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

I'm pleased to speak in support of the Religious Discrimination Bill. I bring a particular perspective to this debate as a Jewish Australian who has served on the boards of religious and lay bodies in my own community, and as a former employee of the largest mission of the Catholic Church in Australia who has served both educational and health missions of the church. I hope I can speak to the great strength that faith based institutions and religion more generally offer our country. Working in a faith environment is deeply satisfying. You see a demonstration of faith in action through the mission and identity of the institution and the way it manifests itself in the interactions people have with one another.

As a person of faith, I believe that the maintenance of religion and religious institutions is vital to the moral ecology of our nation. I believe religion has a particular role to play in the world in bringing meaning into people's lives. It calls people to serve others, providing a sense of identity and a purpose to life that is larger and more enduring than fulfilling the needs of the material self. Faith brings people together from a range of different backgrounds and builds a sense of community. The search for meaning in people's lives has never been stronger than it is today. The 2018 Study of the Economic Impact of Religion on Society attempted to measure some of the economic contributions that faith groups make to our country. Religious people who attend services contribute an extra 30½ million hours of volunteering time in Australia each year. Being religious makes people more likely to donate money, not just to religious causes but to social good projects as a whole.

Christians have pioneered many of our great social institutions in aged care and in health and social services. The Royal Flying Doctor Service, Lifeline, Barnardos and Mission Australia all began as the work of Christian men and women who were motivated by the gospel to love God and their neighbour as themselves. If we return to the early days of the RSPCA in Britain, it was evangelical Christians who established that organisation as well. In the early 1980s here in Australia, when the AIDS virus first appeared, there was great panic about people who'd contracted AIDS and many hospitals were turning away HIV and AIDS patients. But the Sisters of Charity at St Vincent's Hospital in Darlinghurst, called by the Christian command to treat the poor and the sick, made the decision to admit, treat and care for patients with AIDS when others refused. At a time when little was known about the virus, this was an act of grace and courage. Over half of all the people with AIDS in Australia were treated at St Vincent's.

Our entire concept of human rights comes from what Jonathan Sacks has described as that radical idea at the heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition: that all people are made in the image and likeness of God. Whether we're tall or short, young or old, or able to speak and walk or severely limited in our ability, our lives matter and are of equal worth. This is an idea defended by the people of faith among us. When a society loses its sense of human dignity, that society loses its soul. I'm certainly not suggesting that only people of faith care about others—that's manifestly not the case—but I am suggesting that we should be careful about pulling too far away from our roots.

The church continues to play an extremely important role in our culture, a role that many people respect and cherish. Many people who are not churchgoers send their children to Christian schools. We have a Prime Minister who's open about his faith. Church institutions continue to play an essential role in the delivery of many services such as aged care and family support. Sixty per cent of Australians ascribe to some form of faith. There are over 150 different faith communities in this country. From European settlement until 1981 Judaism was the major non-Christian denomination, but since that time the number of Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs has overtaken the number of Jews in this country. One of the exciting things about Australia's future will be the growth of its religious diversity. While there has rightly been a lot of talk about the way in which this bill will affect Christians, I suspect it will be the minority faiths that will most take advantage of its protections.

Some people have asked why this bill is necessary. The government's response has been in part because it completes a patchwork of discrimination law in this country, but this is only a partial answer. Unfortunately, we have to be clear eyed about the difficulties and discriminations that people of faith face in Australia today too. Anti-Semitism is on the rise. As reported at the annual conference of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry last year, during the 12-month period to 30 September 2021 there was an increase of 35 per cent in the overall number of reported anti-Semitic incidents to Jewish community organisations compared to the previous year. Behind the statistics lie some horrific personal stories of persistent anti-Semitic bullying of Jewish students at schools, the brutal physical assault of a man on his way to synagogue, the spray-painting of 'Free Palestine', 'F Zionists', 'Free Palestine' on the signage at the front of a synagogue in Adelaide, the flying of a Nazi flag above a synagogue in Brisbane and the draping of two Palestinian flags and two shredded Israeli flags at the front entrance of a synagogue in Sydney. What is perhaps worse is the disgraceful discourse online, occasionally in the mainstream media as well, of those who for whatever reason seek to rationalise or minimise this egregious behaviour.

In 2017, when I served on the PJCHR's inquiry on free speech in Australia, I remember Muslim community leaders asking for the extension of the Racial Discrimination Act to cover their community. Their leaders produced a number of examples of discrimination against Muslims at that time. Today the Islamophobia Register contains several examples of discrimination against Muslims in Australia, and these will help illustrate the point. A Muslim female applicant went to a job interview without her hijab, knowing she had a lower chance of employment if she wore one. Having secured the job, she started wearing her hijab. The employer was not happy, saying he wouldn't have hired her if he'd known she wore a hijab. In another case, a patient seeing a Muslim doctor complained about how, 'A Muslim got on the premises,' and that, 'We don't want their sort here.' She refused to see the Muslim doctor. A doctor wearing a headscarf seeing a patient was told in a dehumanising manner: 'That's not touching me. That's not my doctor. Get me another doctor.'

It's not just Muslims and Jews. Buddhists in my electorate have told me about public libraries that refuse to stock their holy books. In October 2018 a Hindu temple in Regents Park was set on fire during one of its most sacred times of the year. Prayer carpets were burned and statues of Hindu gods were destroyed. It was really disgraceful behaviour.

Even today Sikh doctors and health workers are discriminated against in six Australian jurisdictions, being forced to choose between shaving their beards, contrary to their religion, so they can fit a surgical mask or practising medicine. In New South Wales and Western Australia the Clinical Excellence Commission has approved the wearing of surgical masks on top of an elastic band, obviating their need to say shave, but elsewhere Sikh doctors are being stood down at a time when we need them most.

While there are fewer physical threats against Christians, there is a cultural and existential threat to Christianity as people have tried to delegitimise the place of Christianity in the public square and force it off the national stage. The public position of Christians has been weakened through not just a decline in religious observance but also a decline in the level of religious literacy and empathy for religion among the general population.

Debate interrupted.

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