‘Protect the kids!’: Latham launches NSW schools Bill

A radical gender ideology program called ‘Multiverse’ is surfacing in early childhood learning classrooms in New South Wales – often without the knowledge and consent of parents and legal guardians.

The Multiverse program – which is NSW Government accredited – is a pedagogy for alternative sexual and gender identities for young children but the age appropriateness of the content as well as the lack of transparency with parents over the content is causing community concerns.

A member of the NSW Legislative Council, Mark Latham, told The Catholic Weekly he believes Multiverse is a harmful and inappropriate form of political indoctrination.

“They run [Multiverse] on a closed Facebook group which obviously raises further concerns over what is going on,” said Mark Latham.

“Schools are there to serve the parents not the other way around.”

Mr Latham said he plans to present a Bill to the NSW Legislative Assembly to keep programs such as Multiverse away from early learning.

“I am going to be moving a Private Member’s Bill in the Upper House that the NSW education system must have a standard in teaching. Ethics, morality, social and moral development must be consistent with the wishes of parents,” he said.

Dr Kevin Donnelly, a Professor of Education at Australian Catholic University, likened exposing children to adult themes of sexuality as a form of child abuse and emphasised the lack of respect Multiverse has for the express wishes of many parents to raise their children in line with their own beliefs.

“Early childhood should be a time of innocence, play and joy,” he said.

“Programs like this don’t have the right to indoctrinate young children against their parent’s moral and spiritual values.”

Dr Donnelly re-iterated that bullying and discrimination have no place in the classroom but that the goals of Multiverse were more political indoctrination than anti-bullying.

“Catholic teaching says there is no room for bullying and unfair discrimination but this program is not about stopping bullying but rather a radical agenda overthrowing the status quo [and] this is a form of politically correct groupthink where it is indoctrination. I am very much against it.”

Australian Family Association President Terri Kelleher said that normal childhood psychosexual development is being interfered with and that teachings on human sexuality should be guided by the wishes of parents.

“Human sexual identity is a very close, intimate and personal matter dealt with by the parents first and foremost,” she said.

“Normal psychosexual development is being interfered with. Children are exposed at a pre-school level and it’s quite insidious.”

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