A review panel led by former attorney-general Philip Ruddock calls on the government to amend the Racial Discrimination Act or “preferably” develop a new Religious Discrimination Act to enshrine the protections. Loading The government is facing growing calls to release the report amid a political storm over the findings on religious schools, reviving a fundamental dispute over gay rights that split government MPs in the vote on same-sex marriage last year. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten called on Mr Morrison to make the report public before the Wentworth byelection on October 20 so voters could consider the findings, while he also added that he would not support any new laws to discriminate against children in education. The idea of adding religion to the existing regime against racial discrimination triggered concern from Institute of Public Affairs executive director John Roskam, who has campaigned against Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act for the way it imposes sanctions on speech that offends, insults, humiliates or intimidates on racial grounds.

Mr Roskam questioned whether this would be applied to speech that offends on religious grounds. "That is a potential new blasphemy law and it should be vigorously opposed," he said. Mr Morrison insisted on Wednesday that the findings on religious schools were not a new law because the ability for those schools to discriminate was already part of the Sex Discrimination Act. The call for a new Religious Discrimination Act to enshrine the protections for people of faith appears certain to widen the debate over religious freedom. “We’re not proposing to change that law to take away that existing arrangement that exists,” the Prime Minister said while campaigning on the NSW Central Coast.

“We have a report that’s been provided to the government. It’s a report to government, not from government. It’s a report that the government will be considering and developing a balanced response to, and we will do that in our orderly process, taking it through cabinet.” Mr Morrison was asked: “So you’re comfortable with a school expelling a student because they are gay or lesbian?” He replied: “It is existing law.” Recommendation seven in the Ruddock review calls for an amendment to the Sex Discrimination Act to be passed by Parliament to confirm this power but to apply four conditions, including a requirement that schools disclose their policies to new and existing students and their families. The school would also have to consider the “best interests of the child” as the primary consideration in its conduct.

Mr Ruddock argued the conditions would narrow the ways in which religious schools could discriminate. Loading "The approach that we have taken is to, in fact, restrict them rather than to make them easier," he told 2GB radio. Marriage equality advocate Rodney Croome attacked the proposal for cementing the right of religious schools to discriminate against gay students when that right should be scrapped completely. “Schools are places of learning – they should not be breeding grounds for prejudice,” Mr Croome told Fairfax Media.

“If you give faith-based schools hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, they should be subject to the same discrimination laws as everyone else.” Mr Croome noted that faith-based aged-care facilities cannot discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation and the rule should be the same for schools. He also argued that Tasmanian law does not allow discrimination against gay students and nobody was considering passing such a law. Special Minister of State Alex Hawke defended the right of religious schools to apply their own faith, saying parents expected this when they enrolled their children. Social Services Minister Paul Fletcher would not say whether he backed the right to discriminate, emphasising the existing law and saying the findings were yet to be considered by federal cabinet.

The call for a new Religious Discrimination Act to enshrine the protections for people of faith appears certain to widen the debate over religious freedom. Protection of religious belief is already granted in most states, but not NSW and South Australia. The Ruddock panel urges those states to amend their laws. Crucially, the panel rejected calls for a Religious Freedom Act, which would have gone further and granted people the right to manifest their religious beliefs in various settings. The panel concludes this would be “out of step with the treatment of other rights” and could necessitate a charter of rights. A Religious Discrimination Act might garner support from all sides of the argument over gay rights and religious freedom.

Liberal MP Tim Wilson was cautiously supportive, telling Fairfax Media a Religious Freedom Act "would complete the anti-discrimination law framework that Australia [already] has". Loading Human Rights Law Centre director of legal advocacy Anna Brown, a key player in the 'Yes' campaign for same-sex marriage, also endorsed the proposal. “With the exception of workplace protections, there is a gap in federal law when it comes to legal protection from discrimination on the basis of religious belief,” she said. “We would support the addition of religious belief [and non-religious belief such as atheism] to those attributes already protected under federal discrimination law.”

Others view the proposal for a Religious Discrimination Act as a potential Trojan horse for allowing people to discriminate in the name of religion. Monash University associate professor of law Luke Beck said the law could allow employees to refuse to serve gay couples at wedding ceremonies on the basis of their religious objection. “You would have individual employees running around as laws unto themselves,” he said. Patrick Parkinson, dean of law at the University of Queensland and a board member of Christian legal think tank Freedom for Faith, said a Religious Discrimination Act was worthwhile but minor. “There should be a strong national statement which condemns discrimination against people on the basis of their faith – but it is largely there under state and territory law,” he said.