Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this matter of public importance. We've called on the government to support the notion that we should treat teachers in non-government schools—all schools—the same way that we want children to be treated. There is no magical time, when you turn 18, that it's okay to be discriminated against for who you are and who you love. That's the notion we're putting forward. But I do thank the Morrison government and the Turnbull government for bringing on this debate.

I do have some background in this area, not only having been a teacher in Catholic and state schools but also having worked as a union organiser in non-government schools. I dealt with schools grappling with religious tenets—Jewish schools, Islamic schools, Catholic schools, even closed brethren and evangelical schools, Anglican schools and many others. I gave advice to members of the union who were, perhaps, contemplating coming out at school. I gave advice to members of that union when they even took a discrimination case to court. Religious belief or activity is protected under the Anti-Discrimination Act 1991 in Queensland. One of its attributes is that people can go to court and say, 'I was discriminated because of that.' I've run a case where someone was discriminated against because of their religious belief.

The starting point for this whole MPI was the idea that we should look after our children in schools and, similarly, we should look after the staff in those schools. No-one would have seen this coming. The religious report was commissioned by the Liberal government. The person they put in charge of it was a former Liberal Attorney-General, a Liberal politician. That Liberal-engendered report was given to the Liberal Party. Yet we have a Prime Minister who says, 'This has nothing to do with the Liberal Party. This has nothing to do with us.'

I look forward to reading the report from Ruddock, Brennan, Croucher et al. I am sure it will provide some good insights. All the people who have prepared this report are well respected in their own disciplines. But it comes in the context of modern Australia. We do know the reality that the chances of suicide are two or three times higher for gay children. Lived experience at school has the potential to be so much more traumatic for gay children. Hopefully, now that we have marriage equality, that journey might be a little bit easier for some.

Maybe it will get better much quicker now that the nation has finally recognised, in law, what we always had in the Constitution the power to do. The parliament has finally recognised the vote of the Australian people and said, 'Yes, we will get this done.' However, the government has been strangely quiet on recognising that we should not be discriminating against someone as soon as they have their 18th birthday, that it's not okay to discriminate against someone because of who they love or who they are.

We know this would not be the state imposing its will on religious schools. Obviously, there are sensitivities there. There are taxpayer dollars—secular taxpayer dollars, from the secular state that is modern Australia—being put into these religious institutions, and they should be able to run their schools according to the 'tenets of their religion', which is the term used in the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Act. But that might mean that, for a person mowing the lawn at a religious school, it would not be an inherent quality that they must have the same faith as the religious school. And, like any teacher, irrespective of their sexuality, what they do in their private life would not have anything to do with their classroom, I would hope. I would hope that my children, one at a state school and one at a Catholic school, know nothing of the lifestyles of their teachers.

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