Tuesday, 2 August 2022

LGBTIQA+ equality

Ms WARD (Eltham) (16:16): I tell you what, never let the truth get in—

The SPEAKER: Just before the member for Eltham continues, member for Caulfield, I remind you to call members by their correct titles.

Ms WARD: Thank you, Speaker. Yes, never let the truth get in the way of a bumbling, incomprehensible 15 minutes of I am not really quite sure what. I tell you what, though, I do grieve for people who only care about division and exclusion—those people who see division and exclusion as their only path to government and will do everything in their power to make sure that they sow those terrible seeds. I grieve for those who are so consumed with hate and bigotry that they can only peddle hurt, and I grieve for a party that preselects people who describe transgender laws as ‘my number one issue’. I would have thought that your number one issue would be about equality in this state, would be about fairness in this state or would be about creating economic opportunity in this state so that people can live their best lives and realise the people that they are to be, the integral people that they are. Instead we have got a political party that nurtures hatred, that nurtures division and that promotes those people. We have a party—and I grieve for a political party that is unable to show leadership in showing what equality looks like—that cannot show what empathy looks like. There is a lack of leadership on the other side of the house when it comes to this state and when it comes to inclusion in this state, and for this today I grieve.

I grieve for a party that does not have at their core the desire to see Victorians create a happy and inclusive community. I grieve for a party that is so focused on hatred that it can see nothing else. What we have got is a weak leader and a weak party. We need to be comfortable in our own skin, and we need to have a community around us that supports us for who we are. We need to be proud of ourselves, and we need to be proud of those people around us. We need to show pride. I am really proud to be part of a government that has created Victoria’s first Pride Centre. Not so long ago I went with a few other colleagues and had a visit to the Pride Centre, and it is amazing. It is a beautiful space. It is a space that is inclusive of all Victorians. It is there to celebrate our rainbow community, but it is inclusive for everyone, and they are so clear and determined in that goal to be inclusive for everyone. You walk into this space that is beautiful—this beautiful organic structure that is around you—and that has so many supports in there. You become very aware of and very clear on how important safe spaces are for vulnerable people, and our Pride Centre is one such place. It is a safe place.

I believe that it is the role of government to create various forms of pride centres all over our state where people can feel safe no matter who they are, no matter who they love and no matter what they look like. For those opposite to encourage people who do not want that pride and who do not want people to feel safe in this state is appalling, and I absolutely grieve for that, because every Victorian should feel safe in this state. When you have got people in positions of leadership who think it is okay to peddle hate and who think it is okay to denigrate different people, you are not creating those safe spaces. All you are doing is entrenching bigotry, and you are allowing bigots to be vocal, to be nasty, to be mean, to be hurtful and to be violent. These things need to be condemned, and that is what leadership is. Leadership stamps out that kind of bigotry. Leadership stamps out that kind of hate. And we are not seeing it from those opposite, because they continue to preselect people who peddle this rubbish, people who want to hurt other people. That is not what politics should be about. Politics should be about looking after the people in this state, not creating hurt, not creating division.

Speaker, like you, I know people who have got rainbow families, but I also know kids who are transgender. One of my daughter’s closest friends is trans. People I went to mothers group with, one of their kids is trans. I have got people around me in my community who have got trans kids who are horrified at the conversations that they hear being held in public by people who are supposed to be leaders, people who make their kids feel unsafe. These parents are furious, and they have got every right to be, because their kids have got every right to be safe in this state and these kids have got the right for their political leaders to show that they are safe, to make policies that make them feel safe and to talk about safe and inclusive language. These kids in my community are safe because I live in a good community, a community that cares about other people.

One of the important parts of our leadership was in 2010 when we brought in Safe Schools. Now, Eltham High School was one of the four pilot schools for Safe Schools. My kids go to Eltham High School. My kids feel safe. Their friends feel safe because that school has worked really hard to create a culture of inclusion. And this was the foremost point of Safe Schools: to create those inclusive spaces and to help other people understand what is happening around rainbow kids and how they feel. So for someone to say that it is narcissistic to have programs like Safe Schools and to be talking about trans kids is shameful. It is absolutely shameful. The Leader of the Opposition should be stamping this out, should not be applauding the preselection of people who say these things and should not want these people in this place, whether it be in this chamber or the other. It is about inclusion. It is about protecting our kids. It is about looking after our kids. It is about doing everything that we can to help these kids live the lives that they should be allowed to live, which is a life of truth and which is a life of who they are, who they want to be and what they want to look like. It is not for any of us to judge when they are ready to be these people or what they should look like.

I find it ironic that we have got a party that wants to trumpet about the individual all the time and wants to rage against big government. They have got a former Prime Minister who does not trust in government; however, they are preselecting people who want the government in our houses, in our bedrooms and monitoring what our bodies look like. I do not think you can find a more invasive set of circumstances than that. That is big government, that is Big Brother—saying how you should behave, what you should look like. It is Big Brother when you are preselecting people who also do not want women to determine the health care that they receive when it comes to terminating pregnancies.

