Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Religious Discrimination Bill 2021. I really want to thank the speakers that have preceded me, in particular my friend the member for Macnamara, who has just made a great contribution. Our electorates are close geographically, but they are very different communities that we represent. I come to this place from the most extraordinary patch of our country, the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. I represent one of the most diverse electorates in the country. It's a very religious electorate and very religiously diverse. That's the input I want to give to the parliament tonight.

When the Prime Minister announced that he was going to legislate against religious discrimination, I knew this was going to be a very important topic to the people I represent in this parliament. Over the last couple of years since he made that announcement, I've done a lot of consultation with my faith leaders and my faith communities to understand what problem a law such as this might try to solve and how they would see it best solved. So I want to talk briefly about the four main things that came out of those conversations.

I mentioned I have a very religiously diverse community. Within that are very large groups of Catholics, as many of us have in our electorates, and very large groups of others from the Christian religion—Uniting Church, Pentecostal, Evangelical, Lutheran. I have a very large Greek Orthodox community in my electorate. I have a very large Buddhist community—around 7.5 per cent of my constituents are Buddhist adherents. I have a reasonably sized Muslim community and also a reasonably sized Jewish community. Religion is a critical part of life for the people that I represent in this parliament. Somewhere around 75 per cent of my constituents say that they adhere to a particular religion. It's interesting that we are coming to this debate after this two-year pandemic where the spiritual support and guidance provided by religion has been incredibly important to so many people that I represent in this parliament.

The first big finding that came out of my discussion with faith community leaders in Hotham was that there is a need for better protection of religious beliefs in Australia. There are lots of other types of antidiscrimination law in our federal sphere, including for gender, age, disability and race. When I talk to my religious leaders about whether such a thing was necessary, it was agreed that there was generally a gap in the law in the protection of religious beliefs. It was also really clear from the conversations I had that discrimination on the basis of religion is a very real and very large part of life for a lot of people that I represent in parliament. Some of that discrimination is direct, severe, personalised and inciting to violence. We see that most frequently for people who wear some sort of garb associated with their religion—of course, Muslim women wearing a headscarf of some kind are the obvious example here.

All the people that I talk to about these issues reiterate to me that Australia is a beautiful, open, incredibly tolerant country celebrating of difference, but there is a minority of people who treat people who are different very badly. A lot of the examples that were given to me were things that occurred on public transport, where Muslim women in particular were spat at, viciously attacked and very much physically intimidated by people. People coming and going to and from mosques was another example where we heard of some awful acts of discrimination. Things relating to abuse of Jewish people around synagogues was another specific example that was raised with me. I heard some good examples, as well, of Christian community leaders talking to me about how they sometimes get abused when they're wearing a religious collar. This is something that actually is quite pervasive, and I think that everyone who I talked to agreed that we shouldn't see as much of it. If a law can help us do that, then we should have a law.

One of the things I want the parliament to note was that there is a broader discussion about discrimination against people of faith happening out there. I want to aerate that tonight, although it is controversial. I think there are a lot of controversial views being shared, so let's give it a go. I think one of the things that led to a really good conversation with my faith leaders was the role of religion in society. There is a general sense across many types of religious leaders that Australia is becoming a more secular country. Where does that leave religion? Historically, religious beliefs in Australia have had a special place; they've been almost above reproach because they are attached to a religion, particularly Christianity. Talking with my Christian leaders, they're having really deep, thoughtful conversations about how you manage a religious community, and how you converse with a less religious society with the sort of transition that they're seeing. One of the things that we did talk about was the sense, in general, that in the public conversation we are moving into a space where there are less diverse views being allowed to be expressed. People feel that there is a more doctrinaire approach to discussion of issues in public life, and that that really affects some people who are of religious faith. I think this is a real problem—that it's one of those things that it doesn't help us not to talk about, aerate and discuss. It's for that reason I'm raising it with you tonight.

The second important finding that came out of the discussions I had was that religious schools need the ability to preference staff of their own religion. Perhaps to some, that's a controversial statement; to me, it's not controversial at all. Talking with my faith leaders, they're saying to me, 'What is the point of a religious school if we can't provide a certain set of values and beliefs surrounding young people as they go through their most formative years of education?' To me, that is a very obvious and straightforward one, but it was very important. I had this conversation with my faith leaders, not just in their roles as leaders but in their roles as parents. A lot of them are saying to me: 'This is more important to us than academics, than the sporting program in a school, than anything else that might drive our school choice. We will do anything to get our kids in the right faith community in their school.' Of course that requires the school to be able to choose people of that faith.

