The peak body for women lawyers in Australia has raised concerns about the federal government’s proposed religious discrimination legislation, saying it prioritises religious rights over other rights.
Australian Women Lawyers has released a statement saying it’s concerned the proposed legislation will “override” current protections that women have under existing state and federal laws.
“Australian Women Lawyers is particularly concerned that the draft Bill would lawfully permit discriminatory statements to be made about women based on religious grounds, including in the workplace,” Leah Marrone, President of Australian Women Lawyers said in a statement.
“Permitting such statements is likely to feed the cultures that encourage sexual and other gender harassment, at a time when most sectors are working hard to redress these issues.”
Marrone said Australian Women Lawyers considers the likely negative impacts of the religious discrimination bill will be “felt more keenly” by those people whose intersectionality exposes them to discrimination on religious grounds. Marrone said this included women, people of colour, the LGBTQIA+ community including gender diverse or gender non-conforming, unmarried mothers and soon-to-be mothers and women living with a disability.
The concerns raised by Australian Women Lawyers come as the federal government will attempt to push through its religious discrimination bill this week as parliament resumes on Tuesday.
In order to placate moderate members of the Liberal Party who have raised concerns about the bill’s potential to infringe on discrimination laws, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has committed to an amendment to the Sex Discrimination Act that would protect children and teachers being expelled from school because of their sexual orientation.
But the amendment will not protect students based on their gender identity, Senate leader Simon Birmingham confirmed on Radio National on Tuesday morning. This means transgender and gender diverse students will not be protected from school expulsion.
“The proposal put forward is to repeal the exemption as it relates to students being exempted from the Sex Discrimination Act on the basis of their sexual orientation, but it doesn’t go further than that,” Birmingham said on Radio National.
“I’d like to see as much discrimination removed as possible, whilst respecting the fact that schools of faith, single sex schools, need to be able to find the right way within discrimination laws to continue to operate.
Liberal MP Bridget Archer has confirmed she does not support the religious discrimination bill in its current form, saying “we should do what we can” to protect anti-discrimination laws. She is concerned the bill would override her state of Tasmania’s existing anti-discrimination laws.
“I’m not sure that there’s any way to bridge the divide between the bill as it currently looks like and my concerns,” Archer said.
Archer has already crossed the floor once, when she voted against the government last year because she wanted to allow debate on a federal integrity commission bill proposed by Independent MP Helen Haines.
Katie Allen, along with a few other moderate Liberal MPs, has also expressed reservations about the bill, saying her support for it is “conditional” on there being protections for all students and teachers, and that she is prepared to cross the floor to vote against it.
Equality Australia has said the government must scrap its religious discrimination reforms after two parliamentary inquiries criticised key aspects of the proposed legislation.
“After three years of trying to solve a problem of the Government’s making, the committees were left with the pieces of a broken and friendless bill. It’s no wonder they failed to find a way to fix it. It is time to throw out this failed, experimental bill,” said Anna Brown, CEO of Equality Australia.
“The government must scrap the Bill and instead do what everyone has been telling it to do for three years: protect all of us, equally. Protect people of faith from discrimination by lifting the standards for all of us, without eroding protections for women, people with disability, LGBTIQ+ people and even people of faith.”