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Opinion
Gay Liberal MP tells why he crossed the floor: I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t act
By Trent Zimmerman
I hadn’t intended to speak on the Religious Discrimination Bill but I feel it is important to outline to my community the position I’m taking. This has been one of the most difficult weeks of my time in Parliament.
It’s just under a month until the anniversary of when I made my first speech to this chamber – and what a special day that was, most particularly because I stood in this place as the first openly gay man in the House of Representatives.
North Sydney MP Trent Zimmerman, who was among five Liberals to cross the floor on Thursday morning after a marathon debate.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
That was not just an important milestone for me. I hoped it was a significant milestone for so many other Australians, particularly those who were still struggling with their sexuality and wondering whether they could achieve all that they wanted to in life. I said in that first speech that I hoped that my mere presence in this chamber would send a signal that you could be gay and be a member of the Parliament of Australia.
Of course, since that time there have been so many momentous decisions that have affected the community of which I’m a part. Several years later in this chamber, we celebrated the passage of the marriage equality legislation. I honestly believe there will not be a day as special for me as when marriage equality became the law of this country.
I raise these issues because it is important to understand the significance of this legislation. Of course, it is a no-brainer that in this country we should have legislation which prevents one person discriminating against another person because of their religious faith. It is an international obligation. It is a human right. It is simply wrong that any person could be discriminated against because of the faith that they hold dear.
And I know that the Ruddock review of religious freedom in this country made the point that, unlike so many other nations, we, as part of our wonderful liberal democracy, provide opportunities for people of all faiths like virtually no other country. And I know in that review they found religious freedom was not in imminent peril. But I also know that there are some who face discrimination based on their religion, particularly minority faiths—people of Jewish faith, people of Islamic faith; there are perceptions among some Christians of that as well—so the concept of having a religious discrimination bill is one that makes sense.
In all my work as the member for North Sydney, one of the highlights has been working with so many wonderful religious organisations, from the Sisters of Saint Joseph at Mary MacKillop Place, who do so much for those in need of help, to our local religious schools. There are the charity groups—Vinnies, Salvos—that I’ve worked very closely with among so many others.
But I have had concerns about this bill because it does extend beyond the orthodox provisions of discrimination laws in this country. It goes beyond simply preventing and outlawing discrimination on the basis of a person’s religion and their faith. I do want to acknowledge that there have been improvements to this bill over time – the deletion of the Folau clause and the moderation of those clauses relating to medical practitioners are important – but there are still aspects that concern me. Most particularly, it is the statement of beliefs clause in this bill.
No human right exists in a silo. Inevitably many do conflict. In many, we try to balance and judge competing interests and competing human rights. But my concern about the statement of beliefs is fundamentally that it extends a greater privilege to freedom of conscience based on religious views. For me as a Liberal, freedom of conscience and freedom of thought [are] the most important thing in our society, and religious faith is one of those expressions of freedom of conscience. My concern with the statement of beliefs is it actually puts religious faith on a pedestal above other rights in a way that I have serious problems with.
Liberal MPs Trent Zimmerman, Fiona Martin, Katie Allen and Bridget Archer in the Parliament on Thursday morning. They crossed the floor along with their colleague Dave Sharma to help amend the government’s Religious Discrimination Bill.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
The current Sex Discrimination Act provides that, effectively, someone can be discriminated against based on inherent characteristics like their sexuality, gender, sex, pregnancy or marital status. For me, that is fundamentally wrong. Those are exemptions that belong in the 19th century, not the 21st century. That’s why, for me, having the opportunity to reform the SDA as part of this debate is so important.
For me, it’s about teachers. The hearings of the two committees that looked at this made us realise that this is not some mere academic issue. There are teachers today who love their job, who love their profession, who love the schools that they work for and who love their students but have been sacked for things like the simple fact that they were gay. As the son of a Christian school headmaster, I know how important those educational settings are. I understand that schools want to protect the ethos and the mission of those schools, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but there is something profoundly wrong when you judge a person based on their sexuality or their gender. That’s why I believe that today we should be addressing the issue of teachers in the SDA.
I also believe it’s an opportunity to address discrimination, which is permitted in the SDA, against students. Of course, the reality is that it’s uncommon for that to happen. I think of the wonderful schools in my electorate. I have spoken to many of their principals just this week, and all strive to provide a supporting environment to students based on their sexuality or gender, including those who are transgender or going through the transition. But there are still some, and we’ve seen this just in recent weeks, that would purport in the name of their religion to discriminate in what I think is quite a heinous way.
I want to tell you why this is important to me: because my own journey – something I don’t talk about, because I’m intrinsically a private person – is a reflection of what many other people have experienced. It was a different age in the 70s and 80s, but, like so many of my peers, I went through that long period of struggling with my sexuality, where I lived in fear of discovery, where someone simply talking about homosexuality sent me rushing in case it led to some type of exposure, and where I could spend weeks after an incident, if I’d said the wrong thing, wondering whether I’d revealed myself.
That is so debilitating. I did that in the environment of a school that was not particularly conservative. I can never remember it preaching against homosexuality. I did it in an environment where I had such a loving family and support group of friends, but nonetheless for people in my situation in that age it was such an ordeal. Can I say that, while we have improved so much, just in my lifetime, I know that that is still the experience of so many Australians.
There are people today who are in mental anguish because of their sexuality. There are even more people in anguish because of their gender. We have to provide a legal environment that supports them. Part of that is ensuring that when they’re going to school, they do so knowing, at the very least, that that school cannot legally discriminate against them, the school cannot expel them and the school cannot penalise them in a way that they have a de facto expulsion because their life becomes so unpleasant.
One of the things I am most proud of in my position as an MP is that so many parents have contacted me, even about my first speech, and said: “We gave that to our child to help them.” So many young people have approached me and said: “Thank you for setting an example that we can aspire to.”
Today, there are people who will consider taking their own lives because of the internal struggle they go through. For me, it wasn’t until my 30s that I came out completely to my family. Of course, like most people, my family said it doesn’t make any difference. That’s as it should be. But that’s not always the case. There are people who are threatened with violence in the home and with, effectively, exile from their families for going through that same journey.
It’s really the core of who I am that is leading me to make some difficult decisions in relation to what I do in this chamber. And I’d like to think that my community will support me.
One of the things that’s disturbed me most this week is the debate about transgender children. I cannot support a situation where we solve a problem for one community but in fact enhance a problem for another. And we are. It’s a bit of a misnomer that this is actually new legislation that’s putting in place something punitive.
They are the most vulnerable people in our society. All the statistics show what they go through: the suicide rates, the attempted suicide rates and the mental health problems. I cannot do anything which makes their situation more difficult, which sends anything other than a message from this Parliament that we want to embrace you, we want to love you, we want to support you and we want to nurture you during what is a difficult and often challenging part of your lives, as you realise who you are and who you should be.
There is nothing different about your sexuality or your gender from the colour of your skin. I don’t believe that this parliament would waste a second if there were some old law which said that a school or any institution could discriminate against you because of your race, or allow that to stand on the statute books if it were discovered that, in fact, that law were being exercised in a way that discriminated against someone based on their creed or their colour. For me, that’s why this is important.
The case we saw in the last two weeks, which equated homosexuality with bestiality and paedophilia, was just disgusting. And that’s in modern Australia. That’s why we have the opportunity, by supporting amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act.
I want to indicate that I will be making the difficult decision to part with my party on some of the amendments that are before the chamber tonight. It’s an opportunity that I can’t let go past. I could not live with myself if I didn’t seek to address those issues.
Trent Zimmerman is the Liberal member for the federal seat of North Sydney.