Depending on your point of view, Mark Latham's Parental Rights Education Bill is either plain common sense or an extreme attack on the transgender community that will endanger vulnerable children.
The One Nation MP, one of the cross-benchers who hold the balance of power in the NSW upper house, argues the bill is necessary to rein in activist teachers spreading radical gender ideology in schools against the wishes of parents.
"There's a lot of concern," Latham says. "It's an existing government policy to get rid of Safe Schools, but if it's coming back in through the backdoor, then the parental rights bill responds to that."
Safe Schools was an optional anti-bullying program for schools with resources to teach about sexual and gender diversity that was used nationally from about 2014. It became a lightning rod for controversy over transgender issues and in 2017 the NSW government replaced it with a broader anti-bullying campaign.
Latham says the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) has 42,000 professional development courses for teachers, some of which include instruction in "gender fluidity" - the idea that gender identity is not only separate from biological sex but also that it is not fixed and can change throughout a person's life. He also claims that in August, for Wear it Purple Day, 80,000 school teachers were sent "penis-tucking guides and other material that sexualises children" by an unknown person in the NSW Department of Education. (A department spokesperson says Latham is referring to external websites operated by third parties and the article referencing the links has now been removed from NSW Education's SchoolBiz portal).
Contentious: Mark Latham does not expect a vote on his education bill until 2021.
Latham's bill specifically bans teachers and all school staff - including non-teaching staff, counsellors, advisers and consultants - from teaching about gender fluidity. But Latham says the problem is broader - he also takes aim at Maitland High School for giving year 7 English students worksheets on Black Lives Matter and the gender pay gap, saying this was "an indulgence" given falling standards and schools need to "get back to basics".
His bill would force schools to consult with parents before teaching anything that veers into the territory of "core values" and allow them to withdraw students from those classes. He defines core values as "ethical and moral standards, social and political values and an understanding of personal identity".
With the backlog of work - including Latham's two education inquiries plus his separate Religious Freedoms and Equality bill - Latham does not expect a vote on his education bill until 2021.
Education Minister Sarah Mitchell would not be drawn on her position. A spokesman for the minister says that as with any private member's bill, the government would respond "after careful consideration and appropriate processes have been followed".
Meanwhile, debate is heating up in the community.
In August the NSW Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby organised a joint public statement from more than 22 organisations, including the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, opposing the bill. The statement says the bill is incompatible with existing anti-discrimination laws and would encourage transphobia and undermine anti-bullying efforts.
Two weeks ago, hundreds of people marched from Taylor Square to Hyde Park to protest the bill in defiance of the COVID-19 public health orders.
April Holcombe, a 29-year-old transgender woman and one of the rally organisers, describes Latham's bill as "one of the most extreme, anti-LGBTQI bills" ever put forward in Australia.
Transgender activist April Holcombe says the ban on acknowledging gender fluidity could be "devastating".
"It's really unprecedented in its attempt to punish anyone in the education system who would stand up for the rights of young trans and gender-diverse people," Holcombe says.
Holcombe says the ban on acknowledging gender fluidity could be "devastating". It could mean a young trans-person would be met by silence if they tried to discuss their identity with a counsellor, or that a teacher might think twice before intervening when a student is bullied for being trans.
Craig Petersen, the president of the NSW Secondary Principals' Council, is also opposed to the bill; he does not understand why it's needed nor why it only applies to government schools.
Petersen says NSW public schools are already bound by a clearly articulated set of values that are embedded in policy and the "controversial issues in schools" policy, which outlines how schools manage contentious issues and consider the views of parents.
"If there are issues with the application of policy, then we're much better off addressing that rather than changing legislation," says Petersen.
He adds that the question of what Latham calls "matters of parental primacy" is complex, given there are transgender students all over the state who are supported by their parents.
"In these cases, the school actually has an obligation ... to educate the school community in a respectful way about these issues to ensure that a particular child is treated with respect and fairness," Petersen says.
Guidance from the NSW Department of Education states that the student should be treated as the gender identified by themselves and their family, including for school sport, toilets and overnight camps. The use of the student's preferred name and pronouns can be enforced by the department's code of conduct for staff and the school's discipline policy for students.
NSW Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby co-convenor Jack Whitney says the Latham bill would also make it harder for teachers or other staff who are transgender.
At an inner west public primary school, which The Sun-Herald has chosen not to name to protect the privacy of the individuals concerned, the after-school care centre is currently supporting one of its carers making the social transition from male to female. The Sun-Herald has obtained the letter sent to parents in July, which included a link to a Huffington Post blog post that stated that "kids are still in a state of flux" and "the idea of not being either all boy or all girl is pretty natural".
One mother, who asked to be anonymous, says to explain the change in name and pronouns to the children, the transgender carer dressed up in full performance drag to read the picture book Julian is a Mermaid, about a boy who dresses up as a mermaid. She says the carer is "kind and generous" but she had concerns about the way the centre handled the situation, specifically the drag performance and choice to share the HuffPo post rather than a more credible source. She says a number of parents have misgivings but are too scared to say anything because they "fear being labelled transphobic or dragged into cancel culture", citing the recent backlash against children's author JK Rowling over her argument that transgender rights should not impinge on the sex-based rights of women and girls born biologically female.
A department spokesperson says there "are no specific guidelines for staff who are transitioning" but the department can provide support to the school should the situation arise.
While Latham calls it the "parental rights" bill, Holcombe says it gives all the power to the most conservative parents. "The idea is basically that children have no rights themselves and parents should have the right to control everything about a child's life, which is something I deeply disagree with," she says.
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