Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I found last week pretty difficult. We had two full days of hearings into the proposed legislation to end discrimination in schools, the Sex Discrimination Amendment (Removing Discrimination Against Students) Bill 2018. Our inquiry heard and the submissions outlined story after story about the damage being done to LGBTIQ people—young and old, students and staff—through ongoing discrimination against them in some faith based schools.

We heard stories like that from a teacher who is a member of the Independent Education Union. The teacher, working in a learning support role, shared their experience of some of their young students who were bullied because they were perceived to be gay. The first was a boy in year 5 who had started to think and write about his attraction to boys, who was told by his bullies that being gay was demonic, that God hated him and that he was going to hell. When questioned by the teacher, the bully said, 'We were just telling him what the Bible says, and it's what God says.' On one occasion when crossing a road one student said to the boy that he should stay on the road and get run over and die because he was gay and God hated him. The student froze and had to be pulled off the road by one of his friends. The teacher logged an incident report but was later told that it had been lost, so there was no record. The boy tried to harm himself. Again he was told he was going to hell and was possessed by a demon. The teacher persisted in writing up incident reports after each incident. Eventually the bullies were suspended, but the victim was being treated as though he was the real problem, and the teacher was warned against 'overstepping my role'. The teacher then told of coming to terms with their own sexuality at the same time as this was happening, acknowledging that they could not safely tell anyone at the school. They eventually had their position at the school cut. They write: 'So far as I'm aware I lost my job not because I was gay; I lost my job just for trying to ensure a safe environment for my gay students.'

The teacher also wrote about a second boy, a 12-year-old, who had a very outgoing, flamboyant personality and was a talented singer and actor. Over the course of the year, the student was getting more and more negative attention from his class teachers and senior staff over issues like his attitude and emotionality and was the target of some verbal homophobic bullying from other students. One day the teacher found him curled up on the floor, sobbing and shaking, behind a door: 'He told me that the deputy principal had said that he didn't like the way he talked.' The deputy principal had said to his student: 'You disgust me.' The boy described feeling angry and confused because he didn't know how to be a different person from who he was.

This is absolutely heartbreaking. No person, let alone a 12-year-old, should ever be made to feel ashamed of who they are, and no person, let alone a child, should ever experience this harassment, bullying and shaming behaviour anywhere in society, let alone in a school and let alone from a teacher. The teacher said, 'Schools like my former workplace rely on the exemptions, not necessarily directly, to expel students or sack staff, but indirectly, to legitimise their poor treatment of LGBT students and staff.' Schools are supposed to be safe places where teachers support and nurture young people, not where teachers tell students, 'You disgust me.'

During our inquiry, we considered the government's proposed amendments to the removing discrimination against students bill. If these amendments were adopted, they would further entrench the rights of religious schools to discriminate against LGBTIQ+ students, staff and teachers. Our Greens amendments, in contrast, would remove discrimination against staff as well as students, because otherwise schools will continue to be unsafe places for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender diverse and queer students, teachers and other staff. LGBTIQ people should not walk through the school gates every morning and wonder if they'll be marched out by the afternoon just because of who they are. The Greens believe that religious schools should be able to teach according the doctrines of their faith, but not in a way that causes harm to LGBTIQ+ people. We know that it's possible for faith based schools to teach their faith and not discriminate against same-sex attracted and gender-diverse people, because this is how it's been in Tasmania and Queensland for decades. The rest of Australia needs to catch up. It's time to remove all discrimination in our schools. We can and we must—no ifs, no buts.

I was at the huge 'Stop Adani' rally out the front of Parliament House this morning, and I'll be at the forest rally out the front tomorrow. We have millions of young people all over the world marching, protesting and making their voices heard for action on climate change and for action to protect nature and our life support systems from the blow after blow of fires, floods, fish kills, coral bleaching and flying foxes literally falling dead out of the sky in their tens of thousands after the furnace of a supercharged hot day. Australia is in the grip of an extinction crisis. We have the worst mammal extinction rate in the world. Let that sink in. We are the second worst in the world for total biodiversity loss, beaten only by Indonesia. And it's only getting worse, with ongoing habitat destruction through logging and land clearing and ongoing climate change from the burning of coal and gas and oil. We have 477 animals on our national threatened and endangered species list, including the critically endangered Leadbeater's possum in Victoria and the critically endangered swift parrot in Tasmania, with fewer than 2,000 left in the wild. Even our beloved koala, a global icon, is predicted to become extinct in New South Wales if the current trajectory of habitat destruction continues. This is a tragedy unfolding before our very eyes and a tragedy that is entirely preventable. We have utterly weak federal environment laws that are failing to protect nature, and we have the Labor, Liberal and National parties standing by as the precious natural places that provide homes for our threatened animals get destroyed.

I'm currently chairing a Senate inquiry into Australia's animal extinction crisis. We've seen and heard horrifying evidence of environmental destruction. At the Tasmanian hearings last week, we heard explosive testimony from Dr Matthew Webb, a scientist at the ANU who had previously worked in the Tasmanian state government. He told us:

There's this very, very strong top-down political pressure on the people remaining within government to approve whatever these developments or logging operations are, and it's very difficult for anyone to give really honest, clear advice anymore … because, quite frankly, if you have kids and a mortgage, you need to keep your job.

When asked whether he was suggesting that public servants are compromising their advice because they're worried about losing their jobs, Dr Webb replied, 'Most certainly.' At the Melbourne hearings last year, we heard staggering testimony regarding the forest task force that the Andrews government in Victoria set up before the 2014 elections as an election promise. The purpose of the task force was to find a way forward that would protect precious areas of forest in the Great Forest National Park and other reserves while giving certainty to industry. Cut to after the election: the task force made up of environmentalists, industry and unions laboured for well over a year but in the end was disbanded without resolution. Our inquiry learned that Premier Andrews broke his election promise, because VicForests, the state owned logging company, got their way. VicForests would not have been able to fulfil their future contracts if the parks were declared, so the logging destroying critical natural habitat continues.

You would think our federal environment laws would be able to override something so destructive as logging and woodchipping—but no. Logging done under the regional forest agreements is effectively exempt from our national environment laws. When will the Labor-Liberal-National parties sit up and take notice that our very future is on the brink? It's astounding and appalling that a country as wealthy as ours is robbing future generations of their chance to know and love our nature and wildlife.

I've been so inspired by the young people I've met who are involved in politics and protest for nature and for climate. For their sake, we need action to protect our future now—not after the next election, not in a year or five or 10 years but now!