Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will not speak for long, because the history of this bill has already been well discussed. The fact is that, until the government put up the amendment to this bill, it had the support of all parties and all people in this place, because it was good policy and it was good legislation.

In terms of this amendment, I find myself somewhat conflicted. I support the aims of this amendment. It was interesting to go back and look at some of the comments made in 2001 and 2004 by then Liberal ministers for ageing and for aged care around the development in this sector where people have moved from being seen as inmates or patients who should be grateful for whatever they get to people who are seen as having rights and the right to feel as though, when they are in an institution, that the institution has been developed into the most home-like institution possible. This is a mood that was started by the coalition. Ms Julie Bishop, in 2004 as the Minister for Ageing, talked about the introduction of certification standards into the physical environment where residents lived. She said, 'These are their homes.' This is true, and that is the way that we are now trying to push aged care more and more. We have extended aged care at home, but when people move into aged-care facilities we want them to feel as though they are in a home, their own home. In 2001, Ms Bronwyn Bishop started this as the Minister for Aged Care. She said, 'All of our policy is designed to have respect for the individual.'

I do not think that the religious organisations can have it both ways. They cannot say, 'We don't discriminate' or 'We respect the individual' and at the same time say, 'But we don't want any legislation that affects the way we treat people.' The amendment to this bill being proposed by the Attorney-General would have benefited from a lot more discussion and a lot more debate. It seems that there are number of issues that need to be looked at.

I remember an inquiry into suicide and mental health in Australia that you were involved in, Madam Acting Deputy President Moore. We heard from a number of service provision organisations, all organisations that in some form or another would have given evidence to the earlier Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill—arms of the Uniting Church, the Catholic Church and so on. I said to every one of those organisations: suicide used to be considered a sin by your church. Is it still a sin? No-one said, 'We've stopped calling it a sin,' but they all made the point that they were trying to frame the whole argument differently. They said they were looking at the issue from the health aspect of the individual, not from the religious aspect of the individual.

Can they have it both ways? Religious organisations would like to have it both ways. They would like to say, 'We can make the rules the way we want to make the rules for people who use these facilities.' I have no dispute whatsoever with organisations such as Catholic schools and other religious schools having the right to decide what values their staff are expected to embody. I do not think that a religious school or hospital, or an aged-care home for that matter, should have to employ people who clearly do not live by the values that that organisation adheres to. But that is quite different from the people who are the patients, the residents or the students of those organisations.

There have been suggestions around this that hospitals and schools are not included, just aged-care facilities. Do we need to include hospitals and schools? I do not think an intersex person or a person in a homosexual relationship or a transgender person would be denied, as a student, rights to enter a school. Nor would they be denied, as a patient, rights to enter a hospital. So why should we allow aged-care institutions that are funded by the federal government to decide who the residents of those aged-care facilities will be based on the sexual orientation or the sexual status of the people involved?

I do not think it is reasonable for that to be the right of the organisations.

As a number of people have already pointed out, numerous organisations have told us that they do not discriminate. If we look at some of the comments made about this surprise amendment, a number of providers told us that their policy is not to discriminate in practice and the need for this regulation is not demonstrated. How do you, perhaps as a homosexual couple, demonstrate the need for this legislation when no law has been broken? What did you do? There was no discrimination being conducted—unless this amendment goes through—so we have no idea how many people out there of intersex status or homosexual couples or transgender or bisexual people have been discriminated against by religious organisations when they wanted to become residents of those organisations. We are not going know the level if there has not been an issue.

It seems to me that the amendment has merit but it should not have come to us in the way it has. It would have benefited from further debate and discussion and an opening up of some of the issues around the religious organisations. It struck me as interesting that it was the Catholic Women's League that put in the submission around the amendment to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, of which I am a member, and not Catholic Health Australia, which I think would produce at least a submission a week to various committees in this place or to departments. It certainly would not be for lack of resources to create one quickly that we did not receive a submission. It seems to me that many of the religious organisations choose to put on a non-religious face when it suits them in service provision and the like, but then, again when it suits them, to pull out their religious values and religious exemptions in that area. I think this is an area that needs a lot more debate, but I do support this amendment.