Trent Zimmerman (North Sydney, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I hadn't intended to speak on this bill, the Religious Discrimination Bill 2021, tonight, but I feel it is important to outline to my community the position I'm taking in relation to this important legislation. I can honestly say that this has been one of the most difficult weeks of my time in parliament. I also reflect on the fact that it's just under a month until the anniversary of when I made my first speech to this chamber—and what a special day that was. It was special in a number of other ways, and most particularly because, when I stood—almost in this exact spot; it was a few rows in front of where I am now—I talked about the fact that I stood in this place as the first openly gay man in the House of Representatives. That was not just an important milestone for me, I hoped it was a significant milestone for so many other Australians—particularly those who were still struggling with their sexuality and wondering whether they could achieve all that they wanted to in life. I said in that first speech that I hoped that my mere presence in this chamber would send a signal that you could be gay and be a member of the Parliament of Australia.

Of course, since that time there have been so many momentous decisions that have affected the community of which I'm a part. Several years later in this chamber, several years after my first speech, following the vote by the Australian people, we celebrated the passage of the marriage equality legislation. It was in fact this flag that made headlines around the world as the backdrop to that incredible scene as the member for Leichhardt and the member for Barton embraced in this chamber. It symbolised so much of what was special about that day, and I honestly believe that there will not be a day as special for me as when marriage equality became the law of this country.

I raise these issues because it is important to understand the significance of this legislation. And I want to start my discussion about the bill by saying that of course it is a no-brainer that in this country we should have legislation which prevents one person discriminating against another person because of their religious faith. It is an international obligation. It is a human right. It is simply wrong that any person could be discriminated against because of the faith that they hold dear. And I know that the Ruddock review of religious freedom in this country made the point that, unlike so many other nations, we, as part of our wonderful liberal democracy, provide opportunities for people of all faiths like virtually no other country. And I know in that review they found religious freedom was not in imminent peril. But I also know that there are some who face discrimination based on their religion, particularly minority faiths—people of Jewish faith, people of Islamic faith; there are perceptions among some Christians of that as well—so the concept of having a religious discrimination bill is one that makes sense.

I also want to highlight the fact that in all my work as the member for North Sydney, one of the highlights has been working with so many wonderful religious organisations, from the Sisters of Saint Joseph at Mary MacKillop Place in North Sydney, who do so much for those in need of help, to our local religious schools. For example, this week I am visiting Riverview with the Minister for Indigenous Australians to meet with the Indigenous students that they support. There are the charity groups—Vinnies, Salvos—that I've worked very closely with among so many others. And, of course, just simply the inherent fellowship that churches and other religious organisations, synagogues and mosques provide to their adherents. So it is right that we have religious discrimination laws on our statute books, and it is an important part of our liberal democracy.

But I have had concerns about this bill because it does extend beyond the orthodox provisions of discrimination laws in this country. It goes beyond simply preventing and outlawing discrimination on the basis of a person's religion and their faith. I do want to acknowledge that there have been improvements to this bill over time—the deletion of the Folau clause and the moderation of those clauses relating to medical practitioners are really, really important—but there are still aspects of this bill that concern me. Most particularly, it is the statement of beliefs clause in this bill.

Human rights are a difficult issue; no human right exists in a silo. Inevitably many do conflict. In many, we try to balance and judge competing interests and competing human rights. But my concern about the statement of beliefs is fundamentally that it extends a greater privilege to freedom of conscience based on religious views. For me as a Liberal, freedom of conscience and freedom of thought is the most important thing in our society, and religious faith is one of those expressions of freedom of conscience. It's no more important and no less important than any other. My concern with the statement of beliefs and the way it's constructed is that it actually puts religious faith on a pedestal above other rights in a way that I have serious problems with.

But I also want to talk about another aspect of the legislation and the debate that's occurring today, and that's in relation to the Sex Discrimination Act. Some have said this is tangential, almost accidentally involved in the debate we're having tonight. For me it's not, because in the Religious Discrimination Bill we are talking about new provisions that relate to educational settings and educational institutions. That's why for me we have a historic opportunity to right what I think is a significant wrong in the Sex Discrimination Act, and that is in relation to its treatment of teachers and students.

The current SDA provides that, effectively, someone can be discriminated against based on inherent characteristics like their sexuality, gender, sex, pregnancy or marital status. For me, that is fundamentally wrong. Those are exemptions that belong in the 19th century, not the 21st century. That's why, for me, having the opportunity to reform the SDA as part of this debate is so important. For me it's about teachers. Let me tell you that the hearings of the two committees that looked at this made us realise that this is not some mere academic issue. There are teachers today who love their job, who love their profession, who love the schools that they work for and who love their students but have been sacked for things like the simple fact that they were gay. As the son of a Christian school headmaster, I know how important those educational settings are. I understand that schools want to protect the ethos and the mission of those schools, and there's nothing wrong with that, but there is something profoundly wrong when you judge a person based on their sexuality or their gender. That's why I believe that today we should be addressing the issue of teachers in the SDA.

