Freedom for Faith is claiming three major victories in the first three months of the year.
The Christian legal think tank which seeks to protect and promote religious freedom in Australia, says it shows that Christians can be successful in applying pressure for change.
Executive Director Mike Southon told Vision Radio the biggest success was ensuring a complete rewrite of federal hate speech laws, fast-tracked through Parliament in the wake of the Bondi shootings catastrophe.
FIRST DRAFT WAS “VERY DANGEROUS FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM”
“The federal government released an omnibus bill which covered things like guns, prohibiting hate organisations, and it also had a section there for hate speech,” Mr. Southon explained.
“Now that last bit of the bill was very, very dangerous for religious freedom.”
“In effect, it was saying that something you say is hate speech, if the person who was listening to you hears it as hate speech.”
“It was only limited to race, but already there were conversations saying: If we pass it to cover race, we should make this legislation cover other protected attributes like religion or sexuality.”
“GOOD NEWS IS THAT OUR ENGAGEMENT MADE A DIFFERENCE”
“If that happened, the law literally would be saying that claims that one religion was true and another was false, would have been hate speech,” continued Mr. Southon.
“The law was that badly written.”
“But the good news is that our engagement actually made a difference.”
“If it had passed as it was written it would have prevented pretty much any kind of debate.”
“But we engaged very heavily with the government.”
PUBLIC PRESSURE PAVED THE WAY FOR “A VERY GOOD WIN”
“Lots of people wrote in to the government and there was a letter that was sent to the Prime Minister signed by 27 faith leaders covering pretty much every major Christian denomination, and they were saying: We cannot pass this section of the bill.”
“By the of the end the week they split the bill up. They passed the guns with the Greens. They passed that hate groups legislation with the Liberals.”
“The hate speech legislation that would have stopped us from having debates and arguments was just completely dropped.”
“So they have not passed anything in that space, which is really a very good win,” Mr. Southon applauded.
LOBBYING FOR CHANGE IN NSW
The next challenge for Freedom for Faith came in the New South Wales parliament.
“New South Wales started an inquiry asking: What should we do about hate speech? How do we stop hate speech?” recounted Mike Southon.
“The problem is how do we say that something that one person said about another person is hate speech?”
“How do you ban that in a way that doesn’t actually ban what Christians want to say?”
“HOW DO YOU DISAGREE WHILE PROTECTING AGAINST HATE SPEECH?”
“We want to disagree with people. We want say that people are wrong,” the Freedom for Faith boss told Vision Radio.
“We want to be able to have strong disagreements sometimes on the nature of God, on gender and sexuality issues.”
“So how do we allow us to have those debates, but also protect against hate speech?”
NSW announced its Review on December 22 and wanted all submissions in by just a week after Christmas.”
NSW REVIEW HAD SOLUTIONS TO THE TOUGH QUESTIONS
“So we engaged again with them,” recalled Mr. Southon.
“The really good news is that the Review came out with very sensible suggestions.”
“It said we should only legislate phrase-by-phrase to create a law which says that Globalise the Intifada is a hate phrase.”
“But don’t create a law which says that if people get upset, then it’s suddenly hate speech.”
“That was quite a sensible and encouraging outcome from New South Wales.”
The proposed ban on the Intifada phrase is still progressing through the state parliament.
FIXING HATE SPEECH LAWS IN QUEENSLAND
Mike Southon told Vision Radio there was also a positive outcome In Queensland where the government fixed some of issues around its hate speech legislation.
“Queensland decided that they were going to release an omnibus bill like the federal government’s bill which covered guns, proscribed groups and hate speech.”
“The state’s hate speech legislation was differently bad to the federal one.”
“It allowed the Attorney-General to just say: I declare a phrase to be hate speech, and then it was up to a two year prison sentence, if you used that phrase.”
CURBING PROPOSED EXTRAORDINARY POWERS FOR QLD ATTORNEY-GENERAL
“This gave the Attorney-General an extraordinary amount of power to decide what’s hate,” Mike Southon observed.
“Maybe they’ll decide later that the phrase Jesus is the only way is offensive and hate speech, carrying a two year prison sentence.”
“So again we campaigned and particularly emphasised the fact that the NSW government had rejected doing that exact same thing and decided that it had to specify in the law what phrases should be hate speech.”
QUEENSLAND GOVERNMENT LISTENED AND CHANGED ITS HATE SPEECH LAW
“We were encouraged that the Queensland government listened to us and changed their legislation.”
“They’ve passed a law which bans two phrases: Globalise the Intifada and From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free.”
“They’ve declared those two as hate speech, but they haven’t given the Attorney-General power to invent other phrases.”
“They would have to pass through parliament.”
FREEDOM FOR FAITH “VERY ENCOURAGED” BY THESE VICTORIES
Mike Southon told Vision Radio these three victories underline the benefits of lobbying governments to get the best outcomes and laws possible.
“We’re very encouraged, but we are very tired.”
“This is the most legislation we’ve seen in a three month period ever, really.”
THE RESULT OF FAITH LEADERS RAISING THEIR VOICE AND WORKING TOGETHER
“We are so encouraged that when the Christian church works together, when faith leaders raise their voice together and work together, we really can make a significant difference across the board.”
“We’re talking about a Labor federal government, a Labor NSW government, an LNP Queensland government.”
“It shows we really can have our voice heard when we work together. It’s really encouraging.”
THE NEXT BIG CHALLENGE
Freedom for Faith’s big challenge is securing protection for people of faith
“In federal law, you’re protected from discrimination of your gender, of your sexuality, of your race, of your disability status, but you’re not protected based on your religion. And that’s the same in New South Wales,” Mike Southon explained.
“We would love to see this change. We would like to see good religious discrimination legislation in both NSW and federally.”
“WE’RE OPTIMISTIC ON RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION LAWS”
“We’re looking forward to talking with the NSW government about that a lot this year.”
“Anthony Albanese has committed to passing a religious discrimination bill, but only if he can get agreement with the coalition.”
“It’s going to be hard work to get the coalition and Labor to agree on a bill that we can get passed, but we’re optimistic about that too,” concluded Mike Southon.
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