I am absolutely filled with grief for a political party that will not stand up for vulnerable people in this state, that will not stand up for trans kids and that will not stand up for our rainbow community. I think it is just shocking that those opposite think that they can march in Pride every summer as if they are allies. You are not an ally when you are not standing up and being counted. You are not an ally when you are allowing bigots to be at the front and centre of your political party. You are not an ally unless you are there standing with these people every day. You have actually got to be truthful, and you have got to stand in that truth, and your actions matter. Your actions absolutely matter. Walking in Pride does not make you an ally, it makes you cynical. It makes you a cynical abuser of people’s trust because you are pretending that you are an ally. You are pretending that you are there for that community, and you are not, because if you were, you would have cancelled out—and I use that word ‘cancel’—people who are bigots and people who are allowing discrimination against very vulnerable people.

We had the previous speaker, the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, talk about this side of the chamber not caring about mental health. I do not understand how he can stand in this place and say this government does not care about mental health when not only have we invested record amounts of funding in mental health support services but members opposite are allowing people in their party, people who they want in this Parliament, to discriminate and exhibit their bigotry against incredibly vulnerable people. Where are their mental health concerns there? Do not be hypocrites.

I grieve for a party that is absolutely hypocritical in this space. Stand up for our rainbow community. Stand up for our vulnerable kids. Be counted. Be a part of a community that shows acceptance and love. Do not use it as a tool for division. Do not use it as an electioneering tool. It is disgraceful. We saw how the Australian community will not put up with that. The Australian community showed at the last federal election that they will not put up with kids being bullied by adults who should know better. That is exactly what happened in New South Wales with a Liberal candidate there who did not win her seat. She was there as a tool to sow division and try and pick up some votes, and it backfired spectacularly. It absolutely backfired because the hypocrisy was evident.

But, most importantly, it was the bullying. When you are repeatedly going after kids and telling them that they are not good enough, telling them that they are wrong, telling them what toilets they should use, telling them what clothes they should wear and telling them how they should be and how they should look, you are being a bully, and as an adult you should know better than to go after vulnerable people and make them feel worse about themselves. We know the physical harm that young people who are transgender or who are a part of the LGBTIQ+ group experience. We know these kids feel vulnerable. We know they self-harm. We know they attempt suicide, and they do that because they feel they do not fit in. This morning before I came here I was at Banyule council’s youth summit. Banyule council youth do amazing work, and every two years they get together with their kids and the kids talk. They talk about what matters to them and they talk about what they are concerned about. This includes things like climate change, the environment and employment opportunities, but it also includes equality. It really does include equality, and it includes the rainbow kids being seen and being made to feel safe. Congratulations to Banyule for the work that they are doing in responding to that. These kids want to feel safe; they articulate that. They talk about the relief of going to events where there are other kids, they say, just like them, where they know they are not alone, where they know they are 100 per cent safe and where they know they can be their true selves and they are not on guard.

Before I finish up I want to give members a little story of someone I came across who was getting aged care help. This relates to a lot of the work that we are doing as a government, but this person was getting care in the home because they were older. What we learned was that this person, who is gay, was hiding their stuff. They were hiding themselves because they did not know if the carer coming in for them would support them if they saw that they were gay, and that is heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking that someone could not feel safe in their own home when a stranger was coming in to help them because of their sexuality. That is just horrible. I do not understand how anybody aspiring to be in this place thinks that that kind of behaviour is acceptable or thinks that it is okay to have a discourse, to have a conversation in our community that creates that fear and allows people to have that fear. It is wrong. It is absolutely wrong. Every person in this place should be campaigning against that fear, not encouraging it and not bringing more of it into this place.

I absolutely grieve for a political party who is so lost, who is so soulless that they cannot care for vulnerable people in this community but instead want to see them be attacked more. It is appalling. It is absolutely appalling. I am very, very grateful to be on this side of the chamber where I am a member of a political party that does take equality seriously, that does look after people and that does create policies that do look after people. We brought in our first Minister for Equality. We have gotten rid of the historical gay offences records—they are gone, those records that had people as criminals for being who they are, for owning their sexuality.

We have brought in Australia’s first gender and sexuality discrimination commissioner. We have brought in a whole-of-government LGBTIQ+ strategy. We have brought so much into this Parliament that will make a safer place for all Victorians, not just those Victorians who look like me or the Minister for Youth or the member over there but those who look like themselves. We are creating a community where people can look like the people that they are supposed to be and be proud of that and feel safe in that. I would call on the opposition to join with us in creating that safe community, creating those safe spaces and stopping those angry, divisive, mean, rotten voices that just sow hurt—because that is all they do; they sow hurt, and it is disgraceful. The Leader of the Opposition needs to stand up and put a stop to it, because that is what leadership is. Leadership is showing people how to be better people, not small-minded bigots that just sow hurt and hate.