Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Australia watches this parliament tonight. They're watching this debate. It's not often we know that people are as tuned in as they are tonight, and they're tuned in because the debate is incredibly important. As we've heard from, in the last 40 minutes, the member for North Sydney, and my colleague from New South Wales the member for Macquarie, it's an incredibly important debate, and I think they both touched on some really important points.

I want to make my contribution as brief as I can, because I don't think I can reach the soaring rhetorical heights that many of my colleagues have on both sides of this chamber today. So I will zone in on my community and I will zone in on where my past experience and expertise has been and perhaps echo some of the things mentioned by the member for North Sydney.

I represent a growth corridor, an area where nearly 50 per cent of our residents were born overseas. We are a vibrant, multicultural, multifaith community. We build community every day. We build houses, then people move in, and we get busy and we build community. We have clear aims: we want to build harmonious, inclusive, cohesive communities. They are our aims. And, you know, the most important places in those communities that help to build them are our schools. They are the core of our communities.

In my electorate, there are 51 schools. Eighteen are independent, most of which are religious. Our schools in my community are a microcosm of our community. They are a microcosm of this country. And they should be at the centre of this debate tonight.

We have heard many mention that we should—and I know that I've had emails, and I've been watching Twitter today, and I've been told a thousand times today that I should—'just vote this bill down'. And I'm here to tell you exactly why I can't vote this bill down. And it's not about numbers. It's because the bill, as it stands, as the government has brought it into this chamber, does do one very important thing, and that is it enshrines that people cannot discriminate against somebody else for their religious beliefs.

Now, in my community, I can go back, not so many years ago, to standing in this place and talking about a mother in my community, in my Muslim community, at the height of some of the worst religious vilification that I have lived through. She rang me on a Saturday morning. She said to me: 'I know you've been speaking to the imams. I know you've spoken to my dad. And I know, Joanna, they've told you that everything's okay, everyone's fine.' She said: 'Well, let me tell you, when I woke this morning—on Saturday, my usual practice is to take the kids to the park—my husband said to me: "Perhaps today, love, I should take them,"' because she wears a hijab, and he was frightened that that would single them out in our community to be discriminated against because it was a symbol of Islam.

This legislation means that that discrimination against that woman in my community would no longer be legal. So I can't vote this down. I have to have that. My community needs to know that, regardless of their religion, they won't be allowed to be discriminated against because of it. And currently, in this country, that's not enshrined in our law. This woman would have been protected, if an event had occurred, if she'd been discriminated against because of her race but not if it'd been because of her religion.

So the one thing this government has done right is to bring that into this place to be enshrined in law. It does, however, puzzle me how you can have that as your intent and manage to package it so that it allows active discrimination against another group of people in our community. For them I speak tonight, and it's why I want to zero in on schools.

I want to remind everybody, particularly in my community, that I've stood shoulder to shoulder with my multicultural, multifaith, vibrant community to defend 18C from those opposite—and not just once. Section 18C protects people from racial vilification, and this government wanted to remove it from the statute books. So you can understand why Australia is watching us, why people are confused and why some think that everything in this legislation is bad—because they see it as being delivered by a government that wanted to remove 18C. Not everything here is bad. Labor will introduce amendments that may see us through this mire that has been put in front of us by this government.

I want to focus on my schools, which are a microcosm of my community and this country. I spent decades in schools, and I've got something to share with you about the power of 18C. Kids bring into playgrounds, whether they be in primary schools or secondary schools—let's not forget that, in a secondary school, we throw together up to 1,200 or 1,300 or, in my electorate, sometimes 3,000 kids, at the most antisocial time in their lives, when they're searching for their identity. We throw them all together for eight hours a day, and we say, 'Get along and learn.' So there is always conflict in schools. Kids are rubbing up against one another. Racial discrimination or racial vilification happens in the playground. It happens in the classroom. It happens because kids come from homes where people think that's okay. You want to be able to sit with kids in a mediation session where there has been racial discrimination, racial abuse or racial vilification and say to them: 'Listen. You just can't do this. It's against the law.' It seems a silly thing to say that that would be so powerful, but it is. Young people say: 'It's against the law, Miss? I didn't know that.' In that moment, there is education. In that moment, there is understanding. In that moment, they understand something about this country that they didn't know before that moment. I desperately want schools to have the power to educate kids about religious discrimination. I want them to know that in this country that's not on, but I also want them to know that it's not okay to discriminate because of someone's gender identity, because of someone's sexuality. I want them to know that too. We have an opportunity tonight to make that happen.

So I want the opposition to come into this chamber, to think about these amendments, to put your partisan hats aside and to do something for the 51 schools in my electorate and for schools around the country. I want you to listen to the member for North Sydney when he talks about his school education. A lot of the conversation today has been about institutions discriminating against people. Let me tell you, sometimes in schools it's just kids discriminating against kids, and they need to be educated that it's not okay. This package of laws, with our amendments, would give them that message. It would tell them that everybody is valued, that everybody has the right to exist, the right to be treated humanely and the right to learn.

There is one other thing from my time in schools that I want to share with the parliament tonight, in terms of the power of it. I was in schools when it became outlawed to discriminate because of disability. I was in schools when suddenly we had to change our culture because this place said so. We had to educate adults in our communities. We had to bring in human rights experts to talk to our teachers and our families and to tell them that it was illegal to discriminate against a child because of their disability. It was an incredibly powerful moment. But I'm standing here and telling you that this place has the power to change culture on the ground, in our schools—the places where our children learn not just the three Rs, not just the curriculum we like to argue over, but how to live with one another, how to be joyous for one another, how to be a part of society, how to improve their own lives, how to improve this country. That's what we do in our schools.

I implore every member of this chamber not to listen to the outside world that doesn't seem to quite understand the debate we're having here tonight. They have picked up one piece of the debate and not another. They don't understand that what Labor's amendments are trying to do is to erase discrimination. We created the antidiscrimination framework in this country. We've defended section 18(c), and our amendments will also make vilification illegal on the basis of religion, which is an added bonus. We have an opportunity tonight to deliver these things for the Australian people.

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