Launching Safe Schools and Family Values in an Age of Gender Backlash with Roz Ward

Ten years ago, a program built to support LGBTI+ students, teachers and families in school became front-page news. The backlash against Safe Schools included parliamentary debates, social media campaigns and a Murdoch press-driven campaign against one of its most prominent figures.

Roz Ward, co-founder of Safe Schools Coalition Australia, was at the centre of that storm. In Safe Schools and Family Values in an Age of Gender Backlash: Queer Stories, Social Reproduction, and Contested Futures (Routledge, 2026), Roz asks what the backlash was really about, and argues that beneath the ‘culture wars’ lies a broader struggle over the role of the family, nationalism and cultural ‘diversity’.

Part personal account, part materialist analysis of moral panics, the book traces the Safe Schools controversy from the legacy of Section 28 in the UK to contemporary anti-gender mobilisations. Join us to celebrate the launch, hear readings from the book, and hear Roz in conversation with special guests.

Buy the book: Safe Schools and Family Values in an Age of Gender Backlash (Paperback), Red Flag Books