The Australian Christian Lobby is back, holding a series of meetings with politicians, spending on Facebook ads, and going on a hiring blitz in a plan to get favourable religious discrimination laws passed and make its presence felt ahead of the next election.
ACL boss Martyn Iles was in Canberra yesterday for talks with Coalition MPs about the Religious Discrimination Bill, a one-time priority of the Morrison government which had stalled before the pandemic drove attention elsewhere.
But political lobbying and closed-door meetings are just the tip of the organisation’s strategy. Iles’ heightened presence on traditional and social media demonstrates a real commitment to become an electoral force, mobilising religious voters and dragging the Coalition to the right.
Quiet year is over
The ACL came to prominence during the marriage equality plebiscite as a key voice of the Christian right and a staunch opponent of marriage equality. Since then it has intervened in various culture war stoushes, most notably when it raised millions to pay Israel Folau’s legal fees after Rugby Australia sacked the football star over homophobic Facebook posts.
Now, after a quiet year when the pandemic forced the ACL’s traditional agenda — culture wars over religious freedom and LGBTIQ people — into the background, it wants to make a return. Iles, who appeared on ABC’s Q&A recently, wants Christians in Australia to become “more visible” like the LGBTIQ movement.
In a Facebook post last weekend, Iles — who took over from Lyle Shelton as managing director in 2018 — further outlined his goal for the ACL’s future. He boasted: “[Christianity] sees more politicians and leaders than any other faith group.”
But he went on to say that key to the ACL’s success was mobilisation. In the past year, it had 73 local coordinators in 73 electorates. Iles wants 10,000 volunteers mobilised in all 151 electorates. It’s clear he’s got his eyes on the next poll.
Meanwhile it’s asking for donations, hoping to get an additional $1 million by June 30 to make itself “cancel proof” and to top up the $6 million it brought in during the 2019-20 financial year. It has spent more than $63,000 in the past few months on Facebook ads, largely centred on issues like “cancel culture” and pushing for religious discrimination laws. And, crucially, it’s hiring for very election-facing positions, including a national politics director and a national field team leader.
And while it’s easy to dismiss the ACL as a loser from the marriage equality debate, out of touch with mainstream Australia, its targeting of religious voters could work. At the last election it targeted four marginal seats with a campaign around abortion, gender issues and safe schools. The Coalition won all four, and Labor’s failure among diverse, religious voters saw it lose ground in multicultural Sydney and Melbourne suburbs.
It’s is likely that Iles knows a revved-up Christian right could be a force for the Liberals in key marginals — he’s recently delivered speeches in north Queensland, an area that contains its share of battleground seats.
What the ACL wants
The ACL, though, wants more than reelection for our Pentecostal prime minister. It’s still fighting hard for Folau, for example, taking out ads trying to force his return to the NRL. ARL commission chair Peter V’landys said it was wasting its breath and should focus on poverty reduction instead.
But religious discrimination laws are its big target, as they have been since 2019. The future of the Coalition’s bill will be a litmus test of the lobby’s influence. The first draft, hurried through by former attorney-general Christian Porter after the Folau case, lost support from everyone — LGBTIQ groups, business organisations, crossbench MPs and the ACL, who said it didn’t go far enough in protecting the right for employers to fire employees who didn’t align with religious values.
The pandemic got in the way of Porter’s second draft, which again contained significant, disproportionate protection for religious belief. But now there’s pressure from religious groups to get the bill back. Porter’s replacement, Michaelia Cash, has conducted conversations about the bill, and met with Freedom for Faith, a similar group that just held a “religious freedom weekend” where it urged churchgoers to contact MPs and pray for the laws to come into place.
At yesterday’s Coalition joint partyroom meeting, George Christensen, a darling of the Christian right, reminded MPs about the ACL’s impending visit to make representations to interested parties. As the group continues to flex its political muscles, there will be many more to come.
Are you worried about the influence the Australian Christian Lobby has on our politicians? Send your thoughts to letters@crikey.com.au, and don’t forget to include your full name if you’d like to be considered for publication.
In my opinion there`s nothing Christian about the Christian lobby group, a bunch of phony religious hypocrites, much like the coalition governments, who appear as a bunch of wankers, rapists, alleged rapists, and taxpayer rorting merchants as reported in the media on a regular basis, but they seem to not only get away with this behavior but get promoted when exposed, its a sad indictment on the I.Q levels of the voters who continue to ignore this and vote them back into office time and time again
School kids would do a better job.
There has been no reckoning with child sexual abuse by clergy – the sub-title of an excellent title by Melissa Davey. And no case involving senior clergy who moved offending priests and clergy from parish to parish as knowledge of their offences spread.
The hypocrisy is indeed breath-taking.
Not just the child offenders, either. It seems American pentecostalist leadership are strongly prone to everything from an occasional “bit on the side” to some serious deviances.
Agree totally – nothing Christian about this mob of right wing unChristian fanatics
At the peak of all that, ‘bear, I’m rather looking forward to a doco I have queued up ready to go.
It’s called “Alabama Snake”, and I’ll be looking for parallels to Straya’s current state of affairs;
“Documentary Alabama Snake highlights the story of Pentecostal minister Glenn Summerford — a man accused of attempting to murder his wife with a rattlesnake in the sleepy town of Scottsboro, Alabama — and the investigation and trial that haunted Southern Appalachia for decades.”
ah, that old nutcracker. “There’s nothing christian about the ACL”. I doubt people believe that slant anymore.
Really, Ryan, got any proof of that claim?
Creepy, creepy people. It’s one thing to have your private faith, but these control freaks aren’t happy until they’ve imposed it on all of us. Clearly they’re the insecure type that needs everything simplified and under control to feel secure. Scary and anti-democratic.
