George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is with pleasure that I rise to speak on the Religious Discrimination Bill 2021. I want to address some of the remarks that we have just heard, because there was a lot of criticism around clause 12 of the bill. Make no mistake, my view is that this bill is weak. This bill is watered down. This bill will do only a little bit of good. I support it because it will do a little bit of good, but it won't do much in the grand scheme of things.

Clause 12 is actually where the rubber hits the road for this bill. People of faith wanted one thing from this parliament, they wanted one thing from this government, and that was a shield, not a sword. They want a shield to protect themselves from people who come after them because of what they believe—people who want to cancel them from society, who want to take their jobs, who want to strip them of titles. That's what we're talking about here.

Let me give the exact example of where harm is done. Previous speakers were asking questions out loud: 'Well, what can't you say? What is it the government is saying here that people should be allowed to say?' Let me tell you about this rabid right-wing extremist from Tasmania. Not really—it is the Archbishop of Hobart. His name is Julian Porteous. He's a Catholic archbishop. He committed the heinous crime of sending out a missive to students within the Catholic school system, and the missive was about the Catholic Church's teaching on marriage. He sent it out to students in the Catholic school system—presumably mostly Catholics—to go home to their mostly Catholic parents, which you'd think would be just completely and utterly innocuous. A Catholic prelate was talking to his flock about the Catholic Church's teaching on a particular issue. As controversial as it might be for some, it shouldn't be controversial to note what is the church's teaching, particularly to people who are part of the Catholic Church system.

For that heinous crime, he was dragged before an antidiscrimination tribunal for simply articulating to his flock what the Catholic Church's teaching on a particular subject was. Now, that should have rung alarm bells all those years ago. That actually shows you that in this country we are not free to say what we believe when it comes to articles of faith. If an archbishop of a church is not free to articulate his church's teachings to people who are within his church's system, then we have a very, very big problem indeed. That's why, and I have no qualms in actually saying this, I hounded the former Attorney-General, whose original view was that there should be no clause in this act that overrides state-based laws, to include this. I hounded him personally for this to be in the bill. Others did too. Thankfully, as a result, it's included in this bill. Clause 12 is the Porteous clause, which says that a statement of belief in itself should not be something that gets you hauled over the coals. There might be those that say, 'Yes, but Archbishop Porteous actually didn't get found guilty,' or whatever they do in these jumped-up kangaroo courts, which are called antidiscrimination tribunals, that the states run. He didn't, because the matter was dropped by the complainant because of political pressure.

I have a distinct memory of the then commissioner that was overseeing this tribunal—this jumped-up kangaroo court—saying that she wished the complainant had kept that complaint going, because there was a case to answer. There was a case to answer of discrimination, because a Catholic archbishop told his flock what his church's teaching was with respect to marriage. That's what we are talking about here. That's what we are trying to protect: a Christian—or any other person of faith; a Buddhist—articulating a statement of belief, a genuinely held belief, from being hauled over the coals for that belief. That is wrong, and it just seems that I've entered this bizarre twilight zone where people don't get this. They don't get this argument. It's actually less Twilight Zone and more Orwell. It's Animal Farm, where everyone's endowed with rights, but some rights are lesser than others. The rights of Christians are certainly lesser than others in this country.

I could point to Citipointe Christian College—another school, if you want to know what gets you cancelled in this country—and its principal, who sent out a statement of biblical beliefs that he asked parents and students to sign up to at this Christian school. No-one forces anyone to go to a Christian school. It's not like you're trapped into it and you don't have a choice to go to a grammar school, a state school, a Catholic school or any other school, for that matter. But they arced up because this Christian school sent out a statement of Christian beliefs that it wanted its students and parents to adhere to. Yes, there were statements in that about sexuality. There were statements in that about gender. For that, fire and brimstone rained down upon that college. The principal left his spot. Thanks very much to all the political and media elite that actually trampled upon the college and cost a person their job. You didn't think of that, did you? You didn't think about all of the abuse that the receptionists at that college copped. I phoned them up the next day, sadly after they'd made the decision to pull that statement of beliefs. I phoned them up and I apologised to them for the actions of people in this place on both sides, actions that led to all of that abuse and led to their principal standing down, actions like those we saw from the Queensland government that said that they would launch an investigation, presumably to take away some legal status or funding that the school had.

