The religious advisory committee to the Australian defence force (ADF) wrote to the chief of the military in 2014 saying it was “deeply concerned” that defence force members were being allowed to march in uniform in Sydney’s annual gay and lesbian Mardi Gras, internal defence documents reveal.

The committee, an advisory group then made up of senior members of the Jewish and Christian faiths, asked the defence force chief to clarify the ADF’s policy on uniformed members participating “in events which are political in nature and are also harmful or insulting to many religious members of the defence force”.

Rabbi Ralph Genende, the chair of the religious advisory group, wrote that its members “fully accept the right of individual ADF members to participate in the Mardi Gras”.

“[But] it is deeply concerned about the decision to allow ADF members to march in uniform in an event which patently allows participants to mock and vilify religious faith, and which also has a political agenda,” he wrote.

Genende said the committee had not been consulted when the army permitted members to march in the Mardi Gras in uniform for the first time in 2013.

The documents were obtained under a freedom of information request lodged by the conservative activist Bernard Gaynor, a former soldier and Senate candidate for the far-right Australian Liberty Alliance.

The Liberal member for Canning and former SAS soldier, Andrew Hastie, was sacked from the army reserves on Thursday after refusing to take down billboards showing him in uniform.

On Friday Labor’s candidate for the seat of Brisbane, Pat O’Neill, said he would remove billboards in his electorate showing him in army uniform to comply with a request from the ADF.

O’Neill said it was important that people knew his history as an army officer, but he had left an 18-year career in the forces to talk about health and education, not billboards.

“That’s why we are taking the billboards down.”

But Labor’s candidate in Eden-Monaro, Mike Kelly, said he had resigned from the ADF reserve after requests to remove campaign images of him in uniform.

ADF regulations prohibit members from participating in any political activity in uniform, unless they are pre-approved to do so, to ensure the organisation remains apolitical.

The executive director of the Australia Defence Association, Neil James, agreed with the decision to punish Hastie but said the same standard should be applied to the Mardi Gras.

“This breaches the same convention, which goes back hundreds of years,” James told the Australian.



“The Mardi Gras is a highly ­political event – all of the floats are bagging the conservative side of politics ... we’d be saying the same thing if ADF officers were in uniform at an anti-abortion rally or an ­Australian Patriots Alliance march,” he said.

“You just can’t allow people to improperly use their ADF status for a political event.”

In June last year, the government appointed the first Muslim cleric to the advisory group, Imam Sheikh Mohamadu Nawas Mohamadu Saleem. Its other members are the Reverends Gary Lock, Allan Harman and Murray Earl, Monsignor Peter O’Keefe and Bishop Ian Lambert.

The Department of Defence has been contacted for comment.