Family First National Director and NSW Legislative Council candidate Lyle Shelton says the sexual assault of young women cannot be addressed by a government program shaped by an ideology that cannot clearly define what a woman is, warning that another review of school-based consent education ignores the deeper cultural crisis confronting young people.
The Sunday Telegraph reported that federal Education Minister Jason Clare will fund a review of consent and respectful relationships education in schools following a spate of alleged sexual assaults involving Sydney students.
Mr Shelton said governments were looking in the wrong place for the solution.
"How can a program teach young men to respect women when our political and educational establishment struggles to even define what a woman is?" Mr Shelton said.
"Respect for women is not primarily formed by a government program. Ideally, it is learned first in the home, where a boy sees his father love, honour and respect his mother and understands from childhood that women are not objects for his gratification."
Mr Shelton said the decline of marriage and the normalisation of pornography and prostitution had helped create a culture in which women were increasingly objectified.
"For decades our culture has progressively dismantled the institutions and moral guardrails that taught men responsibility towards women," Mr Shelton said.
"Marriage is almost never promoted by governments as a public good. Pornography is ubiquitous and accessible to teenagers. Prostitution has been normalised and, in some jurisdictions, effectively treated as ordinary work. Then we express shock when young men absorb the message that women's bodies exist for male gratification."
Mr Shelton said the problem stretched from high-school students to elite sporting culture.
"Whether we are talking about disturbing allegations involving school students or controversies involving professional footballers, we should be willing to ask what sort of culture we have created," he said.
"One respectful-relationships lesson cannot compete with hours of pornography teaching boys a completely different lesson about women, sex and intimacy."
Consent education has been compulsory in Australian primary and secondary schools since 2023, with the federal government committing $77.6 million over five years.
Mr Shelton said reviewing and expanding the existing program would not address the underlying causes.
"The program is already compulsory. The taxpayers have already spent tens of millions of dollars. If the message is not getting through, simply reviewing the program and giving children more of the same is not an answer."
He said the best long-term protection for women required rebuilding a culture in which marriage, family, fatherhood and sexual responsibility were again valued.
"We need fathers modelling respect for mothers. We need public policy that recognises marriage and stable families as a social good. And we desperately need to confront a pornography culture that is shaping young men's understanding of sex before parents and teachers even know what has happened.
"Until we rebuild a culture of marriage and family, and until we challenge the pornography and prostitution culture that reduces women to commodities, women will remain vulnerable."
Mr Shelton warned parents to be wary of another ideological program being introduced through the review process.
"We have seen this before with Safe Schools. A program carrying an unobjectionable title became a vehicle for contested ideas about sex and gender," he said.
"Another review of a flawed, woke school program will achieve nothing if governments refuse to confront the cultural forces teaching boys to objectify women."
"Protecting women requires more than another curriculum document. It requires a culture that knows what a woman is, honours marriage, supports mothers and fathers, and teaches boys that becoming a man means responsibility, self-control and respect."
