PM given lifeline on gay pupil bill

Scott Morrison has been given extra time to come up with a solution to protect gay students from discrimination.

Labor’s Senate leader Penny Wong said the deferral of the bill was an ‘outrage’. Picture: AAP

Scott Morrison has been given extra time to come up with a legislative solution to protect gay stud­ents from discrimination in faith-based schools while safeguarding religious freedom after a Labor bill to deal with the issue was deferred until at least February.

The government yesterday sec­ure­­d the support of the two Centre Alliance senators to send the ­opposition bill off to a Senate committee for further examination, in a move branded an “outrage” by Labor Senate leader Penny Wong.

She accused the government of up-ending the Senate to dodge a vote on the bill because it feared having the matter considered by the House of Representatives, where the Coalition no longer commands a majority.

“Call an election instead of lying the way you have about this issue,” she told parliament.

She said gay students “now face the prospect of returning to school next year knowing they can be ­expelled simply for being gay”.

Senator Rex Patrick said he and senator Stirling Griff wanted time to consider a series of government amendments to the bill designe­d to protect the freedom of religious schools to operate ­according to their faith.

“It has been put to us that no child has been suspended or ­expelled from any school on the basis of sexual orientation or gende­r identity. So in those circumst­ances we are not dealing with an emergency situation,” Senator Patrick said.

He said Centre Alliance did not want to see the legislation “hijacke­d” by politics.

The proposed government amendments would explicitly protec­t the right of faith-based schools to teach in accordance with their religious doctrine, and impose rules without facing claims of sex discrimination.

They would also require the Human Rights Commission to consider the best interests of the student and the religious nature of the school when determining whether a rule imposed by the ­institution was reasonable.

Attorney-General Christian Porter said the government was “utterly committed” to removing the exemptions in the Sex Discriminat­ion Act allowing discrimin­ation against school stud­ents based on gender identity or sexual orientation, but changes were needed to protect the ability of religious schools to maintain rules that reflected their beliefs.

“There needs to be a balance between the rights of people to not be discriminated against, and the rights of religious people to have schools that reflect their religion,” he told Sky News.

During the Senate debate, Labor’s Jacinta Collins moved a motion stating it was not the intent of the bill to prevent religious schools from teaching “in accordance with the doctrines, tenets, belief­s or teachings of a particular religion or creed”.

Labor elected not to amend the wording of the bill itself.

Christian Schools Australia executive officer Mark Spencer urged senators to await the release of the Ruddock review into ­religious freedom — which the government has been sitting on since May — before considering the matter. “Hundreds of thousands of parents choose to send their children to schools with faith values, because these values are important to them,” he said.

The Sex Discrimination Act has included exemptions for ­religious schools since its introduction in 1984.