Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the minister's explanation.

What a farce. Here we have a review that, yes, was commissioned by government almost a year ago—11 months ago—and given to the Prime Minister on 18 May, which was a full five months ago. It's a report where the key recommendations are now in the public domain, and yet the minister is continuing this nonsense that, for some reason, it's not in the public interest to release the full report. There are no public interest immunity grounds as to why this report shouldn't be released. In fact, there are strong public interest grounds as to why the community deserves to see the background deliberations behind the recommendations which are now in the public domain.

Going to the minister's response and the issue of whether it should be held onto or whether they're actually hiding it—particularly whether they're hiding it before the Wentworth by-election on Saturday—it is ridiculous to say that, by releasing this Ruddock review into religious freedoms, it's going to interfere with cabinet deliberations. The statement is that it would harm the public interest in that it would interfere with the deliberative processes of cabinet. How ridiculous can you get, given that the key recommendations are already out there in the public domain? The Ruddock review is not cabinet deliberations; it is an input into those cabinet deliberations, and there is no need for it to continue to remain a secret document.

We know that having public debate on this review has the potential to influence cabinet deliberations. That is absolutely clear. But the farcical situation we're in, of course, is that that public debate is raging all around us, and, particularly because the recommendations are now in the public domain, we know that public debate is influencing cabinet deliberations on this very issue. We know that because we have got the government, the Prime Minister himself, saying that they're rejecting two of the key recommendations and that they now want to move to remove discrimination against LGBT children in schools—they want to remove that ability to discriminate against children in schools. We know that the recommendations of this review are, in fact, influencing cabinet deliberations, so it is ridiculous that we can't actually see the full report so that we can have more informed public consideration, which I'm sure would further influence cabinet deliberations.

The fact that we aren't able to see this report because it would interfere with the deliberative processes of cabinet does not stand up to scrutiny. It is influencing the public debate; it is influencing cabinet. We have got a situation where, just yesterday, we had a petition from GetUp! with 28,000 signatures calling upon the government to protect the rights of LGBT children, teachers and staff in schools. The Greens have got an online petition that's got almost 10,000 signatures. Advocacy group just.equal have a petition that's got almost 7,000 signatures. There is huge public interest in this issue, and rightly so.

The Ruddock review, and then the leak of these recommendations, has shown just how concerned people are about these issues—how concerned they are about discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender children; and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender teachers and other staff in schools. There is only one reason why this document is not being shared with the community now, and it's not because releasing it now would have the potential to influence cabinet deliberations. It's because they do not want the public to see the full body of this review before the Wentworth by-election; before the voters of Wentworth go to the polls. As part of their deliberations into how they are going to vote, the voters in Wentworth deserve to know where the government's thinking is on how much they want to continue discriminating against LGBTI Australians.

There are some worrying recommendations in the Ruddock review, which we have now seen courtesy of the leak to the Fairfax Media. There is the recommendation to continue discriminating against LGBTI students. But the review is not only recommending that not only should we be protecting people's ability to have a religious belief—and the Greens absolutely support having religious belief as a protected attribute in our anti-discrimination laws—but recommending that we should be protecting religious activity as well. Who knows where that religious activity would go? That's just what we're talking about: does religious activity enable the community, on the grounds of religion, to discriminate against people on the basis of their sexuality or their gender identity? This is very concerning.

The public needs to know what discussion there was in the review about this issue of how far religious activity should be protected. From the Greens perspective, we say, if you're going to be protecting religious activity, you've got to know when that religious activity becomes discrimination. Our view is that you need to have a charter of rights to be able to decide where one person's religious freedom becomes another person's discrimination.

These are important issues, and it is urgent that we act on them. Not acting on them now—not releasing this report—is playing with people's lives in a panicked attempt to hold on to the seat of Wentworth. This report should be released immediately, and we should be legislating immediately, as the community wants. We've got the ability to legislate immediately. Yesterday, the Greens introduced a bill that would remove discrimination in our schools completely. It would remove discrimination against LGBTI students and LGBTI teachers and other staff. We have the opportunity this week in the Senate to legislate. I call upon the government and Labor: if this is so critical and important, as we have now heard them say it is, let's take the opportunity of legislating to remove that discrimination this week. We could do that today. We could stop playing with people's lives. We could remove this discrimination. Now that the community has heard about it and is outraged about it, we could say, 'Yes, we hear your outrage.'

Prime Minister Scott Morrison yesterday said that we need to act 'today', that we need to deal with this issue once and for all, that we need to act right now. We've got the opportunity to do that. We're in control here in this Senate of what we can legislate on. We've got a Greens bill that was introduced yesterday. We could be debating that. We could be moving that and actually turning what are now words saying that we need to end discrimination into real action. We need action on all fronts. We need urgent action, because while these discriminations are still in place and while this debate is ongoing it's basically playing with people's lives. It's a bit of deja vu with the marriage equality postal survey debate that we were having a year ago. LGBTI Australians are still being treated like political footballs. It's just not good enough. We have got the opportunity to end this, to say that we value LGBTI Australians. We know that it's important that they're not discriminated against and that they are valued as much as every other Australian, rather than being played like political footballs. Let us act. Let us remove discrimination, and actually say to every LGBTI student and every LGBTI teacher and other staff member in schools: 'We value you. We know that you are as valued and you are as loved as every other member of your school community,' and say that we recognise that the discrimination that's currently there is unacceptable. We can act, and we could act today to remove that.

I call upon the government to release the full Ruddock review into religious freedoms and then to take the next step and move this week, before the Wentworth by-election, to join the Greens to debate and then legislate to remove discrimination against all lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender diverse, intersex and queer Australians.