Alex Antic (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in relation to the Australian Education Legislation Amendment (Prohibiting the Indoctrination of Children) Bill 2020. I have occasionally taken the opportunity in this building to explore how far the capture of government departments by leftist ideology has gone. In this place, we see all the time that top health bureaucrats can't tell you what a woman is, and they can't tell you whether a man can get pregnant or not. It's actually quite surreal, coming into this place sometimes.

Sadly, it's not just our health department that's controlled by radical leftism. Australia's education system is another domain in which common sense and Australian values are under attack. The education system, of course, has always been of vital importance to the so-called progressive revolutionary idea. The radical left understands that, for people to accept their absurd ideas and their ideology and be obsessed with power structures and group identity based on race, class, sex and religion, they have to indoctrinate children from an early age. To them, this is the purpose that schooling serves. This institutional capture of the education system by leftist, socialist, intersectional ideology has been devastating to the social wellbeing of this country and, I'd argue, to the lives of young people in general, who are tragically more depressed and more worried about the future than they ever have been before.

As I've said before, we failed to instil in our young people a sense of meaning, purpose and understanding of their great heritage, and it's wrong that Australian children are denied the genuine opportunity to meaningfully study our past and learn from its wisdom. We've seen Australian British history virtually removed from the curriculum in recent times, and, wherever it's presented, it's done so with a sense of shame and a sense of regret. It's almost as though Australians ought to be ashamed of our great British heritage, which brought us philosophy, literature, religion, a justice system and all the other benefits that European civilisation brought to this country. Yes, of course, there is tragedy and sometimes even cruelty associated with colonialisation, but to guilt-trip Australian students into believing that their heritage is a racist one is simply cruel, unjust and untrue, and it's a terrible thing to do to our next generation.

Australian students are being denied a true and balanced understanding of their history in favour of a false ideological vision designed to portray anything that is European as inherently racist and evil. This couldn't be further from the truth. It's because of our Christian heritage that we have the concept of social justice at all; it's because of our Christian heritage this notion, which ended slavery in Britain, that all people are made in the image of God regardless of their race, gender or class.

When this bill states that political, historical and scientific issues must be taught in a balanced manner, I take that to mean that the task of teaching is to be done without seeking to indoctrinate our children into a revolutionary worldview. I see it as not trying to present them with this ideology but, rather, presenting them with arguments and counterarguments, teaching students to rely on reason and evidence. In other words, students are taught how, not what, to think. Of course, the views of resentful revolutionaries can't stand in such an environment because they're not true; they don't hold up when the evidence is presented or when students are actually allowed think without being guilt-tripped.

It's not only the history curriculum that is affected; schools have regrettably become a vehicle for so-called sexual liberation ideology. Again, the Left understands that, to overcome the stigma associated with their views, they must normalise concepts, like gender identity, from a very young age. The reason that the Left must normalise untrue concepts as early as possible is so that they can interfere with what children would otherwise learn from their more sensible parents. The Left don't respect the authority of parents that pass on traditional commonsense beliefs to their children, nor do they view education as a journey of becoming disciplined, competent, flourishing individuals who want to contribute to their society. Instead, to them, schools have become mere training grounds for political indoctrination and the building of a voter demographic for years to come.

I have collated seven different complaints from concerned parents around South Australia about what their children are learning in public and, in some cases, private Schools. There are so many more, but here are just a few: (1) 'My nine-year-old daughter attends an eastern suburbs primary school, and the other day the kids learned all about sex with boys in the class, seriously.' (2) 'My daughter was in class in year 7, in an eastern suburbs school, and a teacher played ABC's BTN, Behind the News, which always tells them to live in a state of alarm. On one occasion, the presenter suggested the kids should protest BLM; they should protest for climate change, against misogyny, and everything in between, and finish off by protesting at the dinner table, if you don't mind. Protests, activism—I have a suggestion, it's called education. That's what our taxes pay for. Do this out of school hours.' (3) 'Why should I put my kids in a place where they are taught to hate themselves and see the world through a depressing lens? I never imagined I'd pull my kids out of school. Something is very sick in our children and youth. Someone needs to do something.' (4) 'I'm a mum with a daughter in year 9 at a Christian school here in South Australia. She was in class last term, and the teacher started talking about anal sex. My daughter was so uncomfortable. Then the teacher said that the students could face each other and ask any question they'd like. How is my daughter meant to feel safe? You're teaching kids that there are no boundaries in discussions. What has this topic got to do with education? My daughter didn't feel safe. Her dignity as a young person was not respected—unacceptable.' (5) 'My daughter was in a small Catholic school. The grade 2 teacher asked the kids to draw female and male body parts. She refused to do this activity. If my daughter was at a friend's place or an uncle's, I would be horrified. I pulled my kids out of those schools.' (6) My son was asked to lie down on the ground and imagine he had breasts and female genitalia.' (7) My son was asked to write an essay imagining that he was a girl—pointless woke rubbish.'

The education in this system has been taken over by radical leftist revolutionaries, like the storming of the Bastille. Your children are being indoctrinated, not educated, and parents in this country need to wake up.