Page 2566 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 2 July 2008
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were the architects of this measure. I gather the designer has now left that role. We cannot be responsible for the ABC at a territory level but we can do something in terms of our own ACT education department.
Despite an avalanche of criticism and outrage from parents, the website is currently still available for viewing on the internet and is still recommended for children by the ACT government under the ACT sustainable schools initiative.
The ACT government is by no means the only guilty party in this disgraceful instance of child propaganda. The website, as I said, was funded by the Victorian government and is hosted by the ABC. And moreover the website is explicitly recommended for children by at least four state and territory governments that I am aware of. I find it ironic that yesterday we were talking about protecting children and here we are looking at a matter today which just shows how we are not protecting young, impressionable children, by subjecting them to this sort of nonsense.
This kind of government-funded propaganda masquerading as education is unacceptable in civilised society. The fact that this is directed at young children in public schools is something of which I strongly disapprove.
Mr Barr: It is all schools.
MR MULCAHY: The minister responds and says, “It is all schools,” as though that somehow makes it right. I had issues when my own children were in non-government schools, coming home and telling me that they were meant to do various things that some teacher had decided to impose on them without reference to parents. It does not make it any better.
The purpose of this bill is to address what we here have direct responsibility for, and that is the public system. I do not condone it, whether it is public or private. Parents should not have to put up with this kind of propaganda in their public schools, hidden away from their view in obscure policies and curricula dreamt up by activist bureaucrats. Parents do need some kind of safeguard against this kind of abusive process, and the bill I have introduced will provide that safeguard.
In conclusion, I think that the issue here is not saying that things cannot be taught. The issue here is saying that parents, if there are going to be matters of a political or sexual nature rolled out to students, particularly youngsters of the age I am talking about—and this is where I first became aware of it; some little children who came home with some of this propaganda and started showing it to their parents—then I think that we need to put in reasonable measures that are not unduly cumbersome to observe but at the same time provide parents with a measure of confidence that their children will not be subject to propaganda by people in the education department who think it is fair game.
I first encountered this approach in the early 1980s—in fact in New South Wales. I met with a group of people involved in curricula, and I was staggered; it was the first time I had really become aware of how politicised some of the people designing curricula were willing to be to try to influence the thinking of children and minors on issues that were important to them politically.
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