Page 4161 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 24 October 2018
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Of course, it should be no surprise that hard right conservatives in the ACT will not support such a move. There should be no surprise at all that the ACT has such hard right conservatives. You can see now from the debate before us that the Canberra Liberals do not welcome this debate. They seek to delay. They are concerned, but they want to wait, whatever that means. They would rather carry on about the rights of others than raise the fact that LGBTIQ kids are, at a minimum, five times more likely to commit suicide than their heterosexual peers or that gay teachers are getting fired right now in the ACT. It even happened to one of my teachers.
The federal government likes to say that it is standing up against discrimination by banning schools from expelling kids for who they are. The fact that teachers and other staff are still at risk under the proposed federal legislation says a lot about their values. They know they cannot pick on gay kids; that is a bridge too far. But they think they can get away with marginalising gay adults. So they will just keep trying that.
One of the better quotes in the last week came from federal Labor MP Terri Butler:
A gay teacher doesn’t teach gay maths. They just teach maths.
Those that have a problem with gay teachers in classrooms often subscribe to the insidious, wrong and downright outrageous notion that gay people are predators or that they will spread their sexuality to those they teach. It is disgusting; it is wrong.
The federal Liberals say that Labor brought this legislation in, that federal Labor moved the bill that allowed discrimination back when they were in government last. I respect my colleagues on the hill, but they got it wrong. They are working to change it; they admit that they made a mistake. That is a measure of leadership.
We are seeing a reckoning today. Religious beliefs about gay people from thousands of years ago are not instructive as to how we should treat LGBTIQ Canberrans in the education sector. We know that people are born as they are. We know that some people’s journeys to discovery are not straightforward. Discrimination against gay people is no more acceptable than discrimination against people of colour, women, the young or the old, those of differing parental or marital status, those of differing employment status, those of differing religious views or the disabled. And while people have a right to their faith, they do not have a right to discriminate against someone for being born who they are. It is time to change our laws to protect our LGBTIQ community.
MR STEEL (Murrumbidgee—Minister for City Services, Minister for Community Services and Facilities, Minister for Multicultural Affairs and Minister for Roads) (12.01): Over the last two weeks Canberrans have had an open and honest discussion about discrimination, since the leaked Ruddock review on religious freedom suggested more discrimination is needed. The ACT is the most LGBTIQ welcoming and inclusive jurisdiction in Australia, and Canberrans do not stand for discrimination.
As a human rights jurisdiction the ACT is committed to ongoing reforms to promote the equality of all Canberrans. I promised the community at the last election that
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