With Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirming he will not follow through on his election commitment to introduce a religious discrimination bill, is the reform effort to die with a whimper, asks Mark Fowler. Source: The Australian.
The deep societal shifts driving the fractious religious freedom debate remain unrelenting. They are likely to press both major parties to declare commitments in the lead-up to the next election. What form should those commitments take?
Progress on the reforms stalled when Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus sought line-by-line feedback from his Opposition counterpart, Michaelia Cash, who in turn directed Dreyfus’s attention to detailed drafting provided by faith leaders.
This drafting included amendments to the proposed religious discrimination bill and provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act regulating the treatment of students and staff in religious schools.
Protecting people against religious discrimination remains the missing piece in Australian equality legislation.
Of the five main equality rights recognised in the international law to which Australia is a signatory – race, age, disability, sex and religion – only religion fails to receive dedicated protection in federal law. In its Universal Periodic Review of Australia, the UN Human Rights Council called on Australia to address this deficiency, as did the 2018 expert panel.
The previous government consulted extensively on its religious discrimination bill. While religious leaders expressed broad support for the final of its four versions, they held a range of remaining concerns.
The Australian reports that the proposed reform model provided to Mr Dreyfus and Senator Cash by Archbishops Peter A Comensoli and Anthony Fisher OP drew on these concerns by seeking to ensure judges cannot assume the role of theologian.
However, the archbishops described the Government’s separate proposal for reform of the Sex Discrimination Act, presumably based on the recommendations of the Australian Law Reform Commission, as presenting a “real and substantial reduction in existing freedoms”.
For these long-anticipated protections to pass into law, the politics must be taken out of the issue.
Mark Fowler is principal of Fowler Charity Law.
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Is religious discrimination reform to die without a whimper? (By Mark Fowler, The Australian)
