Across Australia, misinformation about Safe Schools has fuelled controversy around the program.
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While a motion supporting the program was passed by Bega Valley Shire Council on Wednesday, Councillors Mitchell Nadin, Tony Allen and Russell Fitzpatrick lodged a rescission motion to be heard at council’s meeting on February 1.
On Wednesday, Cr Nadin claimed under the program children “are being told they can essentially choose their gender”. However, a Safe Schools Coalition Australia (SSCA) spokesperson said Safe Schools was a capacity building program aimed at educators to support their students and was “not a student training program”.
Also, while Cr Nadin stated his opposition to the motion he singled out one of the many people involved in the development of the program, co-founder Roz Ward, saying said she was a Marxist and a radical.
Ms Ward was an employee of La Trobe University contracted to do work on behalf of the Victorian arm of the program until earlier this year, when Victoria decided to fund the program at a state level and left the national coalition. Therefore, she is not responsible for the program in NSW.
When Cr Fitzpatrick made clear his opposition to the motion, he said it was “not part of the local government curriculum”. However, BVSC is not the first council to vote in support of the program, as those in Shoalhaven, Forbes, Kiama and others have already pledged to do so.
In the public domain, misinformation over Safe Schools arose after Liberal Nationals MP George Christensen used parliamentary privilege to say Professor Gary Dowsett from La Trobe University helped establish the program, also alleging he was a “paedophilia advocate”.
But the SSCA spokesperson said Professor Dowsett was not associated with Safe Schools and was not involved in the development of the program.
Statistics state LGBTI youths are five times more likely than the general population to attempt suicide. A recent example of the need for Safe Schools is 13-year-old Tyrone Unsworth from Brisbane, who took his own life after years of homophobic bullying.
Despite cases like this, during Wednesday’s meeting Cr Allen said “there are things that happen at school that shouldn’t, but that’s part of living and we can’t fix that”.
With 80 per cent of homophobic bullying of youths occurring at school, ‘fixing that’ is exactly what we should be trying to do.