This is where we've gotten to in this country. This is why this law is needed, as flawed as it is—and, boy, oh boy, it is flawed. It's flawed because it's watered down, and yet we have the Left screaming at us that this is somehow going to erode other people's rights. It's not. It's just going to, in a very dulled-down, watered-down, dampened way, ensure that, if people say something, they aren't ipso facto hauled before some tribunal to answer for their thought crimes. Very Orwellian, indeed.

What we've dropped out of this bill, which should have been in it, are all sorts of other protections. The so-called Folau clause, which was in this but is now not in it, has basically given way because there's a view that permeates this place, I guess, that the almighty dollar and profits are more important than people's religious beliefs. We've sacrificed that protection for workers. I don't know; will there be people who, in future, are sacked from their jobs, sacked from their work or sacked from their position or their profession because they articulate some form of Christian or religious belief? Probably, because it's happened before. I could actually quote you many people other than just Israel Folau who've lost their jobs, lost their contracts, lost their professions. I can tell you about doctors who have lost their professions because they privately posted their religious beliefs on their private social media pages. They lost their professions. That's the state of the nation right now when it comes to religious freedom—to be quite honest, there's very little. For those jokers, which is the only thing I can call them, who say, 'You're free to read the Bible; you're free to go to church,' you have no idea what religious liberty truly is. You have no idea what real faith actually is.

People who believe these things believe them innately. It forms part of their core. Belief is fundamental to human beings. When you believe in a religious system, in your creator, who has presented certain truths to you and to humanity, you take that in as a whole, not in bit parts that you can pick and choose and say, 'I'll flick that one off.' These people don't have the luxury of just saying, 'I won't believe that; I won't say that,' but when they do believe that they get in trouble for it in Australia. It's wrong. It's very, very wrong.

I am very sad that this has been watered down this much—it really has been watered down so, so much—because it is the hill we should die on. Without religious liberty—and this is the problem: this bill is about religious discrimination. What we wanted was religious liberty, not religious discrimination. We wanted religious liberty. I could quote you the words of a book that a lot of people should read if they don't get it. The book is The Benedict Option by American columnist Rod Dreher. He bemoans the fact that in the public square there is no space now for Christians. They have been drowned out, essentially—pushed out. But he says there is one cause that should receive all the attention that Christians have left for national politics, and that is religious liberty. It is critically important, he says. Without a robust and successful defence of religious liberty, Christians will not be able to actually build communal institutions that are vital to maintaining their identity and values. They're pushed out of the public square, relegated to their own institutions. They won't even be able to live those values genuinely if they don't have true religious liberty. The fact is that, because we've watered this down—and I'm quoting Rod Dreher here—and we haven't acted decisively within the embattled zone of freedom we have now, we are wasting precious time, time that may run out faster than we think. I think the time ran out a while ago for true religious liberty in Australia.

Again I quote Rod Dreher, from when he came to Australia. He came here just as the Folau situation burst forth, and he said:

It is positively perverse, though, to watch victorious progressives frenetically bouncing the rubble—

of the culture war being lost for Christian conservatives or religious conservatives. He wrote:

From observing the heretic-hunting hysteria surrounding the Israel Folau case, you would think that theocratic tyranny was about to breach the city walls. You would be hard-pressed to find a demographic with less cultural and economic power than Pentecostals of Pacific Islander descent, yet the good and the great of Australia's elite have bravely―oh so bravely!―destroyed the career of just such a man because he hath blasphemed—

against the zeitgeist.

This is the problem with all of this. What we see here with the watering down of this bill, and the fervent opposition to this watered down bill, is the fact that we have moved from being a Liberal democracy in this country to a woke mob democracy. We really have. We've jumped the shark as a nation. If you have an belief—innately held, held for centuries—that is not in line with the zeitgeist of the times and you dare utter it, then you are not just cancelled; there is currently legal action that can be taken against you for expressing those beliefs. Let that sink in. I don't know how people can't see how wrong that is.

As much as I'm critical of this bill—and I am, make no mistake—this is a wet lettuce. It will do a little bit of good in pushing back against this tide of rampant secularism that threatens to ride roughshod over every person of faith in this nation. So I'll take that little bit of good and hope so much more can be done in the future, although I doubt it. I have grave fears for the future of religious liberty in this country, very grave fears indeed.

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