The Morrison government’s first two attempts at passing religious discrimination laws were shelved after leaving nobody happy. Its next attempt at meeting one of the first promises Scott Morrison made after becoming prime minister in 2018 is similarly divisive.
The bill — which Morrison will personally introduce to Parliament, probably tomorrow — has the Australian Christian Lobby encouraged, LGBTIQ groups deeply concerned, and moderate Liberals urging caution. It means there’s little chance of it being passed this year, with review from a Senate or joint parliamentary inquiry all but certain.
Winners and losers
The ACL has been one of the loudest voices calling for religious discrimination laws, lobbying the government, and in particular Attorney-General Michaelia Cash, for months. It criticised previous versions of the bill that gave even more concessions to the faithful than the new draft, but says it is “encouraged by what’s in, disappointed about what’s out”.
“Underwhelming is a decent word for it, but it is a start,” ACL national politics director Wendy Francis said in a video update to members yesterday.
To satisfy moderates in the Coalition partyroom, Cash made some key changes to her predecessor Christian Porter’s drafts. Gone is the controversial “Folau clause” which deemed any restriction made by an employer on statements of belief made outside work hours indirect religious discrimination. Also removed are sections which allowed health practitioners to refuse treatment on the grounds of “conscientious objections”.
But civil rights organisations are still worried about the kinds of behaviour that would be sanctioned under the watered-down bill.
“Despite some significant improvements in the legislation, we remain deeply concerned that some of the worst aspects of the bill remain,” Equality Australia CEO Anna Brown said yesterday.
She’s most concerned about sections retained from previous drafts which allow “statements of belief” to override federal, state and territory anti-discrimination laws as long as they aren’t malicious, or do not threaten, vilify or harass.
“The statements of belief provision will license new forms of discrimination against women, people with disabilities, and ironically people of faith as well,” Brown said.
In practice, this means religious people have an incredibly broad defence to any potential discrimination complaint made against them. If a nurse told an HIV patient their HIV was a punishment from God, that could potentially be protected. A manager could tell a female employee the Bible says only men can hold leadership positions. A religious waiter could tell a queer couple their relationship was the work of the devil. A childcare provider could call a single mother evil for depriving her children of a father.
The bill would also override state and territory laws and allow religious educational institutions to preference people of faith so long as this is in accordance with a written policy. That would specifically target laws being considered in Victoria, narrowing the ability of faith-based schools to discriminate against teachers and students on the grounds of sexuality. The section also gives the attorney-general power to prescribe other state and territory laws which can be overridden in order to allow an institution to preference religious people.
And while the Folau clause is gone, professional or qualifying bodies are effectively unable to take into account statements made outside a work context when setting rules around admitting people. That means while an employer could still set a social media code of conduct which restricts an employee — like Israel Folau — from making religious-based homophobic statements on social media, such statements couldn’t form the basis of a medical or legal body deciding whether to admit or take action against a religious person.
The politics
Despite Morrison’s personal commitment to the bill, its fate is unclear. It was subject to long debate in the Coalition joint party room yesterday, and several mostly city-based moderates — Trent Zimmerman, Dave Sharma, Bridget Archer, Fiona Martin, Andrew Bragg and Angie Bell — raised concerns around the bill, in particular its impact on queer students and teachers. Others, including senators Matt Canavan and Ben Small, spoke up in favour of the bill.
After its introduction tomorrow, it will likely be debated early next week before heading to some form of inquiry, either in the Senate or a joint parliamentary inquiry. And while the Coalition has sometimes viewed religious discrimination as an opportunity to wedge a Labor Party struggling to retain the votes of the faithful, the opposition has been united, and is awaiting the outcome of any inquiry.
The Greens, meanwhile, have slammed the bill in its current form as a “Trojan Horse for hate”, urging it to be voted down.
“Under the guise of faith, bigots would be free to discriminate against people at school and universities, in the workplace, hospitals, restaurants, anywhere in public life,” Greens Senator Janet Rice told Crikey.
Any committee reviewing the bill would need to strike a balance between conflicting views within both major parties, and would be likely to include input from the Greens and crossbench, carefully picking through it over the next few months and reporting back in time for the first sitting week of the parliamentary year.
Whatever comes out of that will be critical to whether the bill gets passed. It’s a long road ahead, and one which could amount to little if Morrison decides to call an election in March, leaving no opportunity for it to pass Parliament.
Maybe it would gain more support, if a clause was inserted into the bill, making all religious/quasi-religious entities (i.e. church organisations) liable to to income and other taxes as are businesses and individuals…
Could not agree more, Gerb.
