Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Religious Discrimination Bill 2021 and the related bills. I want to begin my remarks by acknowledging the literal hundreds of people who have written to me in the last few days, via email and on various social media platforms, and who have called me. I want to say that I have read each and every one of your emails. I have read each and every one of your texts. I hear you, and I'll be getting back to each and every one of you soon. I hope that the House makes significant amendments that I can update you on so we can strengthen protection for people.

Let me say from the outset that I feel this bill does not get the balance right. This bill, in my opinion, has too many aspects that are divisive and that override existing protections in the law. I feel that this bill did not get the balance right. While I won't go into what was discussed in internal Labor meetings, I did express my view in those meetings, and I do not feel that this bill in its current form should get passage through this House. But we can improve this bill. We can go a long way towards fixing this bill.

Before I talk about the bill, I want to say something as a side point. My electorate of Macnamara is filled with amazing people, people who care about one another and about issues of protecting people's identities, whether they be gay, straight, bisexual, trans, intersex or queer. It does not matter who you are. In the electorate of Macnamara, in the suburbs of St Kilda, Port Melbourne, Ripponlea, Caulfield and Elwood, I know that the people where I come from and the people that I represent do not want Australia to be a place where one group is discriminating against another. They do not want that. I have heard them loud and clear.

I also say to any young people who I represent or who are participating in this debate or raising their voice: keep raising your voice. Your voice matters in this debate. We in this place hear you. I want to acknowledge that, for a lot of people, this debate has been really hard. This debate has been, at times, one where people in this place are questioning whether a young person is okay. It has morphed into this quite awful debate about whether people feel that they are accepted or not in this country. I want to say that if you feel that way that's okay. It's okay to feel that you've been let down by the way in which these issues have been debated, not just now but in the past.

Before I move on to the bill, I also want to say that my family, like so many others in this country, has people from a range of genders and sexualities. It hasn't been a smooth passage towards acceptance for people that I love dearly. It hasn't been easy. The pathway to acceptance has not been a straightforward one for many people, including people that I love. And I did not come to this place to enable discrimination against one person by another. I will continue to work, while I'm privileged to be the member in this place, to ensure that we in Australia remove discrimination and end it, as opposed to provide legal protections for it.

So let's go into the bill. There are huge swathes of this bill that are not only uncontroversial; they are good. You should not be discriminated against in this country if you hold a particular faith. If you are a Hindu and you are Australian, that is brilliant. If you are Jewish and you are Australian, that is excellent. If you are Christian and Australian, good on you. If you are Islamic, then more power to you. Whatever faith you hold, whoever you believe in, whatever you believe to be true to who you are and is part of your identity, we in this country should celebrate our differences. I love going to see the wonderful multicultural aspects of our community.

My family is a family that understands religious freedom being taken away from us. We do. My grandmother fled Nazi Germany when she was four years old. My grandmother didn't have religious freedom. We have religious freedom in this country. We accept people and their faith, and that is something I am deeply proud of. And this bill does go some way to ensuring that people—whether you wear a hijab, whether you wear a yarmulke, whatever religious garb that makes you who you are—shouldn't be discriminated against. And that's a good thing, and I stand by that. And I think we all stand by that.

Had the Prime Minister left it at that, had the Prime Minister left the only aspects of this bill that protected people from discrimination—instead of providing various frameworks that enable discrimination—then I think all of us in this place would be celebrating a true moment of leadership, just in the same way that the Labor Party celebrated John Howard and the Age Discrimination Act, just as Labor moved various other pieces of discrimination acts—the Sex Discrimination Act, the Disability Discrimination Act. We don't believe that one Australian should be discriminated against, but that's not where the bill ends.

There are parts of this bill that override and intersect with existing protections. The most egregious is the statement of belief. I believe that you should be able to state what you believe. You should be able to confidently and proudly express your faith in this country—of course you should. But should you be able to vilify someone whilst doing that? No. We must have respect, and I think that is a central tenet of faith. I grew up and went to a Jewish school, and I was always taught to do as to others as you want done to yourself. For me, expressing faith and spirituality and religion has never been something where we would use that to belittle another human being, to express opinions about another human being. It was a way of interacting and asking of yourself: how do you interact with others in a way that lifts them up, not brings them down? The statement of belief clause should be amended so it doesn't intersect with existing laws. We should not be weakening existing laws in this country.

