2016-11-08
Ms. PENNICUIK (Southern Metropolitan) — I would like to thank Mr Leane, Mr Davis, Dr Carling-Jenkins and Ms Patten for their contributions to this bill this morning. As Ms Patten has just said, it is a very simple bill. It seeks to repeal the exceptions that exist in sections 82 and 83 of the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 and to insert a new section. The new section would be as follows:
84A Discrimination against school students not exempt
Sections 82(2), 83 and 84 do not permit discrimination by a person or body that establishes, directs, controls, administers or is an educational institution that is a school against a student on the basis of the student's sex, sexual orientation, lawful sexual activity, marital status, parental status or gender identity.
I note that Mr Davis, in his contribution, said that the case has not been made for this bill. The case is that students who have those attributes — their sexual orientation, their lawful sexual activity, their marital status, their parental status, their gender identity or their sex — should not be discriminated against. That is the case. The case is a case of principle. I introduced this bill to take these exceptions out of the act.
As I said in the second-reading speech, we are talking about school students, so mostly minors. School-aged students are usually under 18, and of course some students in year 12 will have attained the age of 18, but generally we are talking about people under the age of 18 in schools in compulsory education. Education in Victoria is compulsory to the age of 17, so these students are in religious schools in a compulsory way. As Dr Carling-Jenkins said, they are sent there by their parents, who may have particular views. However, it is my contention and the contention of the Greens that students should be protected from discrimination, particularly that which is based on these attributes.
A person's sexual orientation may just be emerging and often is just emerging during those particular years of their life — the years during which they are in compulsory school education. Also their gender identity is often just emerging during that time, so this is a very difficult time for students. If those students do find themselves in a situation where there is either direct or overt, or even more indirect or implied, disapproval of their sexual orientation or gender identity at a school they attend, we know that that can have and does have profound effects on them. We know that students have reported being discriminated against by their fellow students, but also by schools and in schools, on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity. This is just not acceptable. It has never been acceptable, and it is certainly not acceptable in this day and age.
Mr Leane made a very short contribution to the debate on the bill. He said that the government will not be supporting it because they have their own bill. Their own bill is about employment. It is not about this particular issue, which is about prohibiting discrimination against students in schools. He made the point that government schools are not able to discriminate. Yes, and that is because government schools do not have the exceptions under the act that apply to religious schools.
My answer to Mr Leane would be that the government supports the Safe Schools program — and we support the government fully on this — and the Safe Schools program is designed to prevent discrimination against students in schools. While the government and the Greens support the Safe Schools program, it is very curious to me that the government would still support the exceptions that this bill aims to remove that remain in the Equal Opportunity Act. Those exceptions are contradictory to the whole Safe Schools program. The Safe Schools program is about removing homophobia and transphobia from schools and educating school students about the ramifications of this type of discrimination on everybody. It aims to foster understanding, diversity, acceptance and awareness amongst schoolchildren. By allowing these exceptions to remain in the Equal Opportunity Act the government is contradicting its own professed support for measures that aim to counter discrimination against school students and contradicting its support of the Safe Schools program, which I again say that we support.
Yesterday I was speaking about the government's Equal Opportunity Amendment (Religious Exceptions) Bill 2016, and I said that the government really does need to look at some of the anomalies that exist in the Equal Opportunity Act 2010. This is one of them.
If the government is not going to support the Greens bill today, it certainly should be looking at introducing its own legislation to remove these exceptions because they are completely contradictory to its support for Safe Schools. If you are supporting the Safe Schools program but you are still supporting these exceptions in the act, that is just a contradiction — a complete contradiction. You are sending two messages. One message is that it is okay to have in an act of Parliament that students can be discriminated against on the basis of their sexual orientation, lawful sexual activity, marital status, parental status or gender identity, and on the other hand you are promoting the Safe Schools program, which is about not discriminating based on those attributes. So I think the government needs to come to grips with that particular contradiction in its own policy and its own legislative agenda.
I think I probably spoke in response to Mr Leane for longer than he spoke himself about this bill, which is a bit disappointing given that the government is, as he said, proud of its equality agenda. If the government is proud of its equality agenda, then it should be supporting this bill protecting Victorian students.