That will not happen, however.
Or just an across the board, flat rate tax of 17%, no deductions. That captures everybody and everything.
I originally thought that having religious bodies taxable would fix things. But remember that with divine intervention, it may be possible for these bodies to right down taxable income to zero, just like so many corporations. Anyway, this is a tax debate but the topic is we can’t discriminate against people for believing in fairy tales.
How do you tax small weekly donations to a parish church? Are you also going to tax birthday presents?
Presumably you count them! Then on a say, quarterly basis you multiply the total by 0.17 (per example above) and remit the resultant sum to the ATO.
I would just levy a property tax Peter, bit like the rates charged by local government. That saves the churches having to spend money on lawyers and accountants to fudge their income. Churches being multinational would also open up to them the option of transfer pricing their way out of trouble if you were to try and tax income – just like the big fossil fuel companies do. If however you levy a tax on all that property they own, it would be much harder to avoid (or evade).
Land tax was advocated in 1879 by Henry George as the unavoidable, unconcealable tax that spares the poor and levels the wealthy.
Until late last century NZ had Georgist MPs.
Which is why it has never been adopted.
Of course – ipso facto, Q.E.D and as obvious as Canis testes.
Just as much a non-starter as the Tobin tax, a vanishingly small rate, on ALL financial movement – say 0.0001% on the daily churn of $2T – would yield several hundred billions pd.
If that were to fund necessary actions in the real world, little things like clean water, sewage treatment, female emancipation & education, etc ad infinitum imagine what a wonder world could be.
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YES. A land tax will tax all those rich individuals and groups like churches who are huge land owners. See prosper.org.au which is holding a Zoom meeting on this issue on 30th Nov.
I like the Tobin tax as well. A tiny tax on billons of transactions daily can raise billions. Just imagine it! I think the Greens have it as a policy.
Victoria has just passed a Windfall Gains Tax.
Only those given on 25 December.
They’d insist on even more rights as tax payers, then.
One of my queries on this bill is – will it allow female circumcision to again be practised, as it is definitely a part of the religious beliefs of certain religions and cultural beliefs ?
And males.
I personally find it sad and disheartening that we are still debating this religious nonsense in the 21st century while there are so many other important issues to come to grips with.
I think that we have to expect that the bible-bashing, smirking, smarmy, compulsive liar that runs this country will promote this self-serving agenda. As usual, the ALP is sitting on the fence trying not to offend any one (especially its religious constituency in areas like Western Sydney). I must admit that I like the Green’s approach. At least we are in no doubt about where they stand on this ‘hot-button’ issue.
Trying to look on the positive side of this religious nonsense debate, at least we do not in Australia (at this stage anyway) have to be wary of someone attacking us anti-religious people with a knife intenting to cut our throats because we insulted their religion.
The freedom of speech element of it is interesting, taking into account peter dutton’s Win in court today against a person exercising his freedom of speech.
You are right Jane. You have to be careful when discussing individuals or the lawyers will be sending you unwanted letters.
Exaggeration much helped by a sensationalist media. As a risk, certainly in Australia, the risk of “someone attacking us anti-religious people with a knife intending to cut our throats because we insulted their religion” matches the likelihood of being killed by a falling piano.
Can it. They should never get any benefit every one else doesnt get. They should lose tax free status. They are criminal cartels whose only purpose is to deliver a compliant, exploitable public to the status quo generally and the government in particular. Stuff em.
Don’t beat around the bush Michael – just say what you mean! Couldn’t agree more and you are right on the money.
Morrison’s motives for sponsoring this idiotic bill are clear. His intention is to encourage social division with an ill-conceived bill purporting to solve a social problem. The error is that no problem exists. In fact, it is the secularly ethical population that requires protection from socially corrupt religious bigotry.
Agree with your post. One main driver involving this nonsense is the need to placate the religious nutbags. Another of course, is the need for as many “look over there” distractions as possible before the election. Yet another is to attempt to wedge Labor, who need western Sydney and are afraid of alienating them. Hence the weak-kneed response from Albo on this.
According to an Evangelical Christian caller on the ABC this morning the Bill is intended to stop “ministers” from being forced to marry gays and schools from employing gays!
The LGBTIQ community will be outraged, however the rest of us should be very concerned that some Australians are under the impression that Morrison is actually legislating for blatant homophobic discrimination. Now this may suit the PM to win votes in Western Sydney, but it certainly gets him offside with a far larger number of voters who say live and let live.