Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The idea that it should be unlawful to discriminate against someone in employment, in the provision of services or in other areas of public life on the basis of a person's religious belief or activity is not, or at least should not be, controversial. Indeed, it is already unlawful under the antidiscrimination laws in most states and territories for individuals to be discriminated against on the basis of their religious beliefs or practices. Freedom of thought, conscience and religion or belief is a fundamental human right. Labor supports the extension of the federal antidiscrimination framework to ensure Australians are not discriminated against because of their religious beliefs or activities, just as Commonwealth law currently prohibits discrimination on the basis of age, disability, race, sex, gender identity, sex characteristics and sexual orientation.

The provisions of these bills, the Religious Discrimination Bill 2021, the Religious Discrimination (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2021 and the Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill 2021, are complex, particularly when it comes to their interaction with other antidiscrimination laws, including state antidiscrimination laws. Many of the bill's opponents have already raised concerns about the kinds of comments these bills could allow people to say or make, and many of the supporters of these bills have been just as quick to refute many of those arguments.

Even the Prime Minister and the Assistant Attorney-General cannot agree on how the Religious Discrimination Bill would work in practice, with each offering different and contradictory views about the way in which particular provisions would operate. If the Prime Minister cannot even agree with his own ministers about the effective aspects of these bills, it is clearly inappropriate for the Prime Minister to bring these bills on for a vote in the House today, a few days after he introduced them and before a parliamentary committee has had an opportunity to even commence its public consultations on them.

This is a complex area of law, and Labor will not adopt a final position until the parliamentary committee has looked at these bills and we have consulted widely with the Australian community, because we want to get this right. We want a respectful debate and we want that debate informed by what we in this parliament hear from our communities, what we hear from the communities that we represent.

This week we've shown in the debate about Maeve's Law, the bill dealing with mitochondrial donation, and the ethical issues that that raises that we can debate and respect each other's views. It was very much parliament at its best, and I know that many on the other side of the chamber hold the view that I've just expressed about both the capacity of this parliament to have a respectful debate and the need for a respectful debate on these bills.

It has been disappointing to hear the Attorney-General characterise that sensible, responsible position of waiting for a parliamentary inquiry to report, which is of course consistent with the usual practice in relation to the vast majority of complex bills introduced to this parliament, as some kind of delaying tactic. This is the same Attorney-General who has also flagged publicly that she and the government are open to making amendments to these bills if the parliamentary committee recommends that course.

Let's be quite clear about the history of the bills that are now before the parliament. In December 2018, three years ago, the Prime Minister committed to introducing a religious discrimination bill in early 2019, in order for it to be passed before the 2019 election. He didn't. He didn't even introduce it in early 2020 or even in early 2021. In December 2018, some three years ago, the Prime Minister committed to working with Labor and the crossbench in 'the spirit of bipartisanship'. The Prime Minister said that his government 'will endeavour to introduce legislation into the parliament that enjoys broad cross-party support'. In the intervening three years, regrettably, the Prime Minister did not honour this commitment. He and his government have not worked with Labor on this legislation. In June of this year I wrote directly to Senator Cash, as the new Attorney-General, to ask her to work with Labor on these bills. She has not. So for the government to introduce these complex bills in the second last sitting week of the year, almost three years after the Prime Minister promised to do it, and then to accuse Labor of delay because we expect the bill to go through the usual process of parliamentary scrutiny is simply wrong.

The debate in this parliament on the issues of religious freedom and nondiscrimination needs to be an occasion for bringing people together. As I've already made clear, Labor's approach to these bills will be guided by a number of simple but fundamental principles, including the following. First, as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights makes clear, religious organisations and people of faith have the right to act in accordance with the doctrines, beliefs or teachings of their traditions and faith. Second, Labor supports the extension of the federal antidiscrimination framework to ensure Australians are not discriminated against because of their religious beliefs or activities. And, third, consistent with the international covenant, any extension of the federal antidiscrimination framework should not remove protections that already exist in the law to protect Australians from other forms of discrimination. I could add that we also need to ensure the provisions of the bill work as intended, and I expect the parliamentary committee looking at these bills will pay careful regard to any unintended consequences over the course of the important inquiry that it is about to undertake.

