Religious freedom heat rises for Labor over foster care case

A tribunal finding that a Christian couple rejected as foster parents were discriminated against has ignited calls for Anthony Albanese to introduce protections.

Byron and Keira Hordyk arrive at the State Administrative Tribunal in Perth in 2020. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Tony McDonough

New calls for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to introduce religious freedom protections within the next 12 months have been ignited by a West Australian tribunal finding that a Christian couple rejected as foster parents were discriminated against.

Married in October 2010, Keira and Byron Hordyk – both members of the Free Reformed Church of Australia – applied in January 2017 to become foster parents through the not-for-profit family support service provider Wanslea.

On the application form they identified themselves as Christians and informed Wanslea they were interested in caring for “one foster child between the age of zero and six years and not older than their six-year-old son” on a temporary basis.

But in June 2017 concerns were raised about the “impact that the Hordyks’ religion may have on fostering” and, in August that year, the couple was informed their application would not be progressed because of their views on sexual orientation and gender identity issues. The couple had made clear their church believed that homosexuality and being transgender was sinful.

On Friday, the State Administrative Tribunal in WA found that Wanslea was providing a service and “indirectly discriminated against the Hordyks in the provision of that service on the ground of their religious conviction”. “We therefore find the Hordyks’ complaint to be substan-tiated,” the tribunal said. “We have reached the view that the $3000 sought by each of the Hordyks is an appropriate sum to award as general damages ... for the hurt and embarrassment they suffered as a result of the discrimination Wanslea engaged in.”

Adjunct associate professor at Notre Dame law school, Mark Fowler, said that “in recognising that the Hordyks were discriminated against on the basis of their sincerely held beliefs, the decision reaffirms the widely recognised need for a federal Religious Discrimination Act”.

“Being a promise on which Labor was elected, it is expected that the Albanese government will bring that protection to parliament in 2023,” Prof Fowler said.

“First recommended by the Ruddock Expert Panel on Religious Freedom in 2018, the Bill that passed the House of Representatives with bipartisan support in February 2022 lays out the framework to which the government should look in its drafting efforts. However, it (the government) would do well to heed the further concerns and amendments sought by religious leaders, as put before the two parliamentary inquiries that considered the legislation.”

Wanslea had argued the Hordyks were considered not to be competent to be foster carers because they “expressed a degree of ‘rigidity’ that was not consistent with the emotional safety of the hypothetical foster child”.

It also argued there was no evidence that this “rigidity” was part of the couple’s religious convictions. This view was rejected by the tribunal.

During the foster care assessment process, the Hordyks said they believed the seventh commandment in the Bible required sexual relationships to take place only between a man and woman who were married, and all other expressions of human sexuality were sinful.

In the event that a foster child who had been placed in their care was found kissing a child of the same sex at school, the couple said they would “tell the child that they were loved but that the behaviour was sinful and needed to be resisted”.