Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Let me explain how the benchmark, the secondary test, will work. If you fail the first benchmark, APRA will then conduct a very narrow, specific second test, which will ask the question: but for you investing your funds in accordance with a faith based principle, would you have failed the test? And, if the answer to that is, yes, you would've failed anyway, you're out—that is, if the faith based investment principles made no material difference to the performance outcomes of that fund, then you're still out; you have still imposed upon your fund all the rigours of the failure of that test that would apply to any other fund in the country.

If, on the other hand, the independent regulator determines, after assessing that fund, that, but for the investment in accordance with their faith based principles, the fund would have passed the test, you will not be closed down. Who are we, as a parliament, to say to those members who say, 'I want to invest in accordance with my Islamic faith,' or 'I want to invest in accordance with my Christian faith'—let's name them here, because, quite frankly, these are the two great faith groups; it will be the Islamic faith or it will be the Christian faith. Who are we to say, as a parliament, to those thousands of Australians: 'You are not entitled to have a fund available to you which will allow you to invest in accordance with your religious principles'? Understand: that is exactly what the member for Fadden is arguing.

Let's assume for a moment that the member for Fadden is right, and the test will have almost no bearing on those funds. Then you have to ask yourself: what is his problem in allowing members of a faith based community to invest their superannuation in a faith based fund? If his argument is correct, this will have no bearing on the ultimate performance outcome. What is your objection? It is nothing but politics. The thing that bells the cat on this is that the same member, when he was sitting on this side of the House, apparently thought it was more important to give a school the right to dismiss a child on the basis of their sex or gender or sexual preference, or a teacher or a principal on the basis of their sex or gender or sexual preference—they thought it was more important to enable a school to dismiss somebody on this basis—than to enable the teachers of that school or the members of that faith based community to invest their money in accordance with their faith. If we are truly to be a parliament which respects the principle of freedom of religion, surely it's got to extend beyond the schoolyard, surely it's got to extend into grown-up life as well. I put it to you that the argument by the member for Fadden is based on pure politics and is grounded in hypocrisy. All the members of this House should enable all the provisions of this bill to pass through unamended.

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