Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Senate yesterday passed an order for production of documents, for the final report of the Religious Freedom Review Expert Panel. This was rejected by the government late last night, on the grounds that the report informed and was the subject of cabinet deliberation, and therefore the public interest immunity claim was made. The reason for moving this motion today is that we reject that, for the reasons that I just outlined in the motion. The community needs to see this report. In fact, it is in the public interest for this report to be tabled. It is not in the public interest for this report to continue to be hidden. The government, by hiding this report, is putting people's lives—particularly the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people—on hold.

The government has had the final report of the Religious Freedom Review Expert Panel for four months now. We all know the circumstances in which the Ruddock review, the expert panel, was set up. It was as a consequence of the successful passing of the marriage equality legislation. The marriage equality legislation, as we know, removed the largest state-sanctioned discrimination against LGBTIQ people, in allowing us to get married. In response to that, there was some unhappiness on the government benches, particularly among those in the right wing on the government benches. There was a bit of a sense that we need to work out the whole issue of balancing the issue of religious freedom and religious discrimination. That's why the Ruddock review was set up. It is extremely important for LGBTIQ people, in particular, to know what that review has found, to know what Mr Ruddock is recommending to government and then to see what the government's response is, because this review and the government's response to it have potentially huge impacts on the lives of LGBTIQ people. At the moment, they are being kept in the dark. They are being left in the lurch. We do not know whether the Ruddock review is recommending further discrimination against LGBTIQ people, further discrimination that would allow schools, hospitals, aged-care centres, florists and bakers to further discriminate against LGBTIQ people.

The reason why it is now so important that the Australian people know this is the comments of Prime Minister Morrison in recent weeks, where he has indicated that he, in fact, wants to further discriminate against LGBTIQ people. He wants to wind back some of our antidiscrimination laws which protect LGBTIQ people from discrimination. It is extremely important that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people know the extent of the recommendations from Philip Ruddock and to what extent the Prime Minister is planning to further discriminate against them. We know that this debate, about how religious freedom and religious discrimination weigh up against each other, is something that is of critical importance in our antidiscrimination laws going forward. In the Senate inquiry into marriage equality last year there was universal recognition that we need to protect religion as a protected attribute. Of course everybody should have the right to hold a religion and express their religion, but there is a great deal of debate about how the impacts of the manifestation of their religion upon other people should be managed.

The Greens position is that we need to have a charter of rights, so that we can balance people's right to have a religion versus people's right to not be discriminated against. That's the direction we need to be heading in. They're the discussions that the community needs to be having. If we had that charter of rights discussion we could be moving forward. We were hopeful that the Ruddock review might provide some information that would work out where the community debate should go, but in order to provide that information we need to see the report. We do not need to be kept in the dark. We need to let that report see the light of day. It is four months now that the government has had that report. Why isn't it releasing it now? We have been told for a number of months to expect it quite soon, but one has to ask: what is the government hiding?

There are questions around the fact that we have a by-election in Wentworth coming up in a month's time. The debate has been that the government's not going to release the Ruddock review before the Wentworth by-election. We know that the people of Wentworth are very strong supporters of LGBTIQ rights, so one could surmise that maybe the government are keeping this report in secret because they actually don't want the people of Wentworth to realise what their true agenda is. The true agenda is further discrimination against LGBTIQ people in the name of religious freedom. That's what you could actually surmise. That's the ulterior motive of keeping this report hidden. If they weren't planning on doing this then why not release the report? Why not release it so we can see what Mr Ruddock has recommended. And why not then respond to it and lay to rest all these people's concerns and fears?

I really want to go to the point of the importance of seeing the report of the Ruddock review, because there is a lot of fear in the community. LGBTIQ people across the community are worried. They are concerned. They know that achieving marriage equality was a big step forward, but they are very fearful that their rights are going to be wound back. It's not just a theoretical thing that they are worried about; it's people's actual lives—people employed as teachers in faith based schools, who are fearful of no longer having jobs; people employed in aged-care centres or hospitals, who are fearful of not even getting jobs because of their sexuality or gender identity or fearful that they will lose their jobs because of those things. Again, the Greens would like to see our laws strengthened so that people are better protected from discrimination, but we are worried, and the community is worried, that there are going to be further grounds to discriminate against people because of their sexuality or gender identity. You only have to look at the interventions of our Prime Minister over the last month to see that their fears seem to be very well grounded. When the Prime Minister sees fit to retweet an appallingly homophobic and transphobic article in The Daily Telegraph, saying that we don't need gender whisperers in our schools, one can see the sort of intolerance the government seems to be heading to. That's what people are fearful about. They are thinking: if a Prime Minister sees fit to retweet something like that, what has he got in mind? What is he planning to do? What legislation is this government planning to put up to further vilify and discriminate against people just on the basis of their sexuality and their gender identity?

The issue of protecting people's rights is of fundamental importance. All people, regardless of their gender identity, regardless of their sexuality, need to be treated as equals. They need to have all the opportunities other people in our society have. It's clearly going to be an ongoing debate in our community, but it needs to be a debate informed by evidence, rather than an emotive discussion based on prejudice. We need to have the basic information. The government, in initiating and setting up the review into religious freedom in the first place, had the opportunity, through doing the consultation the review has done, to put on the table a body of evidence with which we can move forward. That's the evidence we need to have. In particular, it's evidence that is needed before the people of Wentworth go to the polls in a month's time. They need to know what the Ruddock review recommended and what the government's plans are. So the motion I am moving today says: can we please move this forward? It asks all of our senators here to make sure the information is available so that we know where the power lies; so that we know what the government has planned; so that we know whether it's the fair treatment of LGBTIQ people that's on the government's agenda or whether the government's response to the question of religious freedom is one where the far right of the party have won the day and the government is planning further discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer Australians.