Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment and Water (Senate)) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to participate in the debate today on this matter of public importance put forward by Senator Bernardi: 'The increasing attacks on Australia's traditional freedoms.' I have to ask: what does that even mean? It means different things to different people. It perhaps depends which freedom you're talking about and which side of the debate you're on. I for one would see the attacks on workers—their right to strike and their right to negotiate—as very much an agenda coming from this government, where it has attacked traditional freedoms. The way workers captured by the ABCC historically have been targeted is very much an attack on traditional freedoms. I would hope that Senator Bernardi is in fact talking about the great steps forward in social justice in this country, but, sadly, I disagree with how Senator Bernardi characterises those steps forward as an attack on traditional freedom.

Surely we've improved on traditional freedoms in Australia. We have improved and we want to keep doing so. What could be a more traditional institution than marriage, and it's the fact that the LGBTI community embraced it as a traditional institution that has seen 5,000 same-sex marriages take place this year in Australia. Tomorrow, it will be one year since the marriage equality bill passed through this chamber. Five thousand people now have their relationships recognised in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of their families, and they did so for very traditional reasons: the idea and the desire to celebrate their love and commitment as a couple in front of their friends and family and to have that recognised by the laws of this nation—a freedom that was previously denied to gay and lesbian Australians but was accessible to heterosexual peers. I see these as improved freedoms, and, indeed, traditional ones.

What could be more important, in terms of freedom, than enabling children in our schools to go to school safely and to be protected from discrimination? I was listening to Megan Mitchell in the discussions last week that we had on the discrimination in schools referral that I chaired. She spoke to me about one of the exemptions in the Sex Discrimination Act, not about LGBTI students, but, in fact, on young pregnant women and the high levels of marginalisation and discrimination that they experience in our community. I find it so, so, so terribly ironic that those who champion an anti-choice agenda on women's reproductive rights—and I do not begrudge them those opinions; they're entitled to those opinions—then stand up for the right of a school to exclude a young woman from an education just because she happens to be pregnant. It is absolutely galling. Young women might get pregnant while at school; it does happen.

There are young LGBTI people, young people who do not fit in a gender box, and it might well be because they have intersex sex characteristics that mean they don't want to be easily attributed to a gender, although I do note that most people who have intersex sex characteristics have a very strong gender identification. But sometimes the issue is that it's not the one that you would have state governments tick a box on at birth. I find it absolutely extraordinary that people in this place would see the fact that state governments don't necessarily see this as the most significant thing in the world—that every child should have every bit of information ticked to say which gender box they belong in. Surely parents and teachers—you meet a child; you know whether it's male or female. What is this hysteria about? Are you the gender police? Is that the traditional freedom of having the state running around inspecting the genitals of children so that you know which gender box they fit in? It's a pretty extraordinary thing, frankly, to ask the state to do on behalf of a society. If the church wants to do that, go ahead and do it—if your religious faith wants to do that. But, really, senators, what is the place of the state in upholding these freedoms?

When it comes to LGBTI discrimination against students, the government have promised to resolve this issue by the end of the year, but, as each day goes by, the government are still sitting on their hands. You've refused to proceed with a simple removal of the relevant exemption that would protect young women like the ones I spoke about and who have been advocated for by the Children's Commissioner, Megan Mitchell. It's extraordinary that in the week before the Wentworth by-election the Prime Minister promised to remove exemptions that relate to LGBTI students, but, sadly, as yet we have failed to achieve that goal. I would really like to see this parliament act on that before the end of this year. We know there has been cross-party support on this issue, and there's no reason it should not be progressed and actioned.

I talked about these issues when I tabled the committee report on legislative exemptions. We saw the evidence from the committee and LGBTI organisations, and from faith based institutions, strongly indicating that religious schools do not use these exemptions and do not want them. In fact, we had very detailed discussions. Well, what is it that enables you to uphold a school's ethos? Do you go away relying on exemptions in an antidiscrimination act? No: you have a strong and lively culture within your school and religious community that promotes certain values. It's not written down in exclusive clauses in the Sex Discrimination Act that exclude people as some kind of exception. That is a ridiculous way of upholding religious freedom in this nation. What I find so strange is that when we talk about religious freedom there is no right in this nation to have your own faith or other political belief protected as an individual freedom. I've heard many of those from the other side talk about this. Rather than the belief that you hold, or not being discriminated against for holding that belief, there are some in these debates who are intent on trying to express their religious freedom by upholding a right to discriminate against others.

Well, I'm sorry to say, that is not, in my view, how freedom in our nation should work. By that very statement, when you discriminate against others and harm them in some way, you are impinging on their freedom. I wouldn't want to see any teacher discriminated against in our schools for holding a particular religious belief, any more than I would want that to happen to them for having a particular sexuality or gender. I note, for example, that if you are a religious school then you might want to uphold a religious belief in your teachers, but it shouldn't be that hard to explain, within the strong school ethos that many schools have—and they don't go out of their way to rely on exceptions in the Sex Discrimination Act to do so.

What does Senator Bernardi mean when he says 'the increasing attacks on Australia's traditional freedoms'? Our duty in this place is indeed to strengthen freedoms in Australia when they are for all. It is a quality of access to various freedoms, no matter your race, religion, gender identity, sexuality, union affiliation, political belief or any other attribute.