Wednesday 23 November 2022 09:14 AM Pauline Hanson bill banning transgender issues from schools attacked by Greens' ... trends now
A teacher turned Greens senator has blasted Pauline Hanson's push to ban transgender issues from being taught in schools.
The One Nation leader managed to revive her 2020 bill after it was rejected by a committee two years ago, and it was debated in the Senate on Wednesday.
Senator Hanson's grievances with the education system included 'Marxism', critical race theory and 'climate change prophecies of doom' being taught along with 'gender fluidity'.
Her bill demanded Education Department bureaucrats draw up a 'balanced' curriculum and that schools only get government funding if their states passed laws banning 'indoctrination'.
Rookie senator Penny Allman-Payne, who was a high school teacher for almost 30 years including teaching sex ed, said the bill was an insult to teachers.
'It's not about balance. It's about hate and propaganda,' she said.
The former head of humanities said school curriculum was based in truth and science and teachers delivered it.
'We don't cherry-pick the bits of science that we agree with or disagree with, we don't cherry-pick the bits of history that we like and are hard to face and we don't discriminate against the children who are in front of us in our classes,' she said.
'I invite you to come into a school and sit in front of a student who has made several attempts on their life because they have been subject to hate and transphobia.
'How dare you use our young people as political footballs. They are not wanting anything except to be accepted for who they are.'
Greens senator Penny Allman-Payne, who was a high school teacher for almost 30 years including teaching sex ed, said Pauline Hanson's bill was an insult to teachers
Senator Allman-Payne said students had a critical thinking skills and their teachers were not interested in indoctrinating them.
Instead, it was Senator Hanson and other proponents of the bill who were 'seeking to indoctrinate people with their hateful and bigoted views in our schools'.
'I will not subject young people in this country to your bigotry and hate. I will stand up every time I see it, and the Greens will call it out,' she said.
'This bill isn't about critical thinking; this bill is about legislating a far-right curriculum.'
Senator Allman-Payne warned that allowing politicians to overpower educators led to some parts of the US banning racism and sexuality being taught in schools and even books being burned.
'This bill is dangerous. As a teacher with over 30 years of experience in our schools, I know it is an injustice to the young people in our schools, and it is an insult to teachers,' she concluded.
Senator Hanson earlier opened the second reading of her bill with a 14-minute speech on everything she saw as wrong with the education system.
She began by saying teachers were supposed to educate, not 'indoctrinate them with Marxism'
'They are not supposed to groom them into believing they can be a boy one day and a girl the next. They are not supposed to recruit them as warriors for climate change or social justice,' she declared.
Senator Hanson claimed the bill was necessary because the education system was 'thoroughly infiltrated by activists and disturbing concepts about race, climate and gender grounded in disproven neo-Marxist theories'.
Parents only discovered this, she claimed, when they were forced to homeschool their children during Covid lockdowns.
'They discovered
