Derryn Hinch (Victoria, Derryn Hinch's Justice Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will be brief, because I expressed my view on this appalling situation earlier in the week. I want to go on record in support of the Discrimination Free Schools Bill 2018, which is a bill to ban discrimination by independent schools against any pupil on the grounds of their sexual orientation. Back on Monday, my motion to strip discriminatory schools of any government funding or charity tax concessions was, sadly, voted down in this very chamber. I suspect that the government and the opposition feared a Catholic school backlash, even though the Catholic Church has not threatened, so far as I know, to expel any child or sack any teacher solely because of their sexual orientation.

I said back then that the very worst part of this whole debacle was that some kids all over this country had to sit nervously over last weekend, considering the prospect that they would be thrown out of their school for simply being who they are. This was after parts of the Ruddock report were selectively leaked to The Sydney Morning Herald. A week later, I can sadly say, their fears have not come close to being allayed by this government. It is hard enough being a kid these days. There is bullying on the internet, bullying and teasing at school and the pressures of growing up, et cetera. There is all of that, without having politicians in this place debating whether or not they are deserving of an education at an institution of their choosing and/or their parents' choosing.

When I tried to get the Senate to acknowledge that it's not just gay kids, but also kids who are struggling with their gender identity, who face discrimination under the existing law, Senator Leyonhjelm would not even let me amend my motion or put it to a vote. To make it worse, he sarcastically quoted back at me, 'Shame, shame, shame'. Well, in my view, the only people who should be ashamed of themselves are those senators and members who virtually told Australian kids this week: 'We might not think you're normal enough to continue attending your own school. First, we'll have a think about it, and we'll debate it. We'll take weeks to do it, maybe even months. In the meantime, keep doing your best to learn, keep going to class, but maybe you have to hide who you are while you are at it.'

We had almost three months of this same sort of thing during the same-sex marriage debate and the so-called plebiscite. But, sadly, it doesn't seem that the government has learned very much along the way. On Senator Leyonhjelm, he wouldn't even let me put the question of whether kids who are gay or transgender deserve to be educated at the institution where they may have attended for years, where they have made friends and maybe where their siblings attend. He gagged me on even putting that question to the Senate. Personally—a little side note—it is good news to me that Senator Leyonhjelm has decided that he wants to be a big frog in a small puddle and plans to leave in February to contest the New South Wales state election, but that's a different story.

Another glaring aspect of this debate—if you can call it that—is the right of religious schools to discriminate against teachers, as Senator Keneally raised, on the basis of their sexual orientation. I reiterate what I said earlier in the week: I believe that schools should not receive one cent of taxpayers' money if they commit themselves to such archaic, disgusting criteria when choosing the people whose only qualifications should be the knowledge that they will impart to their students. Religious schools receive charity tax status because they provide 'a public benefit'. You wonder what public benefit the society reaps from excluding kids or qualified teachers. As someone succinctly pointed out: they are there to teach maths, not gay maths. I do accept—and also following up on Senator Keneally—that an independent school, a faith-based school, is entitled to expect that its teachers will follow the church's ethos, to use the Labor Party's current buzzword. A teacher proselytising against school standards or church beliefs could be terminated, but that would not be because they were heterosexual or homosexual but because they were not following the dictum or ethos of the organisation.

Finally, going back to a hypothetical that I raised here on Monday and raised again in encouraging talks with the Prime Minister today: if I were a person of faith—and I'm not—and I had three teenage kids, two straight and one possibly gay or unsure of their sexuality, could two of my kids go to the school of our choice and the third one not? How the hell do you explain to a possibly troubled and insecure child that that is the law? That is why I say this bill must pass.