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

by leave—I will be very brief, because I've expressed my views on this appalling situation many times before. I want to go on record as saying I support the amendments by the Greens to this bill, that have now been abandoned, to ban discrimination by independent schools against any pupil on the grounds of their sexual orientation. I feel as fervently on the issue of discrimination against teachers, too. I am surprised and disappointed, but, after being so gung-ho about protecting gay teachers last week, the opposition dropped the second part from its bill when it got here. That is why I supported several important Greens amendments which I believe would have passed and could have passed. I'm not surprised that the government has abandoned teacher protection for now, because Prime Minister Morrison made it quite clear to me personally that that would not happen. The Libs also, of course, have watered down the gay student protection with some of their amendments today. Now, of course, they've kicked it all to the long grass, as somebody earlier said.

I had a failed motion on this issue earlier this year, and another failed one that would have stripped discriminatory schools of any government funding or charity tax concessions. I still stand by that, although it failed. I suspect that the government and the opposition feared Catholic and Uniting school backlashes, even though neither has threatened, as far as I know, to expel a child or sack a teacher solely because of their sexual orientation.

Finally, going back to a hypothetical I've raised before in here and with the PM: if I were a person of faith—and I'm not—and I had three teenage kids, two straight and one possibly gay or unsure of their sexuality, could two of my kids go to a school of my choice and the third not be allowed to? How the hell do you explain that to a possibly troubled, insecure child? That's why what has happened here today is a bloody disgrace.