Tribunal exempts bias on Muslims

A TRIBUNAL has backed a NSW Education Department's right to discriminate against fair-skinned Muslims of mixed ancestry.

A TRIBUNAL has backed the NSW Education Department's right to discriminate against fair-skinned Muslims of mixed ancestry, arguing they are exempt from anti-discrimination laws because they lack a specific "ethno-religious" identity.

The issue arose after a Sydney man complained his two granddaughters had been verbally, physically and sexually assaulted by non-Muslim students while attending a state primary school in the city's west.

The complaint alleged teachers were failing to clamp down on bullying at the school and had previously ordered the girls to remove their headscarves and cover them with school hats.

The Administrative Decisions Tribunal last month held that the state was entitled to discriminate against Muslims because the legal definition of "race" includes "ethno-religious origin" but not religion itself.

The Department of Education and Communities argued the Australian-born girls did not have a "particular Muslim ethno-religious background" because their ancestors came mostly from European countries "not normally" associated with Islam.

The decision is likely to reinvigorate debate about introducing contentious religious vilification laws, which the NSW Coalition has traditionally opposed as a threat to free speech.

The new case follows a complaint brought by a Lebanese-Australian forklift driver who was taunted as a "bomb chucker" and nicknamed "Osama bin Laden" while working at Toll Express.

Although he was born in Australia, Mohamed Abdulrahman was awarded a $25,000 race discrimination payout in 2007 because "the combination of his (Islamic) religion and his Lebanese ethnicity and/or his Middle Eastern background" constituted an ethno-religious background. The girls' grandfather and guardian, a Muslim who migrated from Europe in the 1960s, said the violence started after they began wearing the hijab in 2009.

"Then they started coming home with all these bruises all over their legs and their mid-sections . . . They'd kicked the crap out of them," he told The Australian.

"I didn't want a big house by the beach or anything like that (from the legal action); I just wanted them to better educate their kids about other cultures."

The department denied any of its staff aided the bullying and said it did "everything reasonably within its power" to prevent further discrimination, including an address to a whole-school assembly on multiculturalism.

The grandfather called on the NSW government to reconsider its longstanding opposition to racial vilification laws.

"They have to change this law, and not just for Muslims. It makes no sense that you can call someone a Buddhist idiot and there's no problem, but if you call them a Chinese idiot or a Vietnamese idiot, that's illegal."

In 2005, the NSW Coalition voted down a private member's bill arguing it would limit free speech, saying "the distinction between criticism and vilification is blurred and a matter of personal interpretation".

"There is no inherent right, nor should there be, for a person's religious or political beliefs to be quarantined from criticism, condemnation or even vilification," Liberal David Clarke said.