One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson has announced new bill that aims to counteract programs that teach LGBTIQ+ issues and climate change to students.
According to Senator Hanson’s website, The Prohibiting the Indoctrination of Children Bill is designed to target “skewed versions of history and science, and sexualised school programs that indoctrinate young children with controversies like gender fluidity.”
The Bill was introduced and read for a first time in Canberra on Monday 10th February.
“Children are easy targets of all sorts of false and left-leaning teachings and parents have had a gut full of seeing the people they entrust with teaching their children, pushing their own agendas,” Senator Hanson said.
“Children should be given balanced information, including views about political, historic and scientific matters, and they should be very strongly encouraged to think critically about what they are told and learn to make up their own informed views.
“When children graduate from school, they need skills in historic research and scientific thinking, which will support them throughout their lives.”
The Bill proposes that schools receiving Commonwealth funding should be forced to teach a “balanced” curriculum, and make school staff liaise with parents over particular issues.
Hanson’s Bill does not include a definition of ‘balance’ in this case, though it appears to be calling for the inclusion of dangerous ideas; such as climate change denial, limited sex education and anti-LGBTIQ+ beliefs.
“The Bill recognises parents across Australia who have concerns about biased teachings, they don’t like the teaching of non-traditional and controversial views that don’t give the full picture; they want to protect and strengthen their children, and this Bill does that.”
Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi has responded to the Bill, arguing that it would “rewrite the curriculum to require teaching of climate denialism and dangerous conservative ideas of gender and sexuality.”
“Senator Hanson’s attempt to gag teachers and stuff the curriculum full of right-wing conspiracy theories would be laughable if it weren’t so terrifying.
“The curriculum should be based on evidence and expertise not Pauline Hanson’s latest bigoted thought bubble.”
“There is no place for this kind of censorship of teachers in our democracy and our schools.”
“This bill belongs nowhere but in the bin. Hanson’s spurious claims that human-caused climate change is ‘unsubstantiated’ and schools ‘teach gender fluidity and realignment to infants’ can go with it.
“It’s vital every child learns the realities of the climate crisis, the truth of Australia’s settler-colonial past and how to have respectful relationships in the context of a comprehensive sex education.
“Teachers, working with educational experts, do a great job supporting students, often working without the resources they need. They certainly don’t need One Nation’s meddling.”
OIP Staff
