All students should go to school feeling safe and with equal opportunities to learn and grow. Currently, religious schools are exempt from anti-discrimination laws which protect LGBTQ people. This means that LGBTQ students can be expelled and LGBTQ teachers can be fired by religious schools, and this isn’t against the law.
We believe that no student or teacher should be discriminated against simply because of who they are.
In October 2018, leaked sections of the Government’s Religious Freedom Review (the Ruddock review) recommended that laws which allow religious schools to discriminate against LGBTQ students and teachers should not be removed. Massive public outcry forced the Government to reverse its position and the Prime Minister Scott Morrison promised to protect LGBTQ children from discrimination in schools.
There were two Senate inquiries in November 2018 and February 2019, with a clear pathway forward to remove this discrimination enshrined in our laws. But the Morrison Government delayed the issue again by sending it to yet another review, this time to an Australian Law Reform Commission Inquiry. The inquiry won’t report back until April 2020, so until then we will be pushing for the Government to abolish these outdated carve-outs which allow religious schools to discriminate against LGBTQ students, teachers and staff.