Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a few brief comments on the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade's Interim report: legal foundations of religious freedom in Australia. The Australian Constitution, section 116, outlines that:

The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion …

I am standing to ensure that Australia remains a free, pluralist and tolerant society—a society where commissions and boards are not given Orwellian power to impose belief or prohibit the free exercise of religion. Unfortunately, as acknowledged by submissions to the committee, Australian law—in contrast to the strong and clear protection for religious freedoms under international law, article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights—provided weak and inadequate protection for freedom of religion and belief.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802, coining the phrase 'wall of separation between church and state', he was emphasising to the church, which had been persecuted in Europe, that it would be protected from an imposed state religion. It was about protecting the church from the state, not the state from the church. Sadly, there does appear to be a slow creep into our public institutions of an intolerance of Christian values, values that have played an important part in Australia and have provided us with the great country that we have today.

I say to all people in this House that we need to make sure that religious protections are protected. The report said that, currently, they are weak and inadequate and we need to do a lot better. I listened to the member opposite, the member for Cowan, and to the member for Goldstein and I say that I hope we can all work together to make sure that protections are stronger going forward.

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