One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has spoken at the second reading on her Australian Education Legislation Amendment (Prohibiting the Indoctrination of Children) Bill 2020 in Federal Parliament on Monday.
The Bill, first introduced by Senator Hanson in February, proposes that schools receiving Commonwealth funding should be forced to teach a “balanced” curriculum, and make school staff liaise with parents over particular issues, specifically targeting LGBTIQ+ issues and climate change.
According to Senator Hanson’s website, The Prohibiting the Indoctrination of Children Bill is designed to censor “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 in February.
“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.”
Speaking in the Senate on Monday, Senator Hanson continued to speak out against trans and gender diverse young people at the second reading.
“The bill seeks to tie federal education funding to the existence of state and territory legislation which prohibits indoctrination in schools,” Hanson said.
“Gender fluidity theory is widely taught in schools, even though it is a medical and scientific fact that inheritance from your father of a Y chromosome makes you a biological male and inheritance from your father of an X chromosome makes you a biological female.”
“Most parents do not support the promotion of gender fluidity theory being taught in schools, and they are quite right because it is dangerous.”
Senator Hanson went on to accuse educators of creating “gender confusion” in schools.
“In Queensland, some teachers are reading stories like The Gender Fairy to four- and five-year-old children. The Gender Fairy shows young children that they can choose their gender because their body parts don’t make them a boy or a girl. In Western Australia, some eight-year-olds are spending learning time dressing up as the opposite sex using a government supplied box of dress-up clothes,” Senator Hanson continued.
“By the time these students are in year 9 they will have a new vocabulary based on gender diversity theory and they will have been taught the art of sex texting and advanced sexual techniques.”
Senators from Labor, The Greens and the Liberal Party all rose to speak against Senator Hanson’s Bill.
Queensland Labor Senator and member of the LGBTIQ+ community Nita Green said the Bill’s amendments would undermine evidence based teaching in our schools.
“Our kids need to be learning the facts about science and history, not about conspiracy theories,” Senator Green said.
“The bill is offensive to teachers, who, like other essential workers, have been working incredibly hard during this pandemic. This bill is damaging, poorly drafted and should not be passed.”
NSW Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi rose to slam the Bill as transphobic and anti-science.
“Students benefit from having their thinking challenged and from considering ideas and subjects through multiple lenses. But let’s be clear that ensuring this is not the intention nor the anticipated outcome of this piece of legislation that we are debating here today,” Senator Faruqi said.
“This is a dangerous and pathetic piece of legislation. There is no more or less to say about it. It is an attempt to force a rewrite of the curriculum to require teaching of climate denialism and harmful conservative ideas of gender and sexuality.”
Victorian Liberal Senator David Van responded third, confirming the government will not be supporting the Bill due to the constitutional challenges it would present, and showing some support for One Nation’s intentions.
“The government will not be supporting this bill, no matter how well intentioned the senators from One Nation think they are being. That’s not to say I don’t have some sympathy for what they’re trying to achieve,” Senator Van said.
“All too often I’ve had complaints from parents and heard from their children about being scared to death at school by lessons on climate change—not just the fact, but about how they should be scared—and scaring of children is not something that should happen in the classroom.”
Senator Van went on to argue that the subjective nature of Senator Hanson’s Bill would be difficult to interpret or enforce.
“One of the situations that we do not want to see with our education system is teachers wasting their time dealing with disgruntled parents who are upset about the level of balance provided within the classroom.”
OIP Staff
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