ANGRY students have stormed and trashed Senator Cory Bernardi’s Kent Town office, protesting his opposition to the controversial Safe Schools program.
More than 20 students occupied the Grenfell St office from noon and scrawled abusive messages directed at Senator Bernardi on the outside walls and veranda.
They also hung a large banner inside the reception area, wrote messages in chalk on the carpet and overturned tables and chairs as they chanted slogans such as “racist, sexist, anti-queer, Bernardi is not welcome here”.
Senator Bernardi’s wife, Sinead, and some staffers retreated into other rooms.
Police arrived shortly before 12.30pm and the students then headed outside, accidentally knocking over a section over the property’s picket fence on to the footpath. They made no attempt to pick up or repair the fence.
The students then headed towards Prince Alfred College, Senator Bernardi’s old school, to hang banners there.
Paper and rubbish was left strewn around the reception area in the office.
Senator Bernardi, who is travelling with a parliamentary delegation to Zambia, later tweeted: “Lefty totalitarians have trashed my office and threatened my staff because their agenda has been exposed. What a bunch of cowards.”
He said “gutless actions like this will never stop me speaking the truth”.
Messages scrawled by protesters on the outside walls of the bluestone building included “Australia’s Trump” and “no to homophobia”.
One of the protest signs read “Eat rainbow, bigot”.
Police are investigating the incident and reviewing CCTV to determine if charges will be laid. One man has been reported for marking graffiti on a road sign.
Flinders University Student Association past president Grace Hill said the protesters were “sick of Cory Bernardi’s attitude, his attacks on young people and refugees”.
Ms Hill said Senator Bernardi’s stance on the Safe Schools program, which teaches students to support gender diversity, was “explicitly homophobic and transphobic”.
“He wants our (gay and transgender) youth to disappear, and we are not going to let that happen,” she said.
The Safe Schools program underwent an independent review after Senator Bernardi raised concerns in the Coalition party room that it “indoctrinates kids”.
“It beggars belief that we’re asking 11-year-olds to identify themselves or imagine themselves as having no genitals,” Senator Bernardi told the Senate last month.
“Schools should be places of learning, not propaganda.”
But Senator Bernardi and other conservative backbenchers are now pushing for a full parliamentary inquiry into the program, saying the terms of reference for an independent review by University of Western Australia Professor Bill Louden were too narrow.
In response to the Louden review, Education Minister Simon Birmingham today announced a series of changes to the Safe Schools program, including the removal of some activities and redesigning lessons to make them age appropriate.
The amended resources will have to be approved by a panel of educators appointed by the Education Department.
Parental consent will be required for students to take part, and an official fact sheet will be developed for parents providing “full and consistent information” about Safe Schools content.
Program resources will not be allowed to be used for political advocacy.
Nationals MP George Christensen has handed a letter to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull calling for federal government funding for the anti-bullying program to be suspended pending a parliamentary inquiry.
Mr Christensen says the letter has been signed by 43 of 81 backbenchers. Former prime minister Tony Abbott is believed to be one of the signatories.
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