from LGBTIQ students and students with LGBTIQ parents about the discrimination they have faced in our schools. Let's make it clear: this is not just about the sexuality and gender of young people or the gender identity of children. It is also about the discrimination that young people have suffered because their parents might be trans or their parents might be in a same-sex relationship. I have had friends and family subjected to this kind of discrimination. It has caused great distress, caused significant mental health impacts and, at times, caused young people to leave school and not finish their education, with a lifelong impact on their future. In saying that, I know how real this is. In my own family, I have members who have experienced discrimination way back, a long time ago, in Catholic schools because they had a single mother and they were at a Catholic school. That discrimination then increased when the child turned out to be non-gender conforming and to be a lesbian, and she just didn't fit in with the school. Inevitably, along comes a change in school circumstances; but it has a lifelong impact on people. It undermines their capacity to continue and complete their education.

It has been said that most schools don't actively discriminate. I know of many schools, including religious schools, that have wonderful LGBTIQ inclusion policies and have LGBTIQ students who are very well accepted and supported within that school community. However, it's not the same in all schools, and the fact that schools currently retain the power to discriminate can mean that young people who are having a hard time with bullying don't always come forward to get the support that they need. The quote I started this speech with very firmly illustrates that.

We welcome removing exemptions in relation to children in religious schools, but we are very disappointed that the Prime Minister has rejected our suggestion that we should be removing the exemption for staff. As Labor's shadow assistant minister for equality, as a member of the LGBTIQ community and very much also as a parent who's co-parenting with other LGBTIQ people, I know how important these protections are not only for myself but for my child. I add to the community that no young person should be subjected to discrimination at school. Our children's right to an education must be our first and foremost responsibility. We need strong discrimination laws to ensure equal treatment.

I do acknowledge that this debate has other sides to it. It is about respecting the rights of parents to send children to the school of their choice and to have children educated in accordance with their religious convictions. We want to see young people worrying about their homework not living in fear of mistreatment because of who they are. We want to see Australia's young people protected.

The debate has exposed that there are fundamental rights and freedoms of Australians that are lacking recognition currently. I really want to thank the leadership of Bill Shorten and Tanya Plibersek for bringing forward this debate in relation to the discrimination faced by students and teachers. It is not only for students to be protected from discrimination but also for teachers. I know of too many teachers that have feared for their job security not just because of their LGBTI status but also because they are pregnant and unmarried. These are teachers who have conducted themselves in the school environment within the ethos of the school—totally within the ethos of the school. It just happens that in their personal and private lives they might be LGBTI, they might be unmarried or they might get pregnant outside of marriage, and it causes them great concern for their job security. This should not be the case in today's day and age. People should not have to be secretive about their personal life and identity at school. Work is such a major part of your life. You should not have to hide such fundamental parts of your life for fear of losing your job. These are wonderful teachers, dedicated to their school community, their students and their profession.

All schools need procedures for hiring and firing teachers and maintaining the quality of their teachers. There's a great deal of conduct that our schools cannot and should not tolerate, and the ethos of that kind of conduct will vary from school to school. Schools will have varying policies, and the ethos of each will vary based on its morals and educational ethos. For example, a religious school might need to sack a teacher because they refuse to stop teaching creationism in science classes—it might be outside the school's curriculum—or you might have a Scientologist teacher trying to recruit students at a Catholic school. There's nothing wrong with being a Scientologist or anything else—actually I don't like Scientology much—but if you don't overstep the mark, if you don't bring those attributes to the classroom, then you should stay out of harm's way within the ethos of that school.

There are many much worse ways in which teachers might create very real moral perils for school students. It could be because their conversations with students about sex are too overt, a female teacher talks about being attracted to male students or a teacher talks about, I don't know, visiting a sex worker. There are plenty of things that are morally wrong.

For some schools, promoting something like marriage equality within the school community might very much be outside the ethos of that particular school. But the intrinsic identity of a teacher or a student—who you are as an individual person—should not be grounds for discrimination, dismissal or the need to be performance managed in any way. There are many examples where the conduct of an otherwise good educator might fall outside a school's ethics and ethos. I remember when a male teacher formed a relationship with a female student at a school I attended, and both left the school. I know of an incident where someone I knew was kissed in a state school by a teacher of the same sex at a school formal. I think that at the time the secrecy attached to that teacher's lesbian identity within the school only contributed to her poor behaviour: 'you and me against the world'. If people can't be open about their identity and who they are within a school environment, then that's where risk comes from.

None of these very real moral perils can be dealt with by carve-outs in antidiscrimination law for non-government schools. Schools already need to manage these kinds of workplace and classroom performance issues for students who have teachers with poor boundaries or a poor moral compass or people who actively promote things that are in contradiction with the school's morals and ethics. But what is very clear to me is that the mere fact that someone speaks in an ordinary sense about themselves and their family, if they're acknowledged as being unmarried, divorced, gay, lesbian, transgender, intersex or in a same-sex relationship—that their family and status is known within the school community—should not be grounds for discrimination. (Time expired)