If every single person on the planet became a Christian tomorrow they would still be at each other because of bible interpretation. That’s why there are over 50.000 different sects all claiming their right.
As the Hitch opined, “All religions cannot be right but they can all be wrong.”
Separation of church and state was something I learned about in high school some 65 years ago. Has the Australian Constitution been changed?
The separation of church and state is only accepted when one of the following two conditions are met:
* Your religion happens to have the cultural ascendency and is deferred to on cultural matters that shape the direction of a society and its moral code.
* Your religion is a minority that is in contradiction to the prevailing religious norms of a society and thus must be protected.
Full-on secularism isn’t ever defended or treated as desirable except in those circumstances above, or by those odious “militant secularists” who hate God and everything God stands for. Such is the nature of moral systems – plurality in society is genuinely uncomfortable because it tacitly endorses the idea that there is no right way to live and no universally-agreed standards by which to engage with your fellow citizen. Easier to trust others when you know where they stand.
Hating God is it. possible to hate an imaginary being.? like hating the tooth fairy.
It just goes to show how irrational those odious “militant secularists” are. They profess not to believe in God at the same time as hating God. Can’t get any more irrational than that!!
But God in his infinite wisdom told us this in his inerrant Word. As it says in Psalms 14:1 – “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.”
Full on secularism is very definitely desired. I am a secularist, what types of gun should I have and how does one become militant?
No guns needed, just an ability to rattle off the arguments of the Enlightenment philosophers that plaved the way for modernity. Then you’ll be subject to the Godly lamentation that in times past the Church used to be able to burn heretics like yourself at the stake.
Secularism has nothing to do with atheism but can be inclusive of the latter; secularism was to stop pious Christians from killing each other…..
Yes, they *should* be distinct issues. The problem I’m trying to highlight is to the devout, they are one and the same. If you can’t see it from the perspective of the believer, you won’t understand why it’s so difficult to defend what should be obvious good and a bedrock of social order in the modern world.
As the aftermath of gay marriage plebiscite brought up, there are a lot of issues around the role of religious discrimination and liberty and how that plays in our society. It shouldn’t be controversial to point out where the conflicts come up because that’s what we hear from the believers themselves, and they attack that as atheistic. After all, if someone truly believes God is the author of all things, and believes the Bible is God’s inerrant Word, and that the Moral Law God set for us cannot be altered or discarded when inconvenient, you are inevitably going to have conflict with a society where the State is agnostic on religious truth and operates under the will of the people.
So, yes, secularism doesn’t mean atheism. However it means a society where a religious belief holds no special authority and to some that amounts to the same thing, hence why many believers try to use the political process to impose theocratic nonsense onto society.
Meaning …”If you believe the manmade myths then you will have a tough life, but go to mythical heaven”.?
Secularism means that decisions are not made based upon mythical bias, but prosaic, real world issues.
ie Separation of Myth and Reality.
I doubt many ‘hate’ god.
They/we certainly have every right to loath the creepy parasites, with their sharp suits, their free associated echolalia and squinting eyes(*), who take advantage of the desperate, depressed and delusional who think sending $10 to grease the sweaty palms of grasping snake oil salesman, will guarantee them a happier life.
(*) What is it with the squinty eyes?
Is that supposed to be them ‘searching for god and/or the answers’?
Why can’t people who believe in god understand that those of us who don’t believe in god don’t hate god, how can we, we don’t believe in god? We just don’t want those who do believe in god to tell us how we should live our lives according to their beliefs. Our disbelief doesn’t tell them what they can and can’t do in their private lives, but they seem to think that their beliefs allow them to tell us what we can do in our private lives.
If someone tries to stop me living my own private life because it upsets their religious beliefs and it doesn’t directly impact anyone else, then that’s their problem, not mine, and their sensitivities shouldn’t be protected by the state.
What has religion got to do with politics beyond a common set of ethical and moral values? Lots – A need for money from any source, rorted or otherwise, an overpowering sense of entitlement to be above the law, above scientific and ethical critique, above human rights and entitled, without let, to pursue corrupt and/or corrupting behaviours. Probably explains why religious services at the commencement of parliamentary years attract such ernest and loyal congregations.
A common set is a bit of a stretch. You should be able to find a passage to justify just about any behaviour that you desire.
Martyn Iles (Director of ACL) is the (30 something) son of a Brisbane doctor – a Law Graduate, if I remember correctly.
He is good looking and a very smooth talker.
Having watched a few of his video posts, I can see how convincing he is to those who want to be convinced
.
He represents very right wing, somewhat libertarian styled, views with the Fox News/Trump/Morrison tendency to spin.
If you listen, without really listening, and without asking yourself how the ‘lecture’ segued, to the point he wants to make, from the story he started telling, you will not pick up the clever duping and the loose attention to the facts.
He is someone I found to be quite sinister and scary; for the influence he has had with his 100,000 social media followers, and for the capacity to raise huge amount of money for his ‘campaigns’.
The fact that the current Government has a higher proportion of politicians, of the Pentecostal persuasion, than is present in the Australian population, with the rise of the religious right within the Political Party organisations, and with the ACL contribution to the Government winning four (4) marginal seats in the last election, all add significantly to the concern that such a numerically small lobby group is having so much influence.
I understand that the established religions are at pains to distance themselves from the ACL, saying ACL does not speak for them.
Maybe these mainstream religious groups may need to be more loudly making their concerns heard.
I’m surprised you find Martin “sinister and scary”. Do you sleep with a teddy bear at night too?
Don’t sneer. It is unbecoming.
Daresay you are a believer in the reeking tripe these snake oil sales people peddle?
That would explain your ungodly response.
Everyone should sleep with a teddy bear!