Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I'm not religious, I've never been baptised, but I show respect to those who are religious. Anyone who's read Umberto Eco's letters to the cardinal, for example, can appreciate how a non-religious person can nonetheless learn from and draw from the lessons of religion. I certainly attend church services quite frequently, as the member for Blair knows, not out of my own belief but out of respect for my constituents and for others who are religious. For example, this week I attended the ecumenical service at the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Nicholas for the opening of the parliament, just as the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Blair did. I listened to the archbishop's sermon, in which he drew on scripture, etymology and philosophy from a number of sources to tell us that inherent in personhood is love for other persons. To me, that implies that we should continue to work towards making sure that everyone, whether they share our values or not, whether they share our identities or not, can live their lives fully as their authentic selves. Of course, the Leader of the Opposition's reading from Corinthians made the same point in a different way. It was about the qualities of love that require us to have respect for others, not for our own benefit or out of our own sense that they are like us but because inherently they should receive it from us.

For me, this means that it is important that we as a parliament continue, from a secular perspective also, to heed in different ways these same lessons: that people are inherently deserving of dignity, that people should be treated with dignity and that people should be equal before the law. One of the ways we in parliaments do that in the law is by continuing to broaden antidiscrimination laws to give effect to international obligations such as those in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This covenant protects religious freedom and the right to freedom of conscience, thought and religion. I believe that this parliament should, as the Goss government did more than 30 years ago, legislate to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of religion, just as this parliament did under the Whitlam government to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race and the Hawke government did to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of sex. I want to pay particular tribute to the late Susan Ryan for the Sex Discrimination Act. Later, that same government prohibited discrimination on the grounds of disability, and, I will confess, the coalition government in 2004 prohibited discrimination on the basis of age.

All of these bills have helped us to give effect to our obligations under the ICCPR and the rights that are protected under that international instrument. But these laws have also given effect to basic human decency and the ability to live free from discrimination, so, given Labor's long history of standing up for human rights and for antidiscrimination laws, I believe that no-one should be surprised that Labor supports protections against discrimination on the ground of religion. I would like to see us as a parliament introduce national protections against discrimination on the basis of religion.

As a lawyer, I did some discrimination law. I remember one person who'd converted to a different religion and was suddenly getting treated differently at work. I remember reading a case of a prisoner who was being denied halal meals in prison, and using the discrimination laws in relation to religion.

These are important matters. These are not trifling matters. Just as our national law protects from discrimination on the grounds of sex, family responsibilities, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status, marital status, relationship status, breastfeeding, race, disability and age, we should protect against discrimination on the ground of religion. Everyone who's been discriminated against for wearing a turban or a cloak or a robe or a hijab, ought to have the knowledge that this parliament will stand up for their rights, and we should do that.

There are some serious shortcomings with this bill. This parliament should also amend those provisions to minimise those shortcomings. But, more importantly, it should also take this opportunity to proactively and positively improve our antidiscrimination laws. The member for North Sydney talked about the provision of the Sex Discrimination Act that positively allows for discrimination against school students. That provision says:

… Nothing in section 21 renders it unlawful for a person to discriminate against another person on the ground of the other person's sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or relationship status or pregnancy in connection with the provision of education or training… that is conducted in accordance with the doctrines, tenets, beliefs or teachings of a particular religion or creed, if the first-mentioned person so discriminates in good faith in order to avoid injury to the religious susceptibilities of adherents of that religion or creed.

That is the current law that is in force today and has been in force for decades. It is not a new provision that this bill of the government's is seeking to insert into the sex discrimination law. It is the existing law and it is no longer, if it ever was, fit for purpose. As the member for North Sydney said, this government's Religious Discrimination Bill gives us as a parliament the opportunity to right this historic wrong by altering the Sex Discrimination Act to remove the licence for discrimination that it provides against students.

Those people—and there are many who have been raising concerns with me about the rights of gay or lesbian students, bisexual students or students with diverse gender identities, for example—would, I believe, want us to take every opportunity to seek to reduce the capacity for discrimination against those kids. I would say that particularly trans kids, whose identity reveals itself at quite a young age, I think, compared to sexuality issues, are vulnerable, and we must protect them. We would be remiss if we did not take this opportunity to seek to resolve this problem that currently exists in law, and one of the ways that we can do that is to seek to include an amendment in this bill to remove discrimination, to try, as we have the power to do in this parliament, to protect those students. We can do that with this bill. We can move that amendment, and if this House supports it, or if it's supported in the Senate, we can right this historic wrong and we can improve the circumstances for young people and children who are gender diverse, who have diverse sexualities. That ought to occur. It's important, and we should pursue it.

