OPEN LETTER

The Hon. Malcolm Turnbull, MP  

Friday 18 March, 2016

Dear Prime Minister

We are dismayed to hear of your administration’s decision to dismantle the Safe Schools program today, despite the recent review which found the program to be justified.

This program is a small but crucial initiative designed to prevent the vulnerability of non-heterosexual and gender diverse youth to endemic bullying, harassment and social exclusion at school – conditions that are known to lead to suicide, self-harm and chronic mental illness among these groups.

By caving in to political and religious extremists who have called on the government to dismantle this crucial program, your administration has demonstrated not only spinelessness but a complete lack of moral integrity.  The vast majority of Australians do not share the views of these toxic, dangerous and divisive individuals.

Today your government also announced that it will not renew the $8 million worth of funding the federal government committed to the development and implementation of this program.

We note that this amount represents a mere 0.08% of the $243.8 million the federal government has provided over 2014 - 2018 to fund chaplains and religious functionaries to operate within Australian schools.

According to a 2013 Win-Gallop poll, 63% of the Australian population is not religious, but this allocation of taxpayer money is apparently immune to critical review.

Given these circumstances, we call on the Federal government to conduct a review of the entire school curriculum, and in particular the substantial resources it directs towards religious instruction in schools, on the basis that the curriculum in general, and the federal investment in religious instruction in particular, is indoctrinating our nation’s youth in relation to matters of gender and sexuality.

In particular, these programs are imposing not only religious ideology, but a particular gendered and sexual ideology – namely, heterosexist culture – on the youth of a nation whose secular character is enshrined in its constitution.

We call on the government to subject these programs to rigorous, non-partisan critical review on this basis, in order to fulfil its duty to ensure social justice and ethical parity for all Australian citizens

Yours sincerely

Kane Race Associate Professor, University of Sydney