Federal election 2022: Christians push for religious discrimination bill to pass

Forget kissing babies, the new ‘essential element’ for politicians is meeting priests, rabbis and imams. But Christians who say their religious freedom is in ‘crisis’ want more than token photo ops.

Christian advocates fighting for protections under the draft religious discrimination bill have called for politicians to be genuine and use their visits on the campaign trail to understand their concerns about freedoms under “crisis”.

“It certainly seems through this election campaign … an essential campaign element alongside kissing babies is having a photo with a priest or rabbi or imam,’’ Christian Schools Australia public policy director Mark Spencer said.

“We’ve seen a lot of MPs seeming to rediscover their faith over this Easter period, which we would be happy with if it was genuine, but there are some concerns that many of them have turned up to have a photo op and left.’’

Speaking after the Freedom for Faith religious freedom conference at Parramatta on Tuesday, Mr Spencer said the ubiquitous visits to Ramadan Eid and Easter celebrations showed religious groups represented a voting bloc but politicians and candidates had to create policies and practise legislation to reflect the community needs.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who supports the religious discrimination bill, at an Eid gathering marking the end of Ramadan at Parramatta. Picture: Jason Edwards

“We certainly hope those engagements, whether they’re just meant to be tokenistic or not, actually have an impact to allow relationships with people,’’ he said.

“We need to make sure our MPs understand that and why and hopefully these engagements are more than just something that happens in a campaign.’’

The conference, held in a key federal election battleground, saw Christian advocates, authors, principals and academics label freedoms at crisis point.

They called for protections in the bill, which in February was shelved until after the May 21 election.

Under the bill, which failed to advance to the Senate, discrimination is banned on a person’s religious belief or activity in areas such as employment and education.

Christian organisations such as schools are seeking more freedoms such as having the power to only employ workers who uphold their faith values.

“We’re not talking about conning people to work in our schools, we’re not twisting people’s arms to come and work in our schools,’’ Mr Spencer said.

Christian Schools Australia public policy director Mark Spencer.

“We’re not saying to people ‘come and work in our schools’ and then tell them what they’re in for. We’re upfront about who we are and what we believe.”

He said Christians were “extremely upset by what happened in parliament in February with the failure of the religious discrimination bill”.

He refuted claims that Christian schools expelled students if they did not identify as straight but said there was a misconception the bill would allow them to be kicked out.

“The fear that’s being created of LGBTQI students of faith-based schools hasn’t been addressed,’’ he said.

“We can tell them ‘you’re not going to be expelled, it’s not going to be a problem’ but that fear is still being pushed by the activists.

“We’re going into the next parliament with no clear plan or process or pathway from either party to resolve these issues.’’

On Saturday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he wrote to religious leaders across the nation and wanted to pass the bill as stand-alone legislation.

Labor wanted to push through several amendments to the bill that were defeated in February.

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