Alastair Lawrie | We've failed the LGBTQIA+ class of 2023

But late on the day before, the deadline was pushed back to December 31.

This eight-month delay extinguishes the hope necessary amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act can be passed in time to benefit, however briefly, LGBTQIA+ young people now in Year 12.

The LGBTQIA+ graduating class of 2023 is a group we have comprehensively failed, from start to finish.

They were born in 2005, the year after John Howard's same-sex marriage ban. Their lives were political footballs from the beginning.

Anti-LGBTQIA+ discrimination wasn't prohibited under Commonwealth law until they were eight years old.

Even then, the law included loopholes allowing religious schools to discriminate against students simply because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

That same year, 2013, saw a rare glimmer of hope - the introduction, with bipartisan support, of a program to address bullying against LGBTQIA+ kids.

Within 24 months of its launch, Safe Schools was relentlessly attacked, its content reviewed, then gutted, and was ultimately defunded, all before the class of 2023 turned 12.

2016 then saw a toxic national debate about whether to hold a completely unnecessary plebiscite to undo Howard's marriage ban. When the plebiscite proposal was defeated, the Coalition pushed ahead with a postal survey, during which trans kids became a particular target for attacks.

Thankfully, 61.6 per cent of the Australian public voted "yes" to marriage equality. But that still taught LGBTQIA+ young people (including the class of 2023, then finishing Year 6) almost two-in-five adults believed they should be denied the same rights as others simply because of who they might love when they grow up.

The postal survey, and subsequent parliamentary debate, also saw the start of the religious freedom review, which would plague the high school years of the 2023 graduating cohort.

The leaking of that review's recommendations in October 2018 spawned another national debate, this time around the ongoing ability of religious schools to discriminate against LGBTQIA+ students.

It even prompted then-prime minister Scott Morrison to promise to introduce urgent amendments to remove those privileges before the end of that year (Year 7 for our ill-fated Class of 2023).

Those amendments never appeared.

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It quickly became clear Morrison was much more interested in a Religious Discrimination Bill undermining the existing rights of LGBTQIA+ people, including kids, and making it easier to say harmful things about them.

Anti-LGBTQIA+ commentary has been heard loudly through every one of the class of 2023's high school years, as politicians argue about how much bigotry LGBTQIA+ Australians should be forced to accept.

Thankfully, the Religious Discrimination Bill was not passed by Parliament, so LGBTQIA+ rights did not go backwards. But nor did they go forwards. LGBTQIA+ students remain unprotected.

Meanwhile the culture war against the very existence of trans and gender diverse kids has escalated.

The new federal government's promise to finally ensure LGBTQIA+ students and teachers are protected, with a short, sharp ALRC inquiry to conclusively settle the debate, provided some hope.

But now, as the LGBTQIA+ class of 2023 are in term 2 of their final year, it seems there's no chance that Commonwealth laws will protect them for even a single day of their schooling.

We have failed them comprehensively.

Parliament has not only failed to protect them - despite promises to do so - but the lives of LGBTQIA+ young people have repeatedly been the subject of often-brutal political debates.

They deserve an apology from a generation of so-called leaders who have demonised rather than defended them. Who have raised their hopes only to let them down.

We won't hold our breath for that apology. But our current leaders have the opportunity, and responsibility, to learn from the mistakes of the past. There is still time for them to ensure LGBTQIA+ young people can walk through the school gates in term 1, 2024, without fear of lawful discrimination.

The ALRC must finalise its inquiry as quickly as possible and recommend changes to laws that mean some LGBTQIA+ young people go to school in fear of being expelled from their communities, denied leadership positions, or mistreated in countless other ways, just for who they are.

And the Australian Parliament must urgently make changes to the Sex Discrimination Act, which now provides exceptions to religious schools, so the harms suffered by the LGBTQIA+ class of 2023 are never repeated.