If I could offer a personal perspective, every member of this House has a responsibility to ensure that the laws we pass here work for the benefit of the communities we represent and for the wider benefit of the nation. I was elected to this parliament in 2007, and, in my first speech, I spoke about how honoured I was to be representing the people of the diverse electorate of Isaacs, which I'm very proud to represent to this day, in south-east Melbourne. My electorate, taking in the suburbs of Dandenong South, Mentone, Mordialloc, south Keysborough and a dozen or so others, just by way of example, provides a vivid example of our success as a multicultural society. These places have absorbed immigrants from around the world and are now a vibrant home to people from 182 countries, including representatives from just about every religion in the world. That religious diversity of the Isaacs community includes the Sikh temple on Perry Road; the Dhamma Sarana Temple, which is managed by the Buddhist Sri Lankan Association of Victoria and has developed relationships with other Buddhist temples in Melbourne, including those of the Cambodian, Laotian, Burmese and Thai communities; the Turkish Islamic and Cultural Centre in Keysborough; Christian churches representing communities from across that faith, including Catholic, Anglican, Uniting and Baptist churches and the Assemblies of God; and the Moorabbin Hebrew congregation, who are busy with their Hanukkah celebrations this festival week.

The religious diversity I see in my own community of Isaacs is of course to be found in electorates across our nation. That religious diversity is intrinsic to our successful multiculturalism and our success as a nation, because, for many Australians, religion forms a central part, if not the core part, of their personal identity and value system, and it helps guide how they want to raise their families.

For me, personally, the values of Judaism are very important. In particular, the central themes of law and justice in both Jewish religious and secular traditions have great meaning for me. It was Moses who charged the Jewish people with the command, 'Justice, justice you shall pursue,' from Deuteronomy. The pursuit of justice has been an ongoing challenge and a call to action for me in my previous career and in my work in this place. Judaism is also an inseparable part of my family history. My father and his parents were forced to flee from Nazi Germany for the simple reason that they were Jews. My father managed to escape Nazi Germany before World War II erupted, arriving in Australia with his brother in July 1939. My father's parents—my grandparents—arrived later, some three months after the war started in a somewhat miraculous escape from Germany. My great-grandparents did not escape; they perished in the Holocaust.

That family history, as well as the much broader historical tapestry of the Jewish people, who've lived for some 2,000 years as the guests of other nations, has helped to shape my worldview, and it continues to inform my work as a member of this parliament. It is a history, personal and cultural, that ensures that I have undying gratitude to this nation and to its generous people for taking in my father, his brother and my grandparents in their time of desperate need. And it is a history that makes me appreciative of the wonderful diversity of this nation and the need to continually protect that diversity and the need to uphold and, where possible, to strengthen the fundamental human rights in which that diversity flourishes.

In my first speech, I said:

Tolerance lies at the heart of our Australian multiculturalism. It is a vital democratic value. Tolerance of others—tolerance of different cultural and religious values and tolerance of different political positions—produces inclusiveness and not division. It enables harmonious communities and peaceful political debate. By and large, migrants to our country leave behind them old hatreds and prejudices. When they arrive, they acquire Australia's understated style of tolerance of difference.

The idea of tolerance is undoubtedly important, but, as I've said before, I think we can often do better than merely tolerating our differences. I think we can learn to embrace the fact of those differences as a wonderful boon to be appreciated for all that it offers us, rather than seeing difference merely as a burden that must be tolerated. I feel that it is in the open-hearted acceptance and genuine appreciation of difference, rather than the mere tolerance of it, that the foundations of a truly multicultural and diverse society must rest, because from this position we will not just tolerate those from other cultures and religions but actively welcome and appreciate them. It is because of the need to foster acceptance and appreciation that I've always championed the importance of our nation's antidiscrimination framework, and it is why I've always worked to find the right balance between ensuring rights are protected and, at the same time, ensuring that those rights do not lead to discrimination.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Australia has been a party for two generations now, makes the importance of this difficult balance clear. Article 18(1) of the ICCPR states:

Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.

