Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

HANSON ( — ) ( ): I rise to speak on One Nation's Australian Education Legislation Amendment (Prohibiting the Indoctrination of Children) Bill 2020. The purpose of this legislation is to give parents the legal right to protect their children from indoctrination at school. This bill is aimed at ensuring schools and teachers do what they're supposed to do, rather than what many of them are doing today. They are supposed to educate our children. They are not supposed to indoctrinate them with Marxism. They are not supposed to groom them into believing they can be a boy one day and a girl the next. They are not supposed to recruit them as warriors for climate change or social justice.

These are decisions that Australians must only make for themselves when they are old enough. At school age, they are not old enough. But they are very easily influenced and, with their education system thoroughly infiltrated by activists and disturbing concepts about race, climate and gender grounded in disproven neo-Marxist theories, our kids are leaving school without the education they need. This system is infiltrated by teachers who themselves have been indoctrinated in woke universities. Only last week, we saw a story in which university students' assignments were marked down just because they hadn't included an acknowledgement of country.

It's hurting our kids. During COVID lockdowns, when schools closed down and parents had to help educate kids with the assistance of education departments, many parents were shocked to discover the indoctrination going on. They discovered their children were being indoctrinated with values and concepts that they could not possibly share. They discovered their children were being told they were evil, racist oppressors just because they were white and that they should feel shame and remorse for it. They discovered their children were being groomed into believing they could choose their own gender at a whim, biology be damned. They found their children were being terrorised by climate change prophecies of doom.

This is what was happening in schools, and I refer to an article here:

Colouring-in posters given to year 1 students at a NSW primary school—accusing Australians of genocide—have been called "indoctrination" and "propaganda".

The posters, promoted as part of NAIDOC week at a public primary school in central west NSW and displayed on a school hall, sparked a complaint by a parent and were raised in NSW parliament by One Nation MP Mark Latham.

The posters depict raised fists and state: "White Australia has a Blak History, No Pride in Genocide, Stop the Lies! Stop Stealing Our Kids, Blak Lives Matter!"

This is what is being taught or our schools by these people, pushing their own ideology and their own agenda.

In another school, a mother was concerned at sending her child to these childcare centres. Her feelings were: 'Feeling sideswiped by the news of IDAHOBIT Day at the day care, I called the centre manager. I was informed that not only was Rainbow Day on the agenda'—this is children under five years of age we are talking about!—'but that LGBTQ material was a part of the children's' curriculum.' Give me a break! We are talking about a person's sex or their sexual preferences, and we are teaching kids this? Let the children grow up and be adults before they decide what you are imposing.

As I said, we are opposed to paedophiles grooming children for what they want to do to our children. Why is this any different? Why is this not grooming our children at a very young age? We are confusing them as to what they should be or shouldn't be—whether male or female or their sexual preference. I'm sorry, but that shouldn't happen to a child of school age or five years of age or even younger. That is something they will decide later in life. It's not up to our educators, babysitters, childcare centres or anyone else to actually do this.

This has been pushed by the Greens for years and years. This is all the Greens. And the Labor Party has done exactly the same and headed down this path. What I was told nearly 30 years ago by people who came to see me in my office was that lecturers at the university were told that they had to teach a certain way, otherwise they wouldn't have their jobs. That's exactly what is happening.

Apart from this, we actually have had the welcome to country or acknowledgement of country being rammed down our throats. Every time you turn around—at a movie or on an aeroplane—this is all being rammed down our throats. The fact is that Australians are fed up with it.

Until we actually change what is happening, these people will be destroying our children's little minds. Childcare centres are there to look after our children, not indoctrinate them. In our school system, they're not there to indoctrinate our kids with this garbage that's been fed to them. Schools are there to teach social services, geography, and history. They are there to actually teach the kids most of all, which they are failing, how to read and write. It's absolutely disgraceful that you want to push this agenda.

This mother went on to say: 'I'm very supportive of adults making their own decisions about how they live their lives, but it is wholly unacceptable to use children to make a group of adults feel validated about their own decisions and sexual way of life.' How true is that? We are allowing these adults to validate their own feelings and their own sexuality, and we're pushing it on.

Here in Australia, where we have seen the debate about transgender, in the 2016 census there were only 1,200 people who identified as transgender. But, no, we've got to change our whole society for those people who feel transgender or have their issues! You don't change what is normal, the norm, for the rest of the world or the country just because you've got to make a few people feel good about themselves or be inclusive. This is about a commonsense approach—that we don't change our way of thinking for a few out there. We don't change because they don't know whether they're male or female. No wonder so many kids are confused.

I was just talking to my eight-year-old grandson, and I said: 'Are you told at school that you can be a boy or a girl?'—and he is an eight-year-old boy, I can tell you!—and he said: 'Oh, yes. We're told we can choose whether we want to be male or female. We actually had a kid come to school in grade 5 and he dressed as a girl.' I said: 'How do you feel about that?' He said: 'We all know he's a boy. We don't know why he dresses as a girl.' He said, 'I'm totally confused by it.' That's what you're doing to our kids. And you are allowing this to happen.

I am saying to parents out there that they need to start to wake up to themselves. I think they are. Parents are saying to me, 'What can we do about it?' That's why they are contacting Mark Latham, who is a voice for this. I am a voice for this. Malcolm Roberts has been a voice for this. There are a few people who are speaking out about these things and really are standing up and trying to push back. They had a real issue in the UK about all this indoctrination that's going on of kids in school.

Even in the climate change debate that's going on at the moment, there are lies, absolute lies, and an agenda that is being pushed. You are not actually telling people the truth to give them a balanced view about this. Critical race theory is being brought into our educational system. Psychologists in training must actually learn about critical race theory and they have to acknowledge that they have been the suppressors of the black race in this nation.