The religious freedom issue that Scott Morrison doesn’t want to deal with

Scott Morrison has revealed how the government will tackle religious freedom — except on one key issue.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison wants new laws to be passed to protect against religious discrimination but there’s one issue that won’t be debated before the next election.

Yesterday, Mr Morrison released the report from former Liberal minister Philip Ruddock’s long-awaited review into religious freedom. It has already been controversial because the report was leaked to the media ahead of the Wentworth by-election in October.

Mr Morrison said this week he would take action including creating a Religious Discrimination Act as well as appointing a religious freedom commissioner to handle complaints, even though this idea was not recommended by the Ruddock review.

There is however, one issue that has been deferred until after the next election and it’s also the most contentious.

Mr Ruddock’s review revealed that most religious schools already had the right to turn away students or teachers on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

While the review suggested schools shouldn’t be able to discriminate on the basis of race, disability, pregnancy or intersex status (and recommended laws be changed in states that allowed this), it did support discrimination be allowed to continue if it was based on sexual orientation and relationship status.

The review suggested confirming this right in the Sex Discrimination Act with some limitations.

It believes schools should be able to discriminate against new students as long as the school’s policy is shared openly. Discrimination against teachers would also be allowed except if they were existing employees who married someone of the same sex.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison during a visit to Galilee Catholic Primary School in Sydney in September. Picture: Joel Carrett/AAP

“To some school communities, cultivating an environment and ethos which conforms to their religious beliefs is of paramount importance,” the review said.

There has been outrage about the current laws with 47 organisations including the Human Rights Law Centre, Rainbow Families Victoria and Justice Connect demanding they be changed.

“Australians voted for fairness and equality this time last year, not discrimination against LGBT people. Kids in schools should be worrying about classes and their homework, not living in fear of mistreatment because of who they are,” Human Rights Law Centre legal advocacy director Anna Brown said.

Mr Morrison has said he would change the laws to stop religious schools turning away students on the basis of their sexuality and offered to have a conscience vote on a bill.

Labor rejected to offer and refused to support the bill last week, saying the government’s proposed changes to the Sex Discrimination Act went too far.

“For example, a teacher or school could provide inferior instruction to a student on the basis of the student’s sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status or, indeed, exclude that student from instruction entirely,” Mark Gibian SC said in advice to Labor.

Mr Morrison has now referred legislation on student and teacher discrimination to the Australian Law Reform Commission. A review is expected in the second half of next year but this won’t be available until after the next federal election is due.

Shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus said the Prime Minister was failing to keep his promise to protect LGBTI students.

He said the government could easily remove the exemption to ensure schools couldn’t discriminate against students but was making the issue unnecessarily broad.

“Even the Ruddock review did not identify any real threat to religious freedom,” Mr Dreyfus said.

Mr Ruddock told ABC radio on Friday the review “didn’t find a lot of evidence of actual material discrimination that would be of concern”.

“But where we did, we brought forward some recommendations to help deal with it.”

Religious freedom could now become a federal election issue.

Mr Morrison has said he wanted some of the new laws in place, including for a Religious Discrimination Act, before the next election.

“For those who think that Australians of religious faith don’t feel that the walls have been closing in on them for a while, they’re clearly not talking to many people in religious communities,” he said in Sydney on Thursday.

But with so few sitting weeks left before a potential election in May, the time frame is ambitious and could spill over into the campaign.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said he was open to a Religious Discrimination Act but questioned whether there would be enough time to debate the idea before the election.

Mr Shorten warned against religion being weaponised for “partisan advantage” or treated as a political football.

He said protection of religious freedom was Labor Party policy but added he “could not say to you that religion is in the top 100 issues that get raised with me”.

— With AAP