Article 18(3) of the covenant states:

Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health, or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others.

It is on that last point, the need to ensure that freedoms do not compromise the fundamental rights and freedoms of others, that so much turns. Acknowledging the complexity of getting the balance right is not a delaying tactic. It is a statement of the obvious. As the expert panel led by Phillip Ruddock recognised, designing legal rules to protect freedom of thought, conscience and religion without unjustifiably burdening other rights is an immensely difficult and delicate task. The expert panel aptly described it as 'a many-sided discussion'.

Some contributions to this many-sided discussion have already referred to matters that are not addressed in these bills directly. For example, as everyone in this place knows, a little over three years ago the Prime Minister promised that he would update the laws to protect LGBT students as soon as possible. Those were the Prime Minister's words: 'as soon as possible'. He hasn't done that as part of this package of bills, and just a few days ago the Prime Minister said that he would not do anything on this issue for at least another year. He said he needed to hear from the Australian Law Reform Commission before taking any action. But now, according to reports this morning, the Prime Minister has changed his mind and has agreed to move an amendment to these bills to ensure that students cannot be discriminated against on the basis of their sexuality or gender identity. We will wait to see what, if anything, the Prime Minister is proposing to do on that front. On that issue, as with these bills, we stand ready to work across the parliament.

As I've said to Senator Cash, Labor has been seeking to encourage a bipartisan approach to all of these issues so that, to the extent possible, we have a discussion that is respectful, constructive, accepting and unifying and that recognises the wealth and value of Australia's diversity. That does not mean that everyone will agree on the outcome, but such an approach should mean that everyone's view is respected and listened to. I await the report of the parliamentary inquiry into these bills, as I am sure do all of my colleagues in this parliament.

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The circumstances of our democracy and the liberties that we enjoy in our form of government are underpinned by the ethos that surrounds faith—for me, my Christian faith, the egalitarian treatise that one should love one neighbour's as one's self, not better, not worse, but as you would expect to be treated yourself. This took the place of the historical hierarchal structure that was the lived human condition since we left the cave: I am the king; you are the peasant; you are the slave; you are merely sport and have no value; you are dispensable. That has been the way of the world till very recent times, till faith succeeded in saying, 'No, this is not how you treat your fellow person.' Sadly, now, democracy is in decline across the globe.

As democracy is in decline then the principle of equality is replaced by another person's or group's unquestioned tenure of power becoming the lived experience of others, that their rights are greater and your role is subservient. Democracy is underpinned by the convention that you and I are equivalent in our rights. Ancient Greece did not invent democracy, not like we experience it today. It is a very, very, very distant and quite different ancestor. What we can take from the ancient Athenians, however, is how long it took to grow to the actual rights that we enjoy in this chamber. The fertilizer, the nutrients that allowed that growth and, to be frank, its most abundant forms in very recent times, was the ethos of faith—in my instance, the Christian faith, and, in other people's, other faiths.

Paradoxically, and somewhat obnoxiously, many now want to pull out the roots of the tree which we shelter under. In Australia, we acknowledge that people should not be discriminated against by reason of their gender. We acknowledge that people should not be discriminated against because of their sexuality. We acknowledge that people should not be discriminated against because of the colour of their skin. We acknowledge that people should not be discriminated against by reason of physical appearance. But in our nation we missed a fundamental element of what a person is.

For many, what is more important than their physical appearance, their gender, their sexuality or the colour of their skin is their faith. It is, for many, what differentiates them from the animals. We're endowed with a belief structure that transcends to the supernatural, the deity, a god. It is a unique thing about the human condition. People's belief structures are a unique thing; cultures that have been separated by seas and thousands of miles and millennia of time nonetheless have faiths. I believe there is a spiritual and an eternal aspect to our terminal human condition.