The third critical point was that there is broad agreement that we need better laws in Australia against religious vilification and incitements to violence. I talked a little bit earlier about some of the real discrimination that my constituents experience because of their religion. We, as the Australian parliament, need to stand and, with one voice, make it absolutely clear that that is not acceptable in Australia today, and that there need to be clear punishments and penalties attached to Australians who treat one another in that way. One of the things that I really enjoyed about the discussions with faith leaders was speaking to them in a multifaith context. There's a lot of solidarity there, especially for the Muslim community, who do feel the brunt of a lot of this vilification. There is very broad agreement that we do need to have better laws—and you will note that Labor's amendments to this bill would put some in place.

One of the controversial aspects of this law is the statements of belief exemption, which would allow people to make statements of belief that are religious in nature, that would then exempt them from various other types of discrimination law. I just want to put a couple of things on the record.

Firstly, this wasn't a very animated part of the conversation that I had with faith leaders. I just want to say that a lot of this debate that we're having about the bill tonight, and a lot of the debate that is had about religion in society, goes immediately to the extremes. I want to say something very obvious here: in my experience religious people don't want to discriminate against other people; they don't want to make statements of belief that would offend other types of discrimination law. That's not a goal, objective or desire of anyone I know who's religious. I think that's why when we talked about this in the groups that I ran, people weren't clear on why anyone would want to be offending other parts of discrimination law.

Something else that they raised with me though, was a very important point about who gets to define what a religion is. They talked to me as faith leaders about the difficulties that they have, where certain fringe groups or extremist offshoots of their own religion are presented as the mainstream of whatever it is they believe, and they said that that's very hard for them to pass out. It's important that the law we pass in parliament tonight makes it clear what a religion is and what a religion isn't.

Those are the four main points that I wanted to make to the parliament tonight. But I wanted to close with one final one that we didn't even talk about in the groups that I ran, because I didn't think that I needed to raise it, and that is that children should not be discriminated against for any reason in this country—they should not. There is not a religious leader in my community who would argue for such a right to discriminate, and I think it's very unfortunate that this debate has descended into a dispute about whether children should be discriminated against. The parliament should not be deliberating on that question; it has a clear answer, and the answer is no.

One of the things that I find frustrating, and I know my religious leaders find frustrating, is the tenor and tone of the discussion we have in the public square about religion in society. And it does feel to me, to be honest, as a progressive person, that the debate is so often dominated by fringe aspects of religions that don't at all reflect the almost-100,000 people who are religious that I represent in this parliament.

Over the last two years, my faith leaders have been telling me this has been the most difficult two years of their life. They have done so much for my community: they have fed hundreds of people I represent; they have cared for people when they've had COVID; and they have provided, apart from material support, enormous spiritual support for so many people that I represent. That doesn't seem to get a lot of airtime. Instead, we talk about Israel Folau. How did he somehow become representative of Christian beliefs in this country? In my experience, dealing with Christian leaders, that's not how they see Israel Folau. In fact, they were, in many instances, deeply offended by some of the things that he said.

Citipointe, again, is not reflective of mainstream religious views in this country, and I feel frustrated that that seems to be the debate we're having as a parliament, pitting this sort of extremism as somehow reflective of the views of mainstream religious people in this country, and it's not. Again, I've never met anyone who's religious in my community who's argued that discrimination towards children is somehow justified by religion, and I don't think I ever will.

The discussions that I had with my faith leaders about the Religious Discrimination Bill filled me with huge hope and respect. I have so much respect for these leaders and the work that they do. One of the overarching themes that we kept coming back to in the discussions was that we live in a very diverse country, and in that diverse country, we are all going to have different views about things. Our goal and our role in this parliament is to join hands and walk forward as a country together, and it is a real question about whether the law is actually the right place to do that, and whether some of these problems are much too complex, much too nuanced and much too difficult to resolve through a law.

While there was general support amongst the leaders that I talked to about a religious discrimination bill, the thing I think they're most concerned about, and the thing I'm most concerned about, is creating the tolerant community that's reflected in the millions of households of people that we represent in this chamber. I don't know if that's a role for the law; I do know it's a role for leaders and for leadership.

See this speech in context