Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In recent days there's been some public controversy about whether students can be expelled from religious schools on the basis of their sexuality. Our government doesn't support the expulsion of students from religious schools on the basis of their sexuality, and that view is widely shared by religious schools and communities right across the country. Because of this public controversy, the government has been taking action to ensure that no student of a non-government school can be expelled on the basis of their sexuality. The Attorney-General is working through amendments and the Prime Minister has invited the opposition leader and the shadow Attorney to help work through this so that we can provide certainty in this area and remove the anxiety that is being created by this public debate.

Last year the government commissioned my distinguished predecessor, Philip Ruddock, and a panel of eminent Australians to look at issues of religious freedom in this country. That panel received 15,500 submissions—that must be something of a record—and held 180 consultations, and I think we owe it to the people who made the submissions to that panel, and to those who attended the consultations, to seriously consider the recommendations of that panel in a sober and careful way.

The broader issues of freedom of religion, I think, should be considered by the government's proposed response in due course, whilst it's been through the appropriate deliberative processes. If this were easy it would have been done already. The government is going to deal with this in an orderly way and I think we'll release the report and its response in due course following consultations.

On Sunday, the member for Sydney, who has initiated this motion, said Labor would wait for the release of the report before considering the issue. She even praised the members of the panel—and I agree with her. Today, the member for Isaacs said that the question of exemption for staff and teachers and other staff working in religious schools is a complex one—and I agree with him, as well. He said, 'We in Labor recognise the need to protect the right of religious schools to run their schools in accordance with the tenets of their faith.' Yet, instead of adhering to the process, today's motion has put the politics before the process.

I want to use the remaining time available to talk a little bit about the place of religion in Australia, because I think too often we hear only one voice about religion in Australia and it's often not a fair or accurate voice. Australia is founded on a Judeo-Christian condition, the font of liberalism, which has two notions at its core. The first is that life is a sacred gift from God and, secondly, that human beings are all created in the image and likeness of God. If all human beings are created in the image and likeness of God, then all human beings should have the freedom to worship God in their own way. This notion has underpinned much of Western theological thinking since the Westphalian settlement and has had a particular resonance in the postwar era through such statements as Nostra Aetate, the Vatican's declaration on relations with other faiths.

For people of faith, their particular faith is fundamental to who they are and how they see the world. For people of faith, the idea that a tradition or a set of beliefs is ordained by God, or whatever supreme being they might believe in, makes that tradition or set of beliefs fundamental. Therefore, the right to practice your faith according to its traditions, customs and beliefs is fundamental to a believer's very existence. That is why true believers seek to leave countries where people are not able to freely exercise their religious beliefs or, worse still, are persecuted for doing so. Australia has never been that sort of country.

Although I'm not a Catholic, prior to entering the parliament I spent the best four years of my working life at the Australian Catholic University, the largest mission of the church in Australia, where I spent time thinking not only about education policy but also about the future of the church in Australia and its place in our national life. I also had the privilege of serving on the board of Mercy Health, a large Catholic health organisation run by the Sisters of Mercy. While Catholicism isn't my faith, in order to support the mission of the university I would often attend mass, celebrated by the university chaplain, Father Anthony Casamento. There's something quite beautiful about sitting quietly and watching people of deep faith observing the rituals and hearing the biblical readings, some from my own Bible and some from the New Testament, and reflecting on what that wisdom means for each of us. Rituals of this sort provide clarity and calm in what can often be a chaotic world.

Today, as a parliamentarian I regularly attend church services, as well as services at Hindu temples, Buddhist temples, gurdwaras, Baha'i temples and mosques. Despite the increasingly questioned place of religion in the public square, religion continues to survive. The former chief rabbi of the Commonwealth, Jonathan Sacks, reminds us:

Religion survives because it answers three questions that every reflective person must ask. Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live? We will always ask those three questions because homo sapiens is the meaning-seeking animal, and religion has always been our greatest heritage of meaning.

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We stand to lose a great deal if we lose religious faith. We will lose our Western sense of human dignity. I think we will lose our Western sense of a free society. I think we will lose our understanding of moral responsibility.

Religion retains a key importance in our life, and we should give it some respect.

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