Religious freedom is likely to provide a stern test for Australia's weakened Liberal-National coalition Government, which lost its majority in the House of Representatives last weekend with the loss of former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's seat in Sydney – a constituency the conservative Liberal Party and its predecessors had occupied since the first Federal Parliament in 1901.
A review into religious freedom by a panel led by former Liberal Cabinet minister Philip Ruddock was delivered to the Government in May and has yet to be released. The review was established by Mr Turnbull to pacify critics from the right wing of his coalition after Australians overwhelmingly endorsed same-sex marriage in a national postal survey last year and the Parliament changed the Marriage Act accordingly.
Mr Turnbull's Liberal Party successor, Scott Morrison, who attends a Sydney Pentecostal church, has announced that the report - and the Government's response to it - will be released before the end of the year. Mr Turnbull, a Catholic, was regarded with suspicion for his progressive views by the more conservative parts of his coalition and was toppled as leader in late August.
Media reports from a leaked copy of the report early this month suggested that the Ruddock panel had recommended that religious schools be given the right to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or relationship status, although it later emerged that those laws already exist in some Australian states. Mr Ruddock told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that his report did not recommend that the law should be expanded, “we were simply saying it should be contracted [more tightly defined] to ensure that that information was clear and unambiguous in relation to those who were seeking to enrol children”.
Sydney's Archbishop Anthony Fisher commended the UK Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding the religious freedom of a Belfast bakery to refuse to write a message supportive of same-sex marriage, and lamented Australia’s lack of legal protections for people of faith, Sydney's 'Catholic Weekly' reported.
“The decision in this case upholds the important freedoms of thought, conscience and belief, and confirms that these freedoms are not just enjoyed by church men like me, but by every person equally,” Archbishop Fisher said, while warning that "Australia’s slim religious and conscientious rights laws mean there is no guarantee courts or anti-discrimination tribunals in Australia would be so respectful of free belief and speech."
Last week, the Vice-Chancellor of Australian Catholic University and a professor of constitutional law, Professor Greg Craven, wrote in The Australian newspaper that there was “nothing weird” about protecting religious freedom. "But because the hard left loathes religion as most people loathe dentistry, any proposal around religious freedom must be sunk before it even sets sail, lest someone actually may analyse it," he wrote.
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