Labor at odds on failed bid to protect gay students

Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten have failed to secure a deal to protect gay school students from discrimination.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten. Picture: Gary Ramage

Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten have failed to secure a deal to protect gay school students from discrimination after clashing over how best to preserve the core freedoms of faith-based educators.

The issue has been deferred until February when parliament returns, with the Opposition Leader and his deputy Tanya Plibersek appearing to offer different messages to explain the impasse after ­rejecting the Prime Minister’s offer of a conscience vote.

Mr Shorten said the deferral of the issue was a “sensible course of action” to help secure a better legislative solution that would balance the competing rights of students and schools.

But Ms Plibersek argued the ­solution was “simple”. She said ­existing protections for religious schools, allowing them the ability to discriminate against gay students, should be removed, and dismissed concerns from the sector as part of a right-wing “scare campaign”.

Defending its decision to reject a conscience vote on a bill proposed by Mr Morrison, Labor said it had obtained legal advice showing that it would “replace one form of discrimination with another”.

The Morrison bill would have ensured that any “teaching ­activity” undertaken “in good faith in accordance with the doctrines, tenets, beliefs or teachings of a ­religion” would be protected from a discrimination claim under the Sex Discrimination Act.

The legal advice to Mr Shorten — provided by Mark Gibian SC — said this provision would further entrench discrimination against gay students.

“A teacher or school could provide inferior instruction to a student on the basis of the student’s sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status or, indeed, exclude that student from instruction entirely,” Mr Gibian said.

Mr Gibian was listed as a member of the internal appeals tribunal at the NSW state Labor conference at the end of June and advised the Transport Workers Union during the trade union royal commission.

Labor was forced in the Senate to agree to the deferral of its own bill to better protect gay students after Centre Alliance — which controls two votes in the upper house — made clear it would support a crucial government amendment.

The amendment contained the same protection for religious schools as that contained in the Morrison bill. Its adoption by the Senate would have forced Labor to vote against its own bill.

Labor Senate leader Penny Wong attacked Centre Alliance for backing the government’s amendment and conceded the opposition’s bill would be “delayed until next year”.

Attorney-General Christian Porter said Labor was responsible for the failure to better protect gay students because it was “not prepared to accept the common-sense principle that religious schools should be able to impose reasonable school rules evenly on all of their students”.

“Worst of all, Bill Shorten will not agree to the common-sense process of allowing a conscience vote of all members to allow these common-sense changes to happen right now,” Mr Porter said.

LNP senator Amanda Stoker said it was extraordinary Labor was opposed to an amendment clarifying that it was not unlawful for a religious school to teach the doctrines of its religion in good faith. She argued Labor’s real agenda was to “gut religious schools of their religious foundation”.

Religious groups were also concerned at Labor’s proposed overhaul of section 37 of the Sex Discrimination Act, arguing it would have consequences that extended far beyond the class room.