With just two weeks to go until the election, fringe groups are now targeting voters at some Victorian pre-poll venues with a dramatic black-and-white flyer saying “Same Sex ‘Marriage’ has consequences for all”. It claims that legalising same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination laws will result in “extreme sex education”, “freedom of speech lost” and “gender ideology imposed”. The flyer claims that “Anyone can be prosecuted if they oppose same sex ‘marriage'”.

The flyer directs people to the Australian Family Association’s website and to the “Kids Rights” website, which attacks the Safe Schools program. The flyer carries an authorisation from Patrick Shea of Inverloch in Gippsland.

Kids Rights flyer

Shea, the person behind the pamphlets, says that he is part of the Australian Family Association and the National Civic Council, the conservative Christian organisation founded by B.A. Santamaria in the 1940s. The flyers are being handed out at key marginal seats across Victoria, “where it will hurt Labor most”. He lists Bendigo, McEwen, Indi, Corangamite, Latrobe, Dunkley and Deakin as some of the seats targeted, as well as sections of Chisholm and Hotham “where there are ethnic groups that are very distressed by this”. Shea says similar campaigns are being run in other states but he is unaware of the exact seats.

Shea says he’s not sure who set up the Kids Rights website, which doesn’t include any information about who publishes it. He says it was necessary to target Labor over the Safe Schools program because “it’s fairly blatant it’s not an anti-bullying program, it’s a gender ideology program. We don’t believe it’s the school’s job to be educating children on these issues.”

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Shea takes most issue with the program’s attitude towards young people expressing their gender identity. “On phys ed days, can you imagine 11- or 12-year-old girls and some 15-year-old boy decides he’s going to be a girl that day and is in the change room and decides to parade around stark naked in front of those kids? You and I can’t go down to Bourke Street and parade around naked.”

However, when pushed on how likely that would be, Shea conceded it wasn’t completely likely.

Shea said this program offended people with religious backgrounds and that making it compulsory would mean that the government was bullying schools and parents. When asked if the program could be most valuable to young people who were coming to terms with sexuality or gender identity and were not accepted by their family, he conceded “it could be”.

“I have a brother is gay. It’s been a struggle for all of us to accept, but we do, and we love him as a brother, even though we don’t really love what he does, or understand what he does. I have two adult daughters and they have friends that are gay, but they’re not out there rubbing our noses in it, and this program is forcing kids who are not even old enough to understand it to be involved.”

Shea advocates a program from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, called RULER, as an alternative to Safe Schools. RULER advocates children becoming more emotionally intelligent and putting themselves in another person’s shoes.

He says that he feels that it is important to target Labor in the election. “If Bill Shorten gets in this is the only moment we will have to argue our case. He has said he will make this compulsory across the country.”