I also fundamentally believe that it's an opportunity to address the issue of discrimination, which is permitted in the SDA, against those that we have the greatest responsibility to in our education system: students themselves. Again, at the moment the SDA allows schools to discriminate based on all those characteristics I mentioned before. Of course, the reality is that it's uncommon for that to happen. I think of the wonderful schools in my electorate. I have spoken to many of their school principals just this week, and all of them strive to provide a supporting environment to students based on their sexuality or gender, including those who are transgender or going through the transition. But there are still some, and we've seen this just in recent weeks, that would purport in the name of their religion to discriminate in what I think is quite a heinous way.

I want to tell you why this is important to me: because my own journey—something I don't talk about, because I'm intrinsically a private person—is a reflection of what many other people have experienced. It was a different age in the seventies and eighties, but, like so many of my peers, I went through that long period of struggling with my sexuality, where I lived in fear of discovery, where someone simply talking about homosexuality sent me rushing in case it led to some type of exposure, and where I could spend weeks after an incident, if I'd said the wrong thing, wondering whether I'd revealed myself. That is so debilitating. I did that in the environment of a school that was not particularly conservative. I can never remember it preaching against homosexuality. I did it in an environment where I had such a loving family and support group of friends, but nonetheless for people in my situation in that age it was such an ordeal. Can I say that, whilst we have improved so much, so incredibly much, just in my lifetime, I know that that is still the experience of so many Australians.

There are people today who are in mental anguish because of their sexuality. There are even more people in anguish because of their gender. We have to provide a legal environment that supports them. Part of that is ensuring that when they're going to school, when they're going to an educational institution, they do so with that struggle that might be within them but knowing, at the very least, that that school cannot legally discriminate against them, the school cannot expel them and the school cannot penalise them in a way that they have a de facto expulsion because their life becomes so unpleasant. I want every child in those educational settings, whilst it's not a solution of itself, to know that the school itself is not going to be the cause of the problem that they face. One of the things I am most proud of in my position as a member of parliament is that so many parents have contacted me, even about my first speech, and said, 'We gave that to our child to help them.' So many young people have approached me and said, 'Thank you for setting an example that we can aspire to.' Our school settings should provide similar support, which I believe they so desperately need.

Today, there are people who will consider taking their own lives because of the internal struggle they go through. For me, it wasn't until my 30s that I came out completely to my family. Of course, like most people, my family said it doesn't make any difference. That's as it should be. But that's not always the case. There are people who are threatened with violence in the home and with, effectively, exile from their families for going through that same journey. That's why for me it's really the core of who I am that is leading me to make some difficult decisions in relation to what I do in this chamber. And I'd like to think that my community will support me in that journey.

I will be forever proud and grateful for the fact that North Sydney residents, for the first time in Australian history—as progressive as they are—said: 'It doesn't matter what your sexuality is if you're standing for parliament. We're going to vote for you based on your merits, not whether you're gay or straight.' They were the first to do that in the country, and I am so grateful in so many ways for the opportunity that they've given me as a result. But I also hope to be an example to anyone who is part of the LGBTI community.

In that regard, I want to say that one of the things that's disturbed me most this week is the debate about transgender children. I cannot support a situation where we solve a problem for one community but in fact enhance a problem for another. And we are. It's a bit of a misnomer that this is actually new legislation that's putting in place something punitive. We are dealing with the existing laws which allow discrimination based on your gender and your sexuality. The fact is: if we solve one problem and not another, by omission we are sending a message to those people in the transgender community.

They are the most vulnerable people in our society. All the statistics show what they go through: the suicide rates, the attempted suicide rates and the mental health problems. I cannot do anything which makes their situation more difficult, which sends anything other than a message from this parliament—as most receive in their schools, but sadly some don't—that we want to embrace you, we want to love you, we want to support you and we want to nurture you during what is a difficult and often challenging part of your own lives, as you realise who you are and who you should be.

I simply want to say that in these debates some are saying we can push this down the road and have reviews. Some are saying that there is something different about sexuality or gender identity. For me—and I made this point in my first speech—there is nothing different about your sexuality or your gender from the colour of your skin. I don't believe that this parliament would waste a second if there were some old law which said that a school or any institution could discriminate against you because of your race, or allow that to stand on the statute books if it were discovered that, in fact, that law were being exercised in a way that discriminated against someone based on their creed or their colour. For me, that's why this is important.

As I said before, we know that teachers today are being removed from some schools—a minority of schools—because of those inherent characteristics. We know that there are some schools that would effectively penalise those people based on their sexuality. The case we saw in the last two weeks, which equated homosexuality with bestiality and paedophilia, was just disgusting. And that's in modern Australia. That's why we have the opportunity, by supporting amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act, to address that problem in the overarching framework of what we can achieve for our educational settings through this religious discrimination bill.

I want to indicate that I will be making the difficult decision to part with my party on some of the amendments that are before the chamber tonight. I'll speak more about those, but I've highlighted the two that are most important to me: the statement of beliefs and the opportunity to fix the SDA. It's an opportunity that I can't let go past. I could not live with myself if I didn't seek to address those issues.

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