Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

I too want to make a brief contribution to the religious discrimination bills before the House. I do not support discrimination in any form. It is absolutely abhorrent to me that people should be excluded from any social, economic or political life on the basis of their race, their disability, their marital or relationship status, their pregnancy, their sexuality, their gender identity or their religious beliefs. It is simply abhorrent. I didn't come into this place to enact laws that introduce new discriminations or entrench old ones that should be long gone from Australian statute books.

I want to acknowledge that this debate is causing deep harm amongst the LGBTIQA+ community. Once again, at no choosing of their own, they are finding their lives at the centre of a divisive political debate in the heart of this nation. I want to thank all of you who have contacted me and my office for your patience, for your wisdom, for your guidance and for your kindness as we from opposition make our way through what is a debate that is of the government's making.

I, like many, have listened very closely to the contribution of others and, as always, when this place steps up to properly debate, to listen to each other and to do our job—the one that we were elected to do—we can be extraordinary. We can unite the country, be inclusive, be leading and be inspiring. We can change the country for the better. I, like many in this debate, know that unity, that inclusion and, as my colleagues, the member for Whitlam and the Leader of the Opposition, so eloquently put it, operating truly based on love is not what has motivated the Prime Minister in deciding that this is the most pressing issue this place should be debating in the last few sitting days before an election. A Prime Minister who chooses to exercise his power to divide people, regardless of the harm it may cause, because he thinks there will be political advantage in it, diminishes the office of Prime Minister. It diminishes this parliament and it diminishes him.

Religious discrimination does exist in this country. We have a history of it here that's as old as our history itself. I am old enough to have experienced it myself as a child. I grew up Catholic. My mother married a non-Catholic. I distinctly recall, as a six-year-old in the suburbs south-east of Melbourne where I grew up—where we roamed the streets as kids in our AVJennings, brick-veneer houses, dodging in and out of them—that my best friend across the road was not Catholic. I didn't know that she wasn't—I didn't even know there was a divide about any of these things. But I distinctly remember, as a six-year-old, sitting in the loungeroom and hearing her grandmother—who was never very nice or very kind to me, but I just thought she was a bit cranky and old, and I didn't have a grandmother, so I didn't know how to relate to them—and I am now 55 and I remember hearing her succinctly saying, 'Why is that Catholic girl in our house?' I remember going home to my mum, and I felt there was something wrong with me. What had happened? Why did this woman think that this was okay to say? That's in my lived experience. I remember my sister, as a nurse, telling the story of nursing someone who had happened to live in the same street as my mum, and this woman saying to my sister, 'Oh, you're the daughter of that woman who married a non-Catholic.' So these debates about religion are not new in this country, and discrimination about religion, about the Catholics and Protestants, in particular, but about all religion, is not new.

There are two propositions here that ought not to be mutually exclusive. People should not be discriminated against because of their religious beliefs or activities. People of faith have the right to act in accordance with these beliefs and the teachings of that faith, which they deeply hold and are deeply part of their identity. Minority religious groups, in particular, in today's modern Australia need the protections offered by this bill. It is a progressive cause, but at the same time kids should not be facing discrimination in the very schools that have been entrusted to teach them, just because of who they are. Nor should their teachers face discrimination because of who they are.

While it has been a longstanding practice to allow religious schools to have a preference in hiring staff of their own faith, sacking a teacher or putting them under pressure to resign or to live in fear because of their sexuality or gender identity is wrong. Expelling a student, putting them in detention, alienating them from classmates, denying them opportunities to participate in school activities because of their gender identity or sexuality is wrong. It is simply anathema that, in 2022, we have to actually say that in this place and we're having a debate about it.

We as parliamentarians should be capable of enacting legislation that provides protections for religious expression without introducing or entrenching discrimination for other groups. That is what religious leaders have been calling for and it's what this bill fails to do. It is what the religion that I grew up with, my Catholic faith, tells us we should be doing. It is why I support the amendments to be moved by the shadow Attorney-General, which prohibit religious vilification, prohibit discrimination against children on the grounds of sexuality or gender identity, make it clear that in-home aged-care service providers cannot discriminate based on religion in the provision of aged-care services and make it clear that the statement of belief provision does not remove or diminish any existing protections against discrimination. We also want to remove discrimination against teaching staff and staff in schools, while recognising the right of religious schools to give preference to hiring school staff of their own faith and recognising that the complex interaction between these two rights needs the Law Reform Commission to quickly finish the work it was asked to do, stalled by this Prime Minister, and provide this parliament with recommendations as the best mechanism to do so.

I want these amendments to get up. But I am realistic, after 20 years in this place, to recognise that it will be, and it is, in the Senate that we will have the best chance to fight for them and to win. So I support that these amendments will be moved and heavily prosecuted both here and in the Senate, and, if they get up, we will be insisting upon them.

I know that there are some who would rather than we simply voted against this bill both in the House and in the Senate. I've seen the commentary on Twitter and I've seen the emails in my inbox and the calls that have come into my office today. It is not a view I support, and it's a view that is based on my 20 years of experience in this parliament. I do think there is merit in providing protections against religious discrimination, and it is a progressive cause. Having seen the terrible division spread by a few locals and exploited by alternative Right outsiders in the neighbouring seat of Bendigo over the construction of a mosque and the fear that that engendered in the Ballarat Muslim community, I don't need convincing that there needs to be protection, and protection for religious freedoms. But, as I said at the outset of this debate, that should not come at the cost of introducing or entrenching further discriminations.

If the numbers are here in the House to get these amendments through then that will be a pretty special thing. It will send a powerful signal to the LGBTIQA+ community that you are loved, that you are respected and that this parliament will protect you. It will also send a powerful signal to those of deep religious faith that you are also loved, that you are respected and that your values, views and faith will be protected.

What a powerful statement for this House to make to the Australian community—that this is something we can do together. And if we can't get these amendments through then let's let the Senate do the job. It is now over to the government and government members. They have a chance before them to unify the country. They have a chance to demonstrate yet again—as we did through the marriage equality bill, as hard and difficult as that was, and through so many other debates on difficult contentious issues that we have had in the 20 years that I have been here—what an extraordinary place this can be. Or, yet again, they can be on the wrong side of history when it comes to these issues. Hopefully they will be able to look back on a long career in this place and feel pride in what they have done.

All Australians should have the right to live their lives free of discrimination and to participate in every opportunity that this great country has to offer. This bill, as it stands, diminishes us as a nation and diminishes us as a people, and it should be amended. I commend the amendments that are to come to the House.

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