The emblems of these varying faiths were in the centres of the villages in Papua New Guinea, in jungles in Central America, in the deserts of the Middle East, in the cities of Europe, or in the psyche of the person as they walked across their land. Without faith, so many people are left without reason, devoid of purpose. They are alone on a planet crowded with people. Faith comes with caveats. You can't use faith for the destruction of another person, in any of their forms, for your own reasons, outside the law, or in the impoverishment of others who do not share your belief. Faith must come with a caveat. You must respect the rights of people who hold completely different beliefs or who hold none at all.

The Religious Discrimination Bill 2021 is a major step—in fact, a belated step—to make sure this nation allows faith to remain unshackled by the state, and by so doing preserves the full expression and enjoyment of the freedom that is the birthright of this democratic nation. Part of our democratic inheritance is the freedom of people to express their views and contribute to the public debate. Rod Chiswell, the Anglican Bishop of Armidale, said, 'Considering the federal discrimination laws already in place dealing with sex, race, age, disability, it is only right that religious belief be among those protections,' and I think most Australians would agree with that.

The right to faith, the refuge of the adherent and the source of a code which has given us the foundation of so many of the rights and freedoms that today we mistakenly believe grew organically—the implausible inspiration from a void—must be protected. This right to have faith must be protected to protect democracy itself. The great threat to faith is when it's usurped by the excessive powers of the state, when the state annuls or corrals the spirit. The paramount state enviably sees faith as their biggest threat and so brutally abolishes it or corrupts it and uses it, replacing it with their alternative belief structure.

Importantly, the Australian Christian Lobby notes that this bill directly addresses the Porteous matter by delivering an override for section 17 of the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Act, which provides that a person can bring an action if they are offended by statements pertaining to a protected attribute. The fact that a Catholic prelate was going to face legal sanction by a simple profession of faith in a document is evidence of the state brutally corralling and neutering to usurp the role of faith in the public square.

In New England, the introduction of this bill has been welcomed by local faith based schools. One school principal in Tamworth says: 'I believe that those using the excuse that these laws will promote the sacking of staff are missing the point, as the very purpose of Christian schools is to hold a world view that is Christian. We don't seek to discriminate but to adhere to the bias by which the school was formed.' I believe that it is creating a strawman that there will be some sort of purge on good teachers doing a perfectly reasonable job, and that parents must be allowed to send their children to a school that adheres to their faith. To elucidate the argument: there would be a proper outcry if a teacher in a non-denominational secular school brought teachings, tenants and exams on bible studies into a mathematics class.

Catholic schools in my area are conscious of the need to have the freedom to employ staff who are supportive of their mission. In welcoming this bill, they say:

The proposed legislation simply enables Catholic schools to preference the employment or enrolment of people of the Catholic faith, and those willing to support the ethos and values of the school. This is reasonable and fair in a free, pluralist society.

Many of my constituents feel strongly about this too. As one wrote to me recently: 'The Church of God is called to a higher standard than the citizens of Australia. It should be allowed to expect their members, and especially their leaders, to follow the teachings of the Bible.' The vast majority of Australians believe in respecting the inherent dignity of the individual. In this regard, it means letting them live the life they wish and raise their families according to their values. It's important to note that this is a belief that stems from Christian teaching and, to a varying degree, has shaped the various iterations of this bill.

This was a promise taken to the last election by the coalition and it is essential that we keep faith with those who voted for us on this issue in 2019. This is something the Nationals believe in deeply. It also underpins our commitment to ensuring parents have a choice in how they educate their kids. While some will say the legislation does not go far enough, others say it has gone too far. That is part of our democratic inheritance. It also suggests that the bill has to take into account the breadth of views held by the community and that it is worthy of bipartisan support. It finally provides Australians with protections against religious discrimination at a federal level that are long overdue, and I'm pleased to support this bill.

In going through the amendments, I hope that we make sure that we adhere to the tenets we provided at the election and that we support it. It is an addition to the rights we currently enjoy. Of course, to do so, it must go beyond what is currently the status quo.

Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It being almost 1.30, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. The member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate resumes.