Tim Hammond (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I'm delighted to rise to speak on the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade's Interim report: legal foundations of religious freedom in Australia. I acknowledge the words of the member for Petrie and certainly endorse those words in terms of seeking to help usher in a new era of bipartisanship when it comes to working towards creating that outcome—where citizens' freedoms in relation to religions they seek to practice are protected, but at the same time, of course, ensuring that we strive for a more just and equal society. I will speak more on that in just a moment.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the member for Moreton and his contribution previously made, noting that this year marks the 10th anniversary that the member for Moreton has been representing his community. I note the significant diversity of cultures and faiths in the member for Moreton's community and also the extent to which he fearlessly prosecutes a case for religious freedoms in that community. I note as well that the member for Moreton has a significant track record in relation to making sure that we have freedom of religion and faith in this community, having led the charge in ensuring that the protections enshrined within 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act are upheld at all material times.

This report is an interim report issued as part of the inquiry of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade into the status of the human right to freedom of religion or belief. Specifically, the interim report goes into the legal foundations of religious freedoms we enjoy in Australia. I have to say that the timing of this report could not be more impeccable, insofar as the debate that is currently taking place in both houses of parliament, insofar as the amendments to the Marriage Act goes, and the extent to which there is absolutely no relationship at all between the amendments that are sought to be made to the Marriage Act, in which marriage equality will be a reality for those same-sex couples who wish to be married. It must be said that at no material time is there any evidence whatsoever that any of those amendments will mean that any religious freedoms are being taken away from any section of the community. In my respectful submission, any assertion that amendments are required in order to bolster those religious protections and freedoms that are sought to be prosecuted—by some on the other side in particular—in many respects have a great risk of achieving the opposite outcome. That outcome is one in which we simply see a situation where, on the one hand, we are seeking to take away a form of discrimination, by virtue of making sure that the amendments to the Marriage Act are being put through, but, on the other hand, we are seeking to protect discriminatory behaviour in a circumstance where there is simply no evidence to suggest that one will equal the other. We have a perfectly well-balanced system of values in this country that allows all religious faiths to go about practising their beliefs and values in a way that ensures they are free from persecution.

We've just concluded a process in this country in which issues around freedom of religion were given prominence by some in the context of competing rights. In rights-based paradigms there has always been tension between rights wherever they compete or conflict. Take yesterday's incredible media circus of Milo Yiannopoulos. Before Milo arrived in town, I thought Milo was a lovely chocolatey drink to enjoy after school. It turns out this is a very different form of Milo, and I am pleased to say we're not all made of Milo. We saw in this building the exercise of Mr Yiannopoulos's freedom of speech, as well as the freedom of protest from a group of people who disagree with his world view. We know that implied constitutional rights around freedom of speech are not absolute; however, they are quite properly bound by defamation laws inter alia. This report covers a number of implied constitutional rights. However, it is worth noting the High Court has not yet indicated whether the Constitution contains an implied right, for instance, to be a bottom-feeding attention seeker.

I thought that the comments from Senator Jane Hume were fantastic yesterday. She expressed her freedom of expression by indicating that the best way to deal with an attention seeker is to simply ignore them and turn the volume down. She says a young man swaggering into Canberra, attention seeking and saying outrageous things and appeasing the far Right and getting some media coverage sounds like the coalition party room! That is a terrific balance—she has freedom of expression while injecting a bit of humour into what is otherwise sometimes a very long day in this place.

In this report, the subcommittee reflected this notion that antidiscrimination is an important social value but can also exist in tension with rights to freedom of religion. They say:

The right to hold a religion or belief is absolute. The right to manifest a religion or belief is not absolute, as the manifestation of one's beliefs may impact the enjoyment of the rights of other people … Any limitations on the right to manifest one's religion or belief must be specifically prescribed in law, must be reasonable and proportionate, and, significantly, must be necessary to achieve a legitimate aim or respond to a pressing public or social need.

The timing of the release of this report and its debate in this chamber while concurrently the House is considering the marriage equality bill goes to the heart of the anxiety that some in our parliament actually have. We saw during the postal survey the 'no' campaign trying to frame this debate as being about anything except actual marriage, which was at the substance of what was sought to be debated. The 'no' campaign, quite conversely, sought to characterise the survey as a referendum on freedom of religious expression. We've seen in subsequent debate amendments to the marriage equality bill that seek to insert new purported religious freedoms in the Marriage Act. Let's just think about that for one minute. To what extent should we in this place be seeking to use the Marriage Act as a vehicle to articulate, either impliedly or expressly, some form of a bill of rights? That gets to the heart of the reason, even if one buys into the notion that any of these amendments have some sort of community substance in respect of reflecting the values and needs of the community, why we're debating them at a time when marriage equality is long overdue. Much of the debate could be truncated, and any notion of inserting some form of religious freedoms into the Marriage Act could be carved out and dealt with by way of a separate order of business—which has always been the view on this side of the chamber.

Indeed, when you look at what is sought to be done here, which is including effectively a pseudo bill of rights type of provision in the Marriage Act, if we drill down into that we find there are opponents of that approach on the government side. The member for Goldstein, who professes to be a champion of Liberal values, has drawn to the attention of his colleagues that a bill of rights is actually inconsistent with the socially conservative values that are sought to be prosecuted by those professing to be Liberals, big 'L' or small 'l'. The truth is that, while Australia doesn't have a Commonwealth bill of rights that sets out in legislation rights and freedoms that have been expressed in international law, antidiscrimination law does have significant carve-outs for religious organisations. Section 37 of the Sex Discrimination Act, for example, exempts religious bodies for:

… any other act or practice of a body established for religious purposes, being an act or practice that conforms to the doctrines, tenets or beliefs of that religion or is necessary to avoid injury to the religious susceptibilities of adherents of that religion.

Those carve-outs are reflected in this report given the primacy of religious exemptions to antidiscrimination law and public discourse.

In conclusion, the report echoes, in my view, current community values in that there are freedoms contained within legislation that are already enshrined in our community and have been debated in this House considerably over the years. There is no need to extend that through any form of amendment to the Marriage Act, as we currently see. I commend the report to the chamber.

Debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended from 11:51 to 17:45

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