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A federal Labor bill to undermine religious freedoms enjoyed by faith-based schools failed to pass the senate last week, but the legislation still remains a threat. It's an issue the Parliament will consider in the new year.
The legislation to remove faith-based exemptions was pushed by Labor on the basis of a discredited notion that same-sex attracted students suffer discrimination at faith-based schools.
South Australian Liberal Senator David Fawcett, a strong advocate for religious freedom, explained his concerns about the legislation:
“The Labor bill modified Section 37 of the Sex Discrimination Act (SDA) which deals with religious bodies (churches, synagogues, temples and mosques) as opposed to religious schools (educational religious bodies - Section 38). The Labor bill would expose someone providing education within a religious body (eg: a course or seminar run by a Church, and potentially even teaching on a Sunday morning from the pulpit) to the provisions of the SDA.
This creates the possibility that a priest or pastor who taught the accepted view of a Church that God created people male and female or that marriage was between a man and a woman could be hauled before a Discrimination tribunal in the same way Jason Tey (a Perth based photographer) was recently, just for stating his belief.”
Senator Fawcett added that the Labor Bill “represents an unprecedented attack on religious freedom, and freedoms more broadly (speech and association) that have always underpinned Australia’s successful plural democracy.”