Greens Counter Bernardi’s Anti-Safe Schools Petition With 7K Signatures

Yesterday, Malcolm Turnbull caved into pressure from conservative Senator Cory Bernardi and other Coalition backbenchers and requested an investigation into the anti-bullying Safe Schools Coalition program, which has been helping LGBTQI kids since it was launched in 2013.

Bernardi – who yesterday said the program was “indoctrinating” children – has been one of the most vocal against the campaign, and launched a petition last week to remove federal funding from this overwhelmingly positive and very very bloody necessary program. (Sydney alone has seen two homophobic assaults occur just last weekend, and ya’ wonder why we need to normalise being queer, Cory??)

Well, yesterday, that pressure reached its ugly head, with this utterly useless investigation ordered.

Any number of politicians have expressed their disgust with this turn of events, including Greens leader Richard Di Natale telling ABC Radio this morning that it was “disgraceful“, a “huge disappointment“, and was a case of Turnbull “caving in to those right wing elements inside his party, and not showing any leadership.”

And then there’s this absolutely blistering commentary from Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews, which ended with suggesting that young LGTBQI kids knew more about love and acceptance than Cory Bernardi and is the mother of all mic drops.

Yesterday, the Greens launched their own petition to counter the attack on the Safe Schools Coalition program, which they confirmed to PEDESTRIAN.TV has 7,300+ signatures and growing.

Bernardi’s petition? It got 9,400, so if you want to add your support against this bullshit campaign and help smash Bernardi’s numbers, sign the petition here: http://campaigns.greens.org.au/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1792&ea.campaign.id=48027 

The Conversation also took on this whole ‘Safe Schools is indoctrinating students and bullying people into taking part’ slog and came up with some key findings, including: 

• School-based inclusion / anti-bullying policies have a direct impact on same sex attracted students’ health and well-being
• No, schools are not being “pressured” to work with the Safe Schools Coalition (but about 500 of them are)
• No, students are not being “indoctrinated”
• No, they’re not being exposed to concepts like gender and sexuality too young
• This whole thing is stupid why is Bernardi so stupid. (Paraphrased.)

And then, there’s this:

Clearly worthy of investigation:
School Chaplains ($243.8mil 4 years)
Safe Schools for LGBTIQ teens ($8mil 4 years) https://t.co/QSdcv2dHGL

— Michael Williams (@mmccwill) February 23, 2016

“Our schools should be places of learning, not indoctrination” says Bernardi. That’s it for school chaplains then – https://t.co/3Sh4tU0Z9N

— Scott Ludlam (@SenatorLudlam) February 23, 2016

Photo: ABC / Safe Schools Coalition.