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

Thank you. I am appalled by what has happened in the past week in this country. I applaud the government and the opposition for what they are planning to do about changing some of the discrepancies in the sexual discrimination laws around independent schools. But what angered me is that, for 48 hours last week, the government, the opposition and, for a minute there, even the Greens sat back when the moral duty of this country, of this government and of this parliament was to defend children. We had a situation where the Prime Minister of this country stood there and kept saying, 'The existing laws, the existing laws, the existing laws.'

The fact is: we had Mr Hawke getting up and saying that independent schools were entitled to expel children and ban children because of their sexual orientation—that was a disgrace—and that teachers should not be allowed to teach because of their sexual proclivities. It was just a lack of common decency. I thought to myself: I'm an atheist, but what if I were a churchgoing person or a person of faith who had three children and one of my children—a teenager—had doubts about their feelings or sexual orientation? Two of my children would be able to go to an independent school, but the third one wouldn't. Maybe at 14 or 15 that child, having been refused permission to go to the school, then goes out and hangs himself or herself, as has happened in this country so many times in recent years.

The fact that taxpayers' money is going to fund these schools is wrong. That is why I believe the government should work with the states and territories to achieve consistency in antidiscrimination laws, should—and I believe this passionately—withhold federal funding from any school which engages in discrimination against teachers or students on the basis of their sexual orientation and should deny or must deny charity tax concessions to any organisation or commission responsible for a school that engages in such discrimination.

This is 2018. From what I read and heard last week, it is like we're going back to the 1950s. What made it even more personal and more hard for me is that I spent eight hours listening to horror stories as the chair of the redress committee into sexual abuse of institutionalised children in this country, and then to get home and read, when parts of the Ruddock report were released in The Sydney Morning Herald, all this stuff about the fact that there are still schools that can differentiate against children was just disgusting. They didn't seem to mind having paedophile teachers in their schools for decades—that was seen to be fine; they were there for decades—and yet now they discriminate against teachers who may be of a different sexuality than I am or students who may be feeling that way. I just think it's a disgraceful thing.

I'm glad that territories are going to get involved—I hope they're going to get involved—and that the government and the opposition are going to get involved. Some of the senators coming up to speak will, I believe, gut and destroy my motion today. If you do, look hard and long at yourselves, because we're looking after kids here. I ask a question I asked for 40 years as a journalist: who's looking after the children? I ask that because, right now, in this building and in this government, we are not looking after the children.