Turnbull defends free speech for churches

Malcolm Turnbull has said churches and religious groups are free to voice opinions on political issues.

Malcolm Turnbull has said churches and religious groups are free to voice opinions on political issues including education, as the national charity watchdog investigates the Catholic Church’s Victorian education arm for lobbying on school funding in the lead-up to the Batman by-election in March.

The Prime Minister will meet Catholic archbishops from Australia’s three largest cities on Thursday to hear concerns about the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission’s decision to investigate the education body.

The ACNC this week revealed it was investigating whether Catholic Education Melbourne still qualified as a charity, after staging a campaign in the lead-up to the Batman by-election that was critical of the government’s changes to school funding.

Yesterday, Mr Turnbull affirmed the independence of the charities watchdog while also standing by the rights of the church to communicate its views on political issues.

“The Catholic Church communicates its views all the time and it is a free country, it’s perfectly entitled to,” Mr Turnbull said.

“As far as the charities commission, that’s an independent agency and it’s designed to be and operates independently of government. I can’t add any more to it than that. If you have inquiries of the ACNC … you should inquire of it.”

In the lead-up to the inner- Melbourne by-election, Catholic Education Melbourne commissioned robocalls and distributed leaflets that criticised government education funding changes that would see many Catholic schools worse off.

On Sunday, the ACNC confirmed an investigation into Catholic Education Melbourne, on the ground that its lobbying efforts could have run counter to the rules it must satisfy to keep its charitable status.

The ACNC lists “disqualifying purposes’’ that prohibit an organisation from being registered as a charity. These include “engaging in, or promoting, activities that are contrary to public policy’’ and “promoting or opposing a political party or candidate for political office”.