I make the point that I made yesterday that most religious schools receive a lot of public funding. Some of them receive the majority of their funding from the public purse — from the taxpayer — so they are highly publicly funded. Many of them are not very transparent about how that public funding is used, but if they are receiving public funding, they should not be able to discriminate against school students. So I am very disappointed with the government's position on this bill.
Mr Davis went on to talk about freedom of religion as a right and that the Equal Opportunity Act at the moment strikes the right balance. Clearly the Greens do not agree that it strikes the right balance, because it allows religious schools to discriminate on these attributes and that is not the right balance. Of course, as I say, we are talking about compulsory schooling. We are talking about students who are minors, who are children, and they are not in a position of power in a school. So the law should not allow them to be discriminated against in any place, and particularly in a place like a school where they are not in a position of power compared with the schools as an institution. The law should be protecting them and not allowing for that discrimination to continue.
Mr Davis read from a letter by Michelle Green from Independent Schools Victoria, which said that schools are committed to no discrimination based on those attributes and which noted her objection that by introducing the bill it is implied that discrimination exists. Mr Davis went on to say that such discrimination should be outlawed. That is what this bill is trying to do, and by introducing this bill the Greens are not insinuating that discrimination exists in all independent schools. In fact I made the point yesterday that we understand that probably in the majority of independent schools — and certainly in a direct or overt way — this discrimination does not exist. Still, that then begs the question: if it does not exist, why should it be allowed to exist under our laws?
Why should there be a law that allows for this discrimination and sends the wrong message to students about their gender identity and sexual orientation? In fact, because we have the attribute of parental status, if a student finds themselves to be pregnant while at school or a student is an unmarried parent, they can be discriminated against under this particular law. I do not think most people in the community would find that to be an acceptable situation, and I acknowledge that in most schools that would not happen and that schools would go out of their way to assist those students. It really does beg the question as to why everybody is not supporting the removal of these exceptions under the act.
Mr Davis also said that we were not able to provide cases in support of the bill. I have made the case in principle for support of the bill. It is very difficult for young people to come forward with their stories if they are being discriminated against, and that is part of the problem. We do have some anecdotal cases which we did mention to Mr Davis in the briefing, and of course, for obvious reasons, people are not necessarily wanting to have those made public. There is evidence of bullying of students based on gender identity and sexual orientation already in the public realm, and that is why this bill should be supported.
Dr Carling-Jenkins made similar points, and she said the reality is that students are not expelled due to their sexuality or if their belief or activity is against the ethos of the religion of the particular school. Again, I would say if that is the case, then that should be an argument in support of the bill removing these exceptions from the act. Dr Carling-Jenkins also read from a letter. I did not catch exactly who the letter was from, but she read from a letter that says a legislative remedy is not the way to go. The fact is that we already have a law which allows discrimination. What I am trying to do is remove that provision from the law. I make the point that this legislative remedy, which is amending the existing act, is in fact the way to go, because having these types of provisions in the law does send the wrong message to the community and particularly to those students who may be struggling with their sexual orientation or gender identity that it is okay under a Victorian act of Parliament to discriminate against them if they are attending a religious school. I do not think that is a message that should be sent, and they are not provisions that should remain in a Victorian statute.
Quoting from another letter, Dr Carling-Jenkins said that this bill will violate the values of schools and parents and undermine the private school sector. I just do not believe that that is the case. These exceptions have already been removed in some states, and the private school sectors have continued without the ability to discriminate against their students.
I disagree with the points made by Mr Davis and Dr Carling-Jenkins. I should say, too, that there were some points raised by Mr Leane and Mr Davis about consultation. The Greens wrote to every independent school in Victoria. We did not receive responses from the schools necessarily. We did receive responses from the peak bodies. Most of them made the sorts of points that Mr Davis has already made and that Dr Carling-Jenkins has raised, which I do not agree with.
One point raised was whether this bill will fall foul of section 39. That was certainly raised by Independent Schools Victoria in their letter. We have checked this with the parliamentary counsel, and they have assured us that section 39 would still remain in force. These amendments after sections 82 and 83 — —
The ACTING PRESIDENT (Mr Melhem) — Order! The member's time has expired.