Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Cities and Urban Infrastructure) Share this | Hansard source

At the moment, early on Thursday morning, we are debating something which is called the Religious Discrimination Bill. But, without this amendment, it doesn't actually protect Australians against discrimination on the basis of their faith. We have heard lots of speeches from people on both sides of the House and from the crossbench too, and a very common theme has been recourse to the imagery that what we should be looking for is a shield and not a sword. But here we see a government insisting, for reasons I genuinely don't understand, on providing a sword but not a shield.

People in my community have spoken to me about their concerns, and I share their concerns, that we have a big gap in our architecture of Commonwealth antidiscrimination laws. We have a big gap that presently allows people to be discriminated against on the basis of their faith. This should be something that we should be able to attend to. This amendment would do that. This amendment deals with what multicultural and multifaith communities have been asking for.

We've heard quite a bit from government members about that, seeking to wrap themselves around community groups in support of their proposal, but this is utterly disingenuous. My colleagues the member for Wills, just a moment ago, and the member for Fenner set out some really important context that all members should have regard to. The fact is that, while we do see an increase in racism in Australia—and that is something that we should and could be doing more about—there is a Commonwealth legal framework that exists that can attend to that.

We're also seeing a very disturbing increase in hate online and in the community, in real life, based on people's faith, in particular, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. It beggars belief that we are here three years after the concept of a religious discrimination bill was advanced dealing with a bill with this title, yet we have a government that is unwilling to grasp the simple fact that people are being discriminated against in our streets and towns on the basis of their faith and how they manifest it—people who are being singled out because they are obviously a Muslim woman or a Sikh man; people who deserve to be able to freely participate in our society. I wonder if members opposite might just spend one moment pondering how any of these Australians might see this debate—a debate taken out by members opposite cynically in their name but without regard to their interests or our interests in constructing a society in which each of us is free to be who we are—absent the ugly stain of discrimination.

When it comes to these manifestations of discrimination based on faith, as the member for Gellibrand set out, we are seeing some of the most challenging and awful manifestations of hate. People feel fear. Muslim Australians look at what happened in Christchurch. While there have been fine words spoken in this place, those words need to be matched by action. And the action that we're putting forward is pretty simple. It's simply to do what all of these groups have been asking for; it's simply to do what any reasonable person would believe is required of a bill styled the Religious Discrimination Bill.

There are other aspects of Labor's amendments that I understand some members on the government side may have an ideological basis for their disagreement. I understand that; I disagree with it. But I simply do not understand how Australia's parliament, right now, in 2022, can fail to recognise the discrimination that is happening in every town and in every suburb, and, more than that, can put forward a bill that, on the face of it, addresses that but thumbs its nose at the people it should be protecting, the people whose interests need to be brought to the centre of the debate, the people whose interests would, should, could and must be protected through this amendment.

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