Religious freedom fears swayed poll, clerics claim

The Catholic Archbishop of Sydney says religious freedom concerns affected the election result.

Covenant Christian School principal Bill Rusin says he wrote to Labor education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek but did not receive a reply.

The Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher, has argued that concerns about religious freedoms affected the election result as faith leaders yesterday encouraged Scott Morrison to provide an update on his plan to introduce a religious discrimination act.

Archbishop Fisher yesterday told The Australian the “relative autonomy and legal protections afforded religious instit­utions, includin­g schools and hospitals, had come under increasing scrut­iny and even attack”.

He sounded a rallying cry to Catholics, calling on believers to “resist attempts” to exclude them from public life and urging the parliament to “ensure that respect for religious freedom informs our laws and social policies”.

“Anxiety about religious freedom was heightened in recent months, with debates about the funding of faith-based schools, proposed repeal of protections ­afforded religious schools, the seal of confession, and high-profile cases around freedom of speech and belief,” Archbishop Fisher said.

Michael Stead, chair of the religious freedom reference group for the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, said the issue of religious freedom was “very significant in a number of electorates”. He pointed to the 6.5 per cent primary vote swing against Labor Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen, who holds the safe seat of McMahon in Sydney’s west — a culturally diverse electorate that recorded a 64.9 per cent No vote against same-sex marriage.

“It demonstrates the need for the government to push ahead with its promise for a religious discrimination act, which would help to alleviate some of the concerns that emerged, particularly during the last part of the election campaign,” Dr Stead told The Australian. “I think that concerns about religious freedoms did play into the outcome of the election, even in western Sydney where it didn’t actually turn the result in terms of seats falling.

“It’s clear that in the seats where there are the highest percentages of religious faiths of all types that the strongest swings against Labor were recorded.”

Bill Rusin, principal of the Covenant Christian School on Sydney's northern beaches and a lifelong Labor supporter, also told The Australian he had voted for the Coalition because of his fears about Bill Shorten’s stance on faith-based educators.

“It was an agonising thing for me,” Mr Rusin said. “It was about schools and also theological colleges. There was a significant amount of uncertainty as to whether we would be able to continue to select staff who would be the proper fit — ie, Christians — for a school like ours.”

Mr Rusin said he wrote to Labor education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek to raise his concerns but did not receive a response. “I expressed to her that I am a Labor supporter and I didn’t receive any reply to that. I’m a little annoyed at that.”

Christian schools grew alarmed when Labor legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus wrote to them during the campaign to explicitly confirm that a Shorten government would remove key legal protections for religious freedoms.

This would have seen the scrapping of key legislative protections for religious freedoms — enshrined by way of exemptions to the Sex Discrimination Act — around the employment of teachers in religious schools.

The Archbishop of Hobart, ­Julian Porteous, yesterday voiced his personal concern about the ­expression of religious freedoms by way of exemptions to the SDA, which allow faith-based institutions the ability to discriminate in some circumstances.

“I am always concerned about exemptions. They make us look outside the law,” Archbishop Porteous said. “The principle of religious freedom needs to be recognised and enshrined.”