Exclusive: Poll shows nearly 80% of respondents are against religious schools’ exemptions on LGBTI anti-discrimination law

Most Australians oppose religious schools' right to fire staff based on sexuality

Four out of five Australians oppose the right of religious schools to hire and fire staff or expel students because of their sexuality, a new poll has found.

The YouGov Galaxy poll, conducted for the LGBTI rights lobby group Just Equal, found that 82% opposed the existing discrimination law exemptions that allowed expulsion of gay and lesbian students and 79% opposed the schools’ ability to fire teachers if they married a person of the same sex.

The poll lends weight to submissions from LGBTI rights groups to the Ruddock religious freedom review, which call for the exemptions to be abolished and adds pressure on Labor to oppose them.

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Religious groups including the Catholic church, Anglican diocese of Sydney and Christian Schools Australia have fought to retain these powers and want them further entrenched by framing them as a positive right to religious freedom rather than as grudging exceptions to discrimination law.

The YouGov poll found 78% of respondents opposed religious schools’ ability to fire transgender staff or expel transgender students.

The same proportion said religious schools should not be entitled to taxpayer funds if they discriminated against staff or students.

Two in three Australians – 69% of those polled – said discrimination laws should not be changed to allow religious people to refuse service to same-sex marriage.

Marriage equality campaign seeks abolition of religious rights to discriminate Read more

In November, the Guardian Essential poll found narrower opposition to a right for businesses to refuse services to gay weddings, with 48% opposed and 43% in favour.

The YouGov poll, conducted from 26 to 29 April, had a sample size of 1,015 and was weighted by age, gender and region to reflect a representative sample of the Australian people.

Women were more likely than men to support the right to non-discrimination – more than 80% opposed religious exemptions to discriminate.

Marriage equality was legalised in Australia in December after a historic postal survey found 61.6% of respondents in favour of same-sex marriage.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rodney Croome: ‘We will begin lobbying politicians to tighten up exemptions allowing discrimination against LGBTI people.’ Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

The Just Equal spokesman Rodney Croome said: “Australians emphatically reject discrimination against LGBTI people in the name of religion, even more emphatically than they supported marriage equality.

“The message to the government and the Labor party is that Australians want less discrimination against LGBTI people in the name of religion, not more.

“Armed with these figures, we will begin lobbying politicians to tighten up exemptions allowing discrimination against LGBTI people, not extend them.”

In January, the deputy Labor leader, Tanya Plibersek, said Labor had no plans to remove existing religious exemptions that allowed schools to hire and fire staff based on their sexuality.

Labor’s draft platform, ahead of its national conference in July, says it is “committed to workplace laws which protect workers against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex status”.

Catholic church says its hiring practices do not discriminate against gay people Read more

It also states it “supports the appropriate protection of the religious freedom of all people”.

Croome said Just Equal would focus on ensuring Labor “opposes any retrograde recommendations from the Ruddock inquiry”.

“Labor should oppose all discrimination against LGBTI people en bloc, and not let its religious caucus override basic principles of equality and fairness,” he said.

The Ruddock religious freedom review is due to report on 18 May.

During the marriage law postal survey campaign, the Catholic church threatened to sack gay teachers, nurses and other staff if they engaged in civil same-sex weddings in breach of church doctrine.

Christian Schools Australia defends right to hire and fire teachers over beliefs Read more

It submitted to the Ruddock review that it did not discriminate against gay staff because they were hired “on the same basis as anyone else”.

“That is, staff in a school could reasonably be expected to support the teachings of the particular religion, to not undermine that teaching and to act as role models to their students,” it said.

The Catholic church said nobody was compelled to work in Catholic schools and, because their religious ethos was “widely understood”, the powers of religious schools to use discrimination law exemptions when making employment decisions had been used “very rarely”.