Tuesday, 16 November 2021

Respectful Relationships

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (23:13): (1636) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Education. During last week’s Public Accounts and Estimates Committee inquiry into the 2020–‍21 financial and performance outcomes hearings, where representatives from the Department of Education and Training appeared as witnesses, I asked about the incident at Brauer College in Warrnambool, where male students were forced to stand up at assembly and apologise for their gender. I also asked about the incident where students at Parkdale Secondary College that were heterosexual, white and Christian were asked to stand up in front of their peers and were then told that they were oppressors because of their privilege. My questions to the representatives from the department were:

Were either of these views part of the Victorian curriculum in the last financial year? Is there anything in the Victorian curriculum which you think might have inspired these actions in these schools?

Dr David Howes, the deputy secretary for schools and regional services, strangely told me:

It is the case that as a result of the specific recommendation from the Royal Commission into Family Violence we have been implementing the Respectful Relationships curriculum. So those actions were acknowledged to be outside that, but the Respectful Relationships curriculum has been a very important part … of establishing more respectful relationships, both in schools and across the community.

This was bizarre because I never even asked about the Respectful Relationships program. Clearly senior figures in the minister’s department believe there is a strong link between this program and the far-left indoctrination and politicking occurring in our schools. These incidents are a disgrace, and if there is any correlation between them and the government’s programs, perhaps not only should the schools have apologised but the minister also. Radical identity politics has no place in our education system, and actions must be taken to ensure our curriculum does not propagate it. The action I seek is for the minister to clarify whether he agrees with his deputy secretary’s views that there is a link between these outrageous incidents driven by extreme far-left ideology in Victorian schools and the government’s Respectful Relationships program.