The ‘Safe Schools Coalition’ issue highlights the problem we have with political debate in Australia.

Now that Turnbull has called for a review of the $8 million government funded ‘All of Us’ LGBTI school program, the left is showing its true totalitarian colours.

Rather than discussing the substance of the ‘All of Us’ program – which so obviously contains a wealth of inappropriate material for minors (particularly 11 year old children) – the debate has been reduced to calling people ‘homophobes’ if they express any form of concern with the program.

The mainstream media has been only too willing to foster this approach, combining a complete absence of investigation with loaded and misleading descriptions such as:

• ‘program that teaches respect for LGBTI children’;

• ‘program aimed at helping lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and/or intersex (LGBTI) school students’;

• ‘Malcolm Turnbull orders review of Safe School LGBTI program after right-wing pressure’.

And what federal political debate would be complete without The Age giving Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews a platform to unleash this pathetic nonsense:

Premier Daniel Andrews has savaged Malcolm Turnbull’s decision to review a school education program that aims to promote acceptance of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students.

“I’m sick of Liberal politicians telling our kids that there’s something wrong with them – when there isn’t,” Mr Andrews said in a Facebook post.

In the same story, The Age’s Benjamin Preiss also decided to invent this ‘fact’:

The Safe Schools teaching manual, introduced by the previous Labor government, has been attacked in recent weeks by conservative politicians, the Australian Christian Lobby and News Corp newspapers.

No Benjamin, that’s a bad Benjamin – while the program was conceived and developed during the previous Labor government, it was actually ‘introduced’ by the Liberal Abbott government in 2014:

The Safe Schools teaching manual, set up by Labor but launched by the Coalition in 2014…

Firstly, to all the people screaming out ‘homophobe’: this issue doesn’t exclusively involve homosexuals – there are also transsexual, lesbian, bisexual and intersex people to consider. Rattling off ‘homophobe’ is completely disingenuous and demonstrates a complete ignorance of the issue at hand.

Secondly, where is the intelligent discussion around the substance of the program?

Why is it so hard to agree that asking an 11 year old to role play as a 16 year old homosexual is completely ridiculous and inappropriate – and that elements of the program containing things of this nature should simply be re-written?

What does the opportunistic hijacking of Corey Bernadi’s website with a gay pride flag and and the words ‘compassion lives here’ add to the debate? How does it help us better educate our children to be tolerant and respectful of LGBTI people and others generally – while still being mindful of the fact that they are children? It doesn’t – it’s an irrelevant, juvenile point scoring attempt that belongs in a first year university debate.