Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have had serious concerns about the Religious Discrimination Bill 2021 for a long time. I do not support this bill, certainly not in its current form. I represent a proudly diverse group of communities in my electorate of Wills—communities of different faiths, communities of diversity and ethnicity, communities that are diverse in their sexuality and gender—that really represent modern Australia. We represent all Australians in the diversity that makes us such a strong and vibrant country.

As someone who has experienced discrimination in my own life, both professionally and personally, I know how important the principle of equality before the law is. I know how important the principles of freedom of religion and freedom from religion are, especially in a secular democracy such as ours. That's critical. Our position on this bill is supportive of extending the federal antidiscrimination framework to ensure that Australians are not discriminated against because of their religious beliefs or activities. We support that extension of the framework. That's the non-controversial part of this bill, which I think most of us here support in good conscience. These are the state, territory and federal laws that currently prohibit discrimination on the basis of age, disability, race, sex, gender, identity, sex characteristics and sexual orientation.

In extending that antidiscrimination framework, we should not and cannot create laws that have the outcome of preferencing the rights of one particular group of Australians over another group of Australians. It cannot be one group pitted against another group, nor at the expense of other groups. This is what elements of this bill do. Surely, as lawmakers, it's within our ability to ensure that we provide a legal framework that protects people from discrimination regardless of their faith, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or any other characteristic. As lawmakers, we could do that if we had the right intent behind this bill.

Almost three years ago, Prime Minister Scott Morrison promised to update the laws to protect all LGBTQIA+ schoolkids as soon as possible. Clearly, after three and half years, he has failed to protect kids in that way. He actually put up an amendment that was kind of like a political wedge within a wedge: 'Well, I'll protect gay kids, but I won't do it for trans kids.' As a matter of principle, equality before the law is equality before the law, regardless. No-one wants to be kicked out of school because of who they are. That's including the vast majority of religious schools. It is a no-brainer. In fact, it's a bill that's kind of looking for a problem. Where is the evidence of this? I saw a story today that a Catholic school, Xavier College, actually affirmed the right of a student to transition and change gender.

In contrast, federal Labor's approach to this bill is guided by a number of simple but fundamental principles, including that any extension of this federal antidiscrimination framework should not remove protections that already exist in the law to protect Australians from other forms of discrimination. We must have not only freedom of religion but freedom from religion. This means that Australians should be free to practice and adhere to their faith, just as Australians should be able to not follow a faith and be free from any repercussions or discrimination on that basis.

Federal Labor wants everyone to live free from discrimination, feel respected and get a fair go. Fundamentally, laws that prohibit discrimination should be about fairness, and the Labor Party is the architect of the antidiscrimination law framework in this country. We enacted the Racial Discrimination Act in 1975, the Sex Discrimination Act in 1984 and the Disability Discrimination Act in 1992. And we supported the Age Discrimination Act in 2004, which was enacted under a Liberal government. This is what drives us to do the right thing and put those laws in place and actually buttress those values that we always talk about.

There has been a lot of commentary about what some of these provisions in these bills would and wouldn't do, including the concerns that the bill introduced by the government would lead to more discrimination, particularly of LGBTQIA+ Australians. The Prime Minister and the Attorney-General have denied that. They've rejected those claims. But some of their own Liberal members of their party room, members of this parliament, have clearly expressed concerns about the bill and the aspects of the proposed legislation that we're discussing and debating. They know, as we know, that the Prime Minister has weaponised this bill, politicised this bill, and wielded it to divide the community, not to unite it.

I have a great deal of respect for the office of the Prime Minister, but I've got to judge and call out what is clearly going on. They're using this bill for base political purposes, to try and find or even create a problem that's not quite there. That is not the intention that we have, clearly, as I've described. So we will amend; we'll put amendments up here in the House. If we don't get these amendments up here, we'll do it in the other place. But let's not go to the other place. I call on my colleagues, fellow parliamentarians on the other side, many of whom have said almost exactly the same things that we on this side have said about the problems with this bill, to support the amendments that are put up. Join us in supporting them because they address the issues that you have raised on the public record.

These amendments, as we've heard, are around the Sex Discrimination Act in order to protect all students, gay and trans, which this bill fails to do. There are amendments around the statement of belief in clause 12 so that it does not remove or diminish any existing protections against discrimination or override state and territory antidiscrimination laws. There is also the antivilification amendment that we're proposing. It beggars belief that after 3½ years a bill called the Religious Discrimination Bill doesn't quite show an understanding that we need to have provisions around vilification of people based on their religious belief. This bill doesn't even cover that, so we want to amend the legislation to ensure that a person is prohibited from threatening, intimidating, harassing or vilifying another person exercising their religious belief in activity and in their faith. We will make it very clear that you don't have a licence to discriminate against someone. This bill doesn't even protect someone who is walking down the street wearing a yarmulke or going to synagogue on the Sabbath from abuse being hurled at them. It doesn't protect a woman in a hijab from having abuse hurled at her, or a Sikh having abuse hurled at him because of his headdress. It doesn't even cover those examples, and yet it's called the protection of religious discrimination bill. We're also going to be moving to protect people from discrimination in in-home care by any providers that might do so based on being a religious organisation, for example.

My parents escaped a region of the world that was engulfed by conflict and discrimination, partly on the basis of religion and faith, so I know just how important freedom of religion is. I know how important it is from the perspective of being a religious minority that was persecuted and has been persecuted for millennia. Being treated equally under the law, regardless of your faith, is critically important. But coming from that background I know the flip side of that is also important, the importance of having freedom from religion, not having other faiths imposed on you or other views imposed on you because you are a minority. We should not be preferencing the rights of one group of Australians over another, so many of us in this chamber want to see changes to this bill to try to get it right. I want to protect the individual members of the community in my electorate who have reached out to me, not just in the last day but over a period of time, to share their stories with me.

We on the side have been the architects of many antidiscrimination laws, as I have described, and we did this because we are serious about protecting Australians from discrimination. We believe in the egalitarian ethos because, regardless of your background, faith, ethnicity, race, sex, gender, sexuality, age, whatever it is, you should be treated equally under the law. That is the fairness that we as Australians talk about. It's not about the politics of this; it's not about trying to win over a part of the demographic or a part of the community that might get angry or be whipped up into some false, concocted anger. It's not about those political games for us. It's about genuinely seeing the importance of laws that protect Australians from discrimination and improve our nation as a body politic. Make real the fair go, not just in word but in deed, because we know that our religious diversity and our cultural diversity are part of what makes us who we are as Australians. Our diversity makes us successful. We talk about the successful multicultural country that we are. We're successful because of the acceptance and the embracing of the diversity that exists and the fair go inherent in that. This law should be a reflection and a statement of how much we value this diversity. Instead, it is being designed—dropped at the eleventh hour and after 3½ years—to pit one group against another group. It's the antithesis of what we should be doing. It should be a commitment to create a society where everybody feels safe and valued. But, as I said, under this government it's been weaponised for political purposes—in the eleventh hour, a few months out from the federal election.

I do not support the bill in this current form. I support the amendments that we're putting up to try and fix the elements of it that are problematic. I call on the government MPs who've spoken out bravely and publicly on these very same issues to join me and many of us here in supporting these amendments, because I think it's incumbent upon us, as lawmakers, to try and get this right.

See this speech in context