Before the Christmas break, the government announced an amendment to the Sex Discrimination Act. Four members of the government and the Attorney-General announced that they were going to remove the ability for students to be discriminated against in schools. The Prime Minister then also recommitted to that exact thing. He wrote to the Leader of the Opposition saying that he was going to remove the ability for schools to discriminate against their students. We also had the Citipointe incident, where a pretty outrageous contract was asked of students, to define what they are and what they're not. And that received the appropriate backlash. But the Prime Minister made a promise to protect kids, and at the moment what the government has put on the table is an amendment to the Sex Discrimination Act that would prevent kids being expelled—not kids being treated differently, not kids being discriminated against, not kids being put in detention, not kids restricted from being on the debating team; it is just that you can't expel kids.

Are we really, in this place, comfortable with the threshold that the House of Representatives of Australia believes that kids can be discriminated against in our schools? I know that this is existing law and this wasn't originally in the Prime Minister's legislation, but that is the question that we are going to have to ask ourselves later tonight. Are we really, in the Australian House of Representatives, on 9 February 2022, as members of various political persuasions, going to be happy saying that we can discriminate against some kids, whether you're gay, you're bi, you're trans or whatever you are? Are we saying that that's grounds for discrimination against kids? Of course it's bloody not.

I know that there are members on that side, people I consider friends, who are deeply disturbed by that question. And I know that there are members on that side who are grappling with what the political equation is. But, putting that aside, tonight, in the House of Representatives, we are going to be asking ourselves: do you, as an adult, as a member of this privileged place, sign your name to an amendment that means some kids can be discriminated against, or not? I would urge—please—a majority of members of this place to decide that question in the right way. That will end a lot of pain tonight. That will send a clear message to children who grow up questioning who they are—not choosing to; that's just who they are—that this place believes that they are exactly who they should be, that they are worth every bit as much as the next person in this country, and that they deserve protections equal to those of any other person in this great place and in this great country.

Labor will also move amendments around antivilification, which, again, I implore the House to support. The power of speech to cut through and to hurt is immense, and we should not be discriminating against another Australian on the basis of our speech. We do not want the right to be a bigot in this country. I'm proud of the Labor Party's consistent position on matters of vilification and antidiscrimination.

There are many places around the world where people of various faiths are not free. I am immensely proud of Australia and the wonderful multicultural success story that it is. I love going to see my Hare Krishna temple and the generosity that they provide when they just give out meals because that is who they are. I loved going to the Pride Shabbat at Temple Beth Israel on Friday night, where Jewish people were celebrating members who have been ostracised in the community. I love going to visit my Anglican church and seeing a priest named Kath, who I consider a friend, who is one of the most inspiring and generous people, who gives to her community and who looks after some of the most vulnerable and needy people in our community because she cares. I am inspired by Father Cox, who works in the small parish next to our public housing. Religion can be a great source of comfort and support to people in this country. We should have the freedom to express ourselves and express our faith, and I wholeheartedly support that. But that doesn't mean that religion can be used as a tool—see the way in which this has been morphed into the Prime Minister basically insinuating that someone's faith is enough of a reason to discriminate against someone else. It's not.

Just as I am proud to walk into those places of worship, I am proud to walk down Fitzroy Street each and every year in the Pride march, in the heart of my electorate, the heart of St Kilda, the heart of diversity. I am proud to see people lifting themselves up with their chin held high, celebrating who they are, celebrating themselves and their different identities and sexualities. It doesn't matter whether they are gay, straight, bi, trans, queer, intersex, asexual—it doesn't matter. Each and every person on this planet deserves respect. This bill doesn't get that balance right.

I would urge the House: please, please, support the amendments. Give a bit more dignity to some people who really need it right now. Say to them without fear or favour that the House of Representatives in this place wants to see all people treated equally, and especially to see our children protected under the laws that we hold so dear. Thank you.

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