Impending assault on religious freedom Editorial
The right of Christian institutions, especially schools, to hire staff who share their religious values will soon be a thing of the past in Australia if the Albanese Labor government has its way. So too will the right of Christian schools to teach their pupils the doctrines, tenets and beliefs of their faith.
The impending federal assault on religious freedom has been a long time in the making. The Labor Party has planned it for years, and has already succeeded in realising much of its agenda at the state level. In the meantime, the Coalition parties have lacked the spine to stand up to them.
In mid-March, the Australian Human Rights Commission published a highly controversial report, based on terms of reference laid down by the Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus. It recommended that the federal Parliament delete section 38 of the Sex Discrimination Act 1987.
At a single stroke this would strip a religious school of: 1) its right to refrain from hiring staff who did not share the school's faith and morals; and 2) its right to exclude from the classroom anti-Christian propaganda, such as sexual orientation and gender ideology (SOGI).
Worse was to come only days after the AHRC delivered its report. On March 26, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that his government intended to collaborate with the far-left Greens Party to draft its "religious discrimination" bill, which is expected to incorporate the ALRC's recommendations.
A week earlier, Mr Albanese had been at pains to allay Christian voters' fears by promising that his government would not proceed with a religious discrimination bill unless it enjoyed bipartisan political support.
So much for the Prime Minister's promise. His March 26 reversal has revealed the Labor government's ultimate agenda, which is to pass laws containing punitive provisions targeted at people of faith and faith-based institutions, including not only schools but hospitals and charitable bodies.
Mark Spencer, speaking on behalf of Australian Christian Schools, has pointed out out that most of the schools affiliated with the ACS have lifestyle clauses in their contracts. He fears that if religious exemptions are removed, schools will be "targeted by activists making vexatious claims", and says he is "contemplating a future where we can't have any moral standards for staff" (Melbourne Herald Sun, March 29, 2024).
Will the opposition Coalition parties be prepared to resist the Labor-Greens assault on religious freedom? Unfortunately, the Liberal and National parties' ambivalent attitude towards Christians in recent years provides no grounds for hoping they are willing or even capable of defending religious freedom.
At the 2019 federal election, both the Liberals and Nationals solemnly promised to enact protections for religious conscience rights; but the Coalition government's subsequent, and long-awaited, Religious Discrimination Bill dashed the hopes of many Christian voters across the country.
Earlier drafts of the bill had contained protections for "statements of belief", including a provision that would have prohibited "woke" firms from sacking employees for expressing their religious views on the social media. However, the Scott Morrison government's Attorney-General Michaelia Cash dropped this provision for fear of alienating the vocal LGBT lobby.
But even the Coalition's subsequent watered-down Religious Discrimination Bill could not placate its critics. When it was voted on in the House of Representatives, five dissident Liberal MPs crossed the floor to vote for amendments moved by the Labor opposition.
The Morrison government withdrew the bill.
The Labor Party's hostility and the Coalition parties' apparent coolness towards Christian voters are, unfortunately, a sign of our times.
The Anglo-American poet, T.S. Eliot, warned on the eve of World War II: "If Christianity goes, the whole of our culture goes. Then you must start painfully again, and you cannot put on a new culture ready-made. You must pass through many centuries of barbarism."
Eighty-five years after these words were uttered, Christians in the West find themselves confronted by powerful elites who despise Christians and view their morality as being a mere expression of hate speech, which, in the left-wing mind, is tantamount to violence.
The fight to defend the autonomy and freedoms of the Christian Church and other faith-based institutions is one that Christians cannot afford to lose.
