 Found a word you're not familiar with? Double-click that word to bring up a dictionary reference to it. The dictionary page includes an audio sound file with which to actually hear the word said. |
Further implications
It will be interesting to see the extent to which the recommendations of the Ruddock review are put into effect during the 2019 Parliament.
There appeared to be consensus on both sides of Parliament, the Coalition on the one hand and Labor and the Greens on the other, that religious schools should not be able to exclude students on the basis of their sexual orientation. On October 12, 2018, the Liberal Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, announced that non-government schools would be prevented from expelling LGBT+ students on the basis of their sexuality under new laws to be introduced by his government in the coming year.
Many religious schools, primarily Catholic and Anglican but also a number of evangelical schools, have indicated that it is not their practice to exclude LGBT+ students.
Some conservative Christian spokespeople have, however, made a distinction between sexual orientation and sexual behaviour. According to this distinction, while a religious school should not be able to expel a student on the basis of his or her sexual inclination, it should be able to do so if that student engaged in same-sex conduct.
Lyle Shelton, former head of the Australian Christian Lobby, has stated, 'A school should be allowed to ensure that they can protect their ethos. If individuals are acting in a way that's not in accordance with the well-known ethos of that school, those schools should be able to do what they need to do to preserve that.' However, Mr Shelton does not support students being expelled simply for their sexual orientation - if they revealed their sexuality or were outed by their peers, for example.
What may make this issue contentious is the attitude of a number of conservative politicians within the Coalition. Special Minister of State, Alex Hawke, for example, has argued that it was 'absolutely' acceptable for religious schools to reject LGBTI students in any circumstances.
On December 6, 2018, it was reported that Prime Minister Scott Morrison had infuriated some of his conservative colleagues by unveiling a new private members bill to protect gay students from discrimination in religious schools, triggering complaints he had failed to consult the Coalition party room on the bill and on his proposal to hold a conscience vote to decide the changes.
Detailed negotiation between the Prime Minister and the Opposition on these protections for LGBTI students has also broken down over Opposition concerns that particular grounds for exemption would continue to be allowed religious schools which could be used to exclude students. The government, for example, wants to protect schools' capacity to initiate 'rules' that uphold their religious ethos, such as requiring all students to attend chapel. LGBTI advocates and Labor are concerned such rules could be used to discriminate against transgender students by preventing them wearing their preferred uniform, for example.
On December 13, 2018, the government released its response to the Ruddock review, which was to accept fifteen of its twenty recommendations in principle. It announced it would establish religion as a protected attribute in a new Religious Discrimination Act, rendering discrimination on this basis unlawful; establish a new statutory position of Freedom of Religion Commissioner in the Australian Human Rights Commission; develop a Human Rights Legislation Amendment Bill for introduction into Parliament as soon as practicable, implementing a range of amendments recommended by the Ruddock Review; support the Australian Human Rights Commission to increase community awareness of the importance of freedom of religion.
These commitments appear designed to convince the government's religious constituents and its own more conservative members that the government is a defender of religious freedom. In all these pledges, the devil will be in the detail. The negotiations surrounding religious schools' right to exclude LGBTI staff and students demonstrates this clearly. There is no agreement as to how, or indeed if, religious schools' right to exclude on this basis will be implemented.
Should the Coalition government lose the election to be held in the first trimester of 2019, it would become even less likely that all the commitments made by the Morrison government regarding religious freedom will be put into effect.