Government to accept recommendations in Ruddock review with law that will be similar to those prohibiting racial and sexual discrimination

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The Morrison government has promised to prohibit discrimination against religious people but has delayed a decision on one contentious issue, with a further review planned on discrimination against LGBT students and school staff.

In a surprise twin announcement, Scott Morrison and attorney general Christian Porter revealed the Coalition will create a commonwealth integrity commission and released its response to the Ruddock review into religious freedom, accepting all 20 of its recommendations at least in-principle but sending five to a further review.

In 2019 the Coalition will release a religious discrimination bill to protect people from being discriminated against on the ground of religion.

The Morrison government will also move a separate omnibus bill to amend other discrimination laws to provide “equal status” to freedom of religion alongside the right to non-discrimination.

Morrison said he was “looking to legislate before the election” and called on Labor to support the religious discrimination bill, which he framed as a safeguard for multiculturalism in Australia given the high rates of religious belief in some migrant communities.

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Porter said the bill would “not necessarily be very contentious” because it “follows a very standard architecture” for other federal discrimination laws.

The law will define religious belief as a protected attribute in the same way federal law prohibits racial and sexual discrimination but will not include an equivalent of section 18C that prohibits speech that offends, insults or humiliates a person based on their race.

A religious freedom commissioner will be appointed to the Australian Human Rights Commission to handle religious discrimination complaints.

Porter said it was “wise and very useful” to appoint a new commissioner despite the Ruddock review recommending it was not necessary.

Porter said the government will ask the Australian Law Reform Commission to review five Ruddock review recommendations dealing with how to balance the rights of non-discrimination of LGBT students and staff with religious schools’ right to “maintain conduct and teaching in accordance with their faith”.

Porter noted that both the government and the Ruddock review had proposed ways to balance those rights, but parliament had been unable to settle the protection of LGBT students.

He expressed hope the ALRC would “produce specific drafting that may be capable of bipartisan support”.

Morrison said the omnibus bill would deal with “administrative tidy-ups” on “uncontentious issues” including amending the Charities Act to ensure that groups who say marriage is between a man and a woman are not stripped of their charitable status. That bill will also clarify that religious schools need not provide their facilities to same-sex couples hoping to marry there.

Guardian Australia understands Coalition conservatives and the backbench attorney-general’s committee were not consulted on the response but accept the ALRC review may be necessary because the reforms are in the “too-hard basket” without a further independent process to act as a circuit-breaker.

However there are concerns that sitting on the report – handed to the government in May – has pushed the contentious issue closer to the election.

Bill Shorten told reporters in Melbourne that Labor would have to see the laws before committing to support them, but the opposition “supports religious freedom”.

“I thought the first cab off the rank … was going to be removing discrimination against children,” he said. “Unfortunately, Mr Morrison is now proposing a review that takes another year.”

Shorten criticised Morrison for delaying the release of the Ruddock review, but said Labor and the Coalition can “sit down and work on this together”. “I think we can come up with the right answers.”

LGBT rights groups agree in theory that discrimination on the basis of religion should be outlawed but have warned that the law must be a “shield not a sword” against LGBTI people.

Phillip Ruddock, the head of the review panel, told Guardian Australia the panel had “looked for examples of questionable conduct” by religious institutions but found examples of them discriminating against LGBT students and staff “few and far apart and ill-defined”.

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Ruddock said the panel had recommended that any institution that wants to rely on religious exemptions to discrimination law should publish a policy beforehand, confirming leaks in October that revealed the panel had recommended entrenching the right to discriminate, subject to certain safeguards.

Widespread backlash after the leak forced Morrison to promise to protect LGBT students from discrimination. But an impasse with Labor over measures to allow school rules to continue discrimination prevented any legislation passing in the final sittings of parliament.