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Shorten Reads Email From Mother of Child With Disability in Response to Hanson's Autism Comments

Opposition leader Bill Shorten read out an email in Parliament on June 21 from a mother raising a child with a disability who expressing outrage at a senator’s suggestions that autistic students should be segregated from mainstream classrooms.

On Wednesday morning, far-right Senator Pauline Hanson said that children with special needs and disabilities should be removed from mainstream classrooms and placed into their own classes because the attention given to them by teachers came at the expense of other students.

The unnamed mother, in an email Shorten said was sent to him, said the real heartbreak of being a parent of a child with a disability was “of the way [their child was] treated by other people.”

“To hear one of our parliamentarians argue that kids with a disability don’t belong in mainstream classes doesn’t shock me, but it does break my heart all over again,” Shorten read from the email to the House of Representatives.

“What [Senator Pauline Hanson] is saying is that [our daughter] doesn’t deserve a good education; that she doesn’t deserve the same opportunities as other kids; that she is lesser, not worthy and not really one of us.

“Who will fight in our corner when we are no longer around? The thing that the senator will never understand is that our daughter knows. She knows how you feel about her. She might have an intellectual disability, but she can tell… she can read you, feel you and while my heart breaks, so does hers.” Credit: Australian Parliament House via Storyful