This article was originally published by QNews. You can find the original article here.
Just.Equal Australia says the NSW Equality Bill being stripped of protections for teachers and students in religious schools was a lost opportunity.
WORDS Brian Grieg
Last month the NSW government announced it was throwing LGBTQ students and teachers in faith schools under the bus. They would not be included in the suite of “Equality” measures proposed by Alex Greenwich that survived to be passed by Parliament.
Premier Chris Minns said the other reforms had a better chance of passing if religious schools were left out, blaming fragile numbers in the Upper House. I suspect the Catholic Right in NSW Labor had more to do with this than the Upper House dynamic.
Greenwich soberly accepted this situation, saying that NSW Labor wouldn’t deal with changes to the Anti-Discrimination Act around teachers and students until the state’s Law Reform Commission review of the Act is completed.
This ignores the findings of the recent report from the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) which called for faith school discrimination to end.
It’s a serious setback which has national implications and highlights how risk-averse the ALP has become at state and federal levels on this issue.
At the Commonwealth level, Anthony Albanese pledged to protect students in faith schools if elected, but failed to do so even after his own ALRC advocated change. He blamed the Coalition for not supporting his proposal, despite having the numbers on the cross-bench to pass the reform. Again, the real issue here is Labor’s Catholic Right, not Peter Dutton.
In Queensland the Miles Labor Government presides over weak laws on faith schools, which protect students but allow discrimination against teachers.
The Queensland Human Rights Commission recommended improvements which Miles appeared to support, but abandoned in June in preference to pushing through other changes.
Queensland also has ineffective laws to “ban” conversion practices because they exempt religious settings where most abuse occurs.
All this is in stark contrast to Tasmania, Victoria, the ACT and NT which already protect students and teachers and have done so for years.
In Tasmania comprehensive legislation has been in place for a quarter of a century and covers not just schools but all staff, volunteers and clients in religiously run services, including hospitals, disability services, charities and employment service providers.
The next cab-off-the-rank for school reform and a conversion ban will be WA.
The Cook Labor Government has promised if re-elected in March to address these issues but has been sketchy on the details.
That leaves South Australia. Last month the push by advocates for a comprehensive ban on conversion practices was undermined when the Malinauskas Government rushed ahead with an inadequate bill that left campaigners flat-footed.
That bill was rammed through parliament and now sits as one of the worst in the country.
South Australia’s unusual laws may protect students but have not been tested in the courts. Its “protection” of teachers only sees schools having to advertise their exclusionary policy, which some feel acts as a “deterrent to prejudice.”
For too long Labor’s abandonment of LGBTQ people to harmful discrimination by publicly-funded religious organisations has been excused or justified as “religious freedom.”
We need real leadership here, where Premiers actually talk about the harm this discrimination causes, and explain that religious freedom does not mean freedom to persecute.
The gutting of the NSW Equality Bill must not be permitted to legitimise religious privilege, or used as a template to “compromise” on other LGBTQ+ reforms expected around Australia from 2025.
-Brian Greig is President of Just.Equal Australia and a former senator for WA.
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