Peter Dutton has called for the entrenchment of “religious freedoms”, including the right of religious schools to sack gay teachers, and for parents to withdraw their children from the anti-LGBTI bullying program Safe Schools.

The home affairs minister made the comments on Friday as the Ruddock religious freedom review delivered its final report to the government.

On Friday the Courier Mail reported that the review would recommend a federal law to prevent discrimination against a person on the grounds of religion – which laws in some states already do.

The LGBTI advocate and Just Equal spokesman Rodney Croome welcomed that recommendation but warned against any “move to allow discrimination in the name of religion”. He called on the government to release the report.

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In a statement, Malcolm Turnbull thanked the former attorney general Philip Ruddock and the other panel members for their work “examining whether Australian law adequately protects the human right to freedom of religion”.

Turnbull said he would consult members of the government before releasing the report’s findings, passing the job of the government’s response to the attorney general, Christian Porter.

At a doorstop in Gatton, Queensland, Turnbull said the review would be “released shortly” and promised that the government was “absolutely committed to ensuring that freedom of religion is protected in Australia”.

Dutton told Sky News the government needed to consider protections for people who “send their children to a particular school, to an independent school, to a Catholic school ... whatever it might be, a Jewish school an Islamic school, whatever, that there is the ability for that curriculum to be taught in accord with that religious belief”.

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Debate was sparked this week by the former prime minister John Howard suggesting the federal government should defund any schools that did not allow parents to remove their children from classes that clashed with their values. Turnbull brushed off the concern by arguing it was a right parents already possessed.

Dutton said that “it should be within the law for teachers to be employed at that school that share that religious belief, not a contrary view, and I think there needs to be similar protections put in place”.

“That’s at the heart of the concerns that many people share,” he said.

“I think there are many within the Labor party who would share a similar view, and I would expect Bill Shorten to offer bipartisan support to sensible reform in this way, but let’s wait and see what the review has to offer and what the response might be.”

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Discrimination laws contain exemptions that allow religious institutions, including schools, to hire and fire staff based on their sexuality. During the Ruddock review, religious groups – including the Catholic church, the Anglican diocese of Sydney and Christian Schools Australia – have fought to retain these powers, while submissions from LGBTI rights groups have called for them to be repealed.

Under Shorten, federal Labor has taken a strong stand against watering down discrimination laws in a way that would allow discrimination against LGBTI people, including voting against all the conservatives’ substantive amendments to the marriage law. But it has not committed to removing existing religious exemptions.

Asked whether an Islamic group should be able to advocate corporal punishment of a married women under sharia law, Dutton said he “wouldn’t support any religion preaching something outside Australian law”.

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He said parents had the right “to teach and guide their children as they see fit ... but protections don’t extend to providing protection for practices which are outside of the law”.

“Similarly for people that have a parental responsibility that don’t want their kids to be taught a Safe Schools program in some schools within Victoria, for example.”

The government had refused to extend federal funding for Safe Schools beyond mid-2017. In the 2018 budget, it extended $247m of funding to the school chaplaincy program over four years, committing to give it “an enhanced focus on addressing bullying in schools”.

On Thursday, the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia, the director of LGBT rights group COC Nederland, Koen van Dijk, urged Australia to reinstitute LGBT-specific anti-bullying programs because bullying on the grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity is the most common form in the Netherlands and around the world.