Morrisons secretive religious freedom bill: its certainly free of information – The Sydney Morning Herald

Remember this the next time the government makes a mockery of the Freedom of Information Act by covering documents in black ink before releasing them to the public. The government keeps its own backbenchers in the dark, too.

The bill is so secret that few can be sure how it will work if it is ever passed. The Attorney-General, Michaelia Cash, outlined drastic changes last week to scale back the plan drafted by her predecessor, Christian Porter, but she only gave the backbench committee a five-page outline.

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There were four main elements to the earlier draft: an Israel Folau clause to give people a right to offend others when claiming to speak up for their faith; a right for medical professionals to deny treatment on religious grounds; a right for religious institutions such as schools to consider someones faith when hiring staff; and a defence for statements of belief when people express their faith.

The bill has been cut in half. The first two elements are said to have been scrapped while the last two remain. But there are doubts about whether every element of the Folau clause is gone. The original plan was to prevent employers sacking people in the way Rugby Australia did when it terminated Folau for his public claim that homosexuals would go to hell.

And peak health groups are still worried that some parts of the law would still allow doctors to turn away patients seeking contraception, abortion or other treatments, even though this is already governed by professional standards as well as state and territory laws.

Too much of the bill remains unclear. It might override state laws that try to stop employers discriminating against people, for instance, but the key point is that the federal bill does this for religious institutions that want to hire people who share their faith. Could a religious school turn away a gay or lesbian teacher? If it tried, it would presumably have to claim it was rejecting the teacher because he or she did not believe in the schools creed.

The changes are an important victory for moderates in the Liberal Party who pushed to remove the Folau clause and the conscientious objection for medical practitioners. Liberals like Dave Sharma in Wentworth, Katie Allen in Higgins and Trent Zimmerman in North Sydney wanted these provisions gone.

The prospect of an election forced Morrison to see the risk of playing only to the base. Funny how that works. It was the second success for the moderates after they helped shift Morrison to endorse the climate change target of net zero emissions by 2050. Two wins in two months.

Yet the revision of the bill has not settled the Coalition rift. In fact, it is just as wide today as it was in the marriage equality debate. The conservatives believe Cash has caved to the left while the moderates worry about back doors in the bill that might allow people like Folau to make his claims while preventing others from taking any action.

What if Folau was a doctor who made his remark to a gay patient? The medical centre might be able to sack him, but could the state medical association sanction him? A section of the bill appears to limit what a professional body could do.

There is a reason Morrison has taken three years to get to this point: a happy compromise is impossible. In fact, it is so out of reach that one promise is not in the bill at all.

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The storm over the Ruddock review was so severe three years ago that Morrison had to rush out a pledge on gay and lesbian school students. Our government does not support expulsion of students from religious non-state schools on the basis of their sexuality, he said in October 2018. He promised a law as soon as practicable to make that clear.

Years later, Cash expects the Australian Law Reform Commission to take one year to work on this problem after the passage of the Religious Discrimination Bill a point that will not be reached in the Senate until early next year, if it ever comes. So the protection for gay and lesbian students is likely to remain in legal limbo until the first half of 2023.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese will not have to work hard to exploit this problem. It goes to the heart of the Labor claim that Morrison does not deliver on his promises.

Albanese has to be careful on religious freedom, however, because he has to appeal to people of faith. Religious schools want to be able to make their beliefs a factor when hiring teachers. This issue alone can give Christian voters, such as those who share Morrisons evangelical faith, a reason to hand out how-to-vote cards for a Liberal or Nationals candidate.

All sides have to tread warily on questions of faith, equality and freedom. Right now the argument is a knife fight in a darkroom. It will stay that way until Morrison listens to his own backbench and releases the draft.

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Morrisons secretive religious freedom bill: its certainly free of information - The Sydney Morning Herald