The other matter that we have an opportunity to address right now by amending this bill is the absence of religious vilification laws in this country at a national level. Again, we have them in my state, in the state laws, but we don't have a national antivilification law that protects on the ground of religion. We have them for race. The Abbott government sought to repeal those laws. We fought against that repeal because we believe that there should be antivilification provisions protecting people on the grounds of race, and we equally believe that there should be antivilification provisions protecting people on the grounds of religion. As the Leader of the Opposition says, anyone who remembers—and everyone does—what it was like when an Australian killed tens of people in two mosques in Christchurch could hardly say that we don't need and deserve religious antivilification laws in this country. In my electorate, after that horrible event had occurred, one of our local mosques was vandalised with graffiti referring to that shooter and with right-wing extremist symbols.

Religious vilification ought to be against the law at a national level. This bill presents us with an opportunity to establish that antivilification provision. It would be remiss of us not to seek to use the opportunity we have right now to establish antivilification provisions on the ground of religion. I have long supported the need to create protections for people on the ground of religion, for these reasons and for the many other reasons that people have recited tonight. That is why Labor is seeking to move amendments to this bill—those are some of them; there are others—that will not just reduce adverse effects of the bill but make a positive step in the advancement of the civil and political rights of Australians and the protection of people against discrimination on the grounds of sexuality, gender identity, pregnancy, marital status and religion. That is what our amendments seek to do.

People from other parties have criticised us for saying that we will pursue these amendments in both the House and the Senate. They want to know why we don't just 'kill the bill' in the House. First, let me say again that I support the concept of religious antidiscrimination provisions, and I think it would be odd for Labor not to support the introduction of ICCPR protections in domestic law. Let me also make a comparison with another achievement of Labor and others in this House against the wishes, frankly, of the government of the day. That's when we introduced the medevac provisions.

Deputy Speaker, you will remember as I do how those provisions came to bear. It wasn't from a private member's bill. There's a party in this place that's moved 15 private members' bills in this term, and not a single one of them has even got to a second reading, let alone passed. That's not how laws are made here. What happened was that a government bill was passed in this House. It went to the Senate. In the Senate, amendments were passed allowing for the medical evacuation of refugees to Australia. Then that bill came back to this House, and this House insisted on those amendments, and they were passed. Now, the same people who are criticising us for wanting to use every opportunity we have to amend this bill, to positively and proactively advance the rights of Australians, are the same people—I would wager—who were very pleased they we're able to use a very similar process in order to achieve medevac. That's how medevac was achieved. The bill passed the House and went to the Senate. It was amended in the Senate and came back to the House, where they insisted on the amendments. That is what we are saying we want to do here.

We will prosecute our case for these positive amendments to protect Australians in this chamber. Our colleagues from the Senate will do the same in the other place. If we are successful in amending the bill, we will be insisting on those amendments. If that is achieved that will mean protection from discrimination on the ground of religion and protection from vilification on the ground of religion, and an increase in the protection of students who are gender diverse, who are pregnant and who have the different attributes that are currently referred to in the exemption that appears in the Sex Discrimination Act.

So for those of my constituents who are contacting me, I want to assure you that I will always do whatever I can to advance the human rights of Australians and protect the human rights of Australians. I will always do that. I will always stand up for vulnerable Australians, especially vulnerable children. I will never cop the idea that it's somehow okay for a school to do what Citipointe College did recently in trying to create some sort of quasi contract precluding kids from expressing themselves in their true and authentic identity. I'll never cop that.

In this case, I'm not going to just because minor parties want to use this as some sort of spin opportunity against Labor. I'm not going to forgo opportunities to increase protections for people. I'm going to support—and Labor will support—doing everything we can to improve those protections and to stand up, particularly, for vulnerable Australians, for Australians who are at risk of facing discrimination or vilification. This is the right thing to do, and I encourage every Liberal, National and other person in this chamber to vote on our amendments with us.

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