The Albanese government has been accused of betraying the LGBTI+ community after abandoning its religious discrimination reforms.
Ahead of the 2022 election, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese committed to legislating a Religious Discrimination Act and scrapping the ability for religious schools to expel gay and transgender students.
Labor never provided a timeline for legislating the reforms. However, they now seem dead in the water due to the PM’s insistence on there being bipartisan support from the Coalition. This is despite the PM previously telling Labor colleagues that the reforms could be passed with the assistance of the Greens.
In a press conference on Friday, Albanese told reporters that the Coalition had not responded to the bill, and therefore he was unable to push it forward.
“Agreement hasn’t been able to be reached because there’s been no suggestions from the Coalition of amendments of the legislation. So I don’t intend to engage in a partisan debate when it comes to religious discrimination, and I think that that is unfortunate,” he said.
For his part, the prime minister said having bipartisan support was important because he was looking for greater social cohesion in Australia.
“The last thing that Australia needs is any divisive debate relating to religion and people’s faith. I respect people’s faith and I think that they should be able to engage free of discrimination,” he said.
The Greens and various independent crossbenchers including David Pocock and Allegra Spender have all pledged their support for new religious discrimination laws, meaning Labor has the numbers in both houses to pass the bill without the support of the Coalition.
By not changing the laws, it means religious schools are still able to discriminate against students and staff based on a variety of issues, including gender and sexuality.
Greens spokesperson Stephen Bates said the decision to abandon the reforms was an act of cowardice by the prime minister.
“Yet another broken election promise from a Prime Minister too cowardly to do his job,” he said. “Labor won the last election with a promise to protect LGBIQA+ workers and people of faith from discrimination and he’s failed at both.”
Equality Australia called the shelving of the reforms a broken promise by the PM and “a betrayal of vulnerable students and teachers”.
“Our community’s needs have again been overlooked and blatant injustices ignored,” Equality Australia chief executive officer Anna Brown said.
“The government is playing a dangerous game by not acting now and pursuing the available pathway through parliament when the stakes are so high for thousands of vulnerable Australians.”
In a rare show of unity, Christian Schools Australia also expressed upset at the reforms being shelved.
“In a case of ‘take-out-the-trash Friday’, Prime Minister Albanese today indicated that religious discrimination legislation is no longer on his Government’s agenda,” the group said on Friday.
Christian Schools Australia director of public policy Mark Spencer said faith leaders had provided the government with a “historic way forward which will unite people of faith”.
“There is no division on how to move forward with religious freedoms and I call on the Prime Minister to show leadership and instruct the Attorney-General to adopt those sensible amendments.”
Gay Sydney News reporter