Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Our schools play a central role in equipping young Australians with the knowledge and skills they will need to successfully participate in the workforce and make their own way in the world. This government understands that we need to ensure children are provided with the right skills and the right knowledge to get the best out of their education. The best way to ensure the Australian curriculum is working to provide this necessary knowledge and necessary skills base to Australian students is promoting discipline specific knowledge in key areas such as maths, science, English and technology. This government has a sharp focus on decluttering the curriculum where appropriate to ensure teachers can get on with teaching the fundamental skills to students—the skills that students will need to prepare them for the future.

We are committed to working with the states and the territories to support quality schooling for all students, and the provision of successful pathways to further education, training and employment once students complete their learning. The government is already working to ensure the Australian curriculum is providing students with the skills that they will need to have a successful education and success in the workforce and their community post education. There is no more important time for us to be considering this as right now when we are experiencing an economic crisis due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the federal government of the day, of any day, plays an important role in education nationally, it is vital, in considering this private senators' bill before us today, to be clear about the primary role of state governments to deliver education. The states run schools in their respective jurisdictions. Where there are instances of schools or individual teachers teaching something that is against the curriculum, or is just simply inappropriate or wrong, it's primarily the state governments and their education departments which need to take responsibility for putting a stop to that, and that is largely the issue that the government has with this bill and the method it is proposing for attempting to regulate content in schools around the country.

To ensure that the Australian curriculum is working for students, the Morrison coalition government formally commenced a review of the curriculum in July this year. The terms of reference were agreed at 12 June 2020 meeting of the Education Council of federal, state and territory education ministers. The review will be undertaken by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, ACARA. This review is an important step forward in addressing concerns that the Australian curriculum is not providing students with contemporary knowledge and essential skills to lift Australia's performance in literacy, numeracy and science. Given the central role which states play in delivering education, as I said earlier, having primary responsibility for running state schools, this seems to be the most appropriate way to improve the Australian curriculum and ensure that those improvements actually flow through to the students in schools regardless of which state they live in. This review will de-clutter the Australian curriculum so it better serves students' needs and promotes academic excellence.

ACARA has undertaken extensive research and monitoring of the existing curriculum and will be engaging with teachers and stakeholder groups. ACARA will report on its progress, with the initial learning areas of mathematics and technology to be considered by Education Council in June 2021 and all other learning areas in September 2021. The review of the curriculum, as I said, is an integral part, a very important part, of what the Australian government is doing to support quality education in Australia.

The government has concerns about the practical effects of what this Australian Education Legislation Amendment (Prohibiting the Indoctrination of Children) Bill is proposing. The bill would give the Commonwealth the power to make federal education funding to a state or territory conditional on the state or territory having laws enforced that prohibit a staff member at a school promoting partisan views or activities to students and require a staff member of a school when teaching a subject to ensure that there is a balanced presentation of opposing views in relation to that subject.

I spoke in my maiden speech about my own experience with civics education from a wonderful teacher at my primary school who insisted that it was possible for us to learn about how Australian political systems and Australian parliaments operate without necessarily providing us with a partisan view on that operation, and I certainly stand by that. Students at school should not be subjected to partisan political views in a learning environment from any side of political thought. One of the most important reasons why we have civics education at school is so our young kids can learn about how politics operates and, I hope, later in life, determine their own views on what they think about the world and how they think the world operates; it shouldn't be imposed on them by someone providing that education.

Under Australia's constitutional arrangements, the states and territories have responsibility for education in their jurisdictions, and any compliance with the balanced presentation of opposing views proposed in the bill would fall to them in the first instance. But requiring the teaching of two different views on a range of issues also opens up the possibility of unintended consequences. We wouldn't want to see a situation where a teacher or a school has been teaching a particular subject absolutely correctly and appropriately but suddenly feels compelled by this legislation to also present an alternative interpretation or view which most parents would agree is clearly incorrect.

There are also legal considerations to take into account in regards to this proposed bill. This bill does not provide clarity on what constitutes a balanced presentation of opposing views, which is a subjective legal standard and, therefore, difficult to implement. The proposed amendments to the Australian Education Act 2013, I'm advised, run a substantial risk of being subject to constitutional and other legal challenges and may be difficult to interpret, implement, comply with, and enforce.

As I said earlier, it is important that state governments take responsibility for the content taught in their state schools. Parents have a right to expect that their children are being taught factual content, along with basic skills in core subjects such as reading, writing, mathematics and science. And as I said, there is no more important time for us to be considering the alignment of the skills and training that our young people receive in this country, and how those skills and that training will prepare them eventually for the workforce than during very difficult economic times that we now find ourselves in.

But, from time to time, we do see examples around the country where a school or individual teacher strays from this concept that children should be taught factual content—and parents, quite rightly, express concerns with that. One of the areas where I believe it is incredibly important for children to be taught factual, age-appropriate information is in the area of science and biology. I've spoken in the Senate a number of times previously about institutions and elements of our bureaucracy that repeatedly conflate gender identity with sex to the point where some of these bureaucrats can't even tell you what the definition of a woman is. There is very good reason for parents to be concerned about what will be taught to children in schools when government agencies like human rights commissions present misleading information about differences between the two sexes and the laws that are in place to protect sex based rights and services.

As an example that's been raised with me since I've taken an interest in this subject, the Queensland Human Rights Commission advises schools that it is not lawful for school athletics carnivals to operate on the basis of sex because an athletics carnival does not count as competitive sport. This is official advice from the Queensland Human Rights Commission to Queensland schools, yet it is so clearly wrong. Both the Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Act and the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Act clearly allow for sport for children 12 years and older to be operated based on sex. It's absolutely beyond dispute that boys at that age have inherent biological advantages over girls, and to suggest that a school athletics carnival isn't competitive is just farcical.

We also know that there have been numerous examples of schools in Australia teaching students unapproved content about gender fluidity—materials like The Genderbread Person. Parents are entitled to be concerned about this when there is significant contention in the medical community about why there has been such dramatic rise in the number of young children—particularly, and sadly, girls—seeking medical intervention to block puberty or change their bodies to affirm their identified gender. So, in terms of schools having a responsibility to be accurate in what they teach and to avoid teaching opinion or activism and presenting it as fact, that is certainly a concern that is raised often with me and, I suspect, all parliamentarians, and I've spoken about these concerns in this place many, many times.

But this bill that we are debating here today does not seem to be the right way to deal with that issue. It's certainly important for parents to be engaged in their child's education and to be comfortable that what is being taught to their child is accurate and appropriate. To achieve that, there needs to be a joint approach between state governments, the federal government, education departments, schools, principals and teachers. But, given the legal issues that have been raised about the constitutionality of this bill that we're debating here today, as well as the practical considerations about how it could really be implemented, I do not think that this bill can be supported.