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Although supportive of protections against religious discrimination, lawyers for human rights said it does not tolerate every behaviour that is religiously motivated, particularly if the external belief impacts negatively on other people with differing views.
Australian Lawyers for Human Rights (ALHR) supports a Religious Discrimination Act which would provide protections against religious discrimination in areas of public life, but stopped short of voicing support of free and unregulated expressions of religion.
“Religious freedom does not mean freedom to visit harm upon others in the name of one’s own religion,” it said.
ALHR is submitting the Religious Discrimination Bill (RDB) has failed to be consistent with international human rights law and creates “anti-human rights” situations whereby discrimination will be permitted on the basis of religious faith.
The human rights lawyers argued RBD will “privilege religiously based discrimination over the rights of others to be free from discrimination” and will build on a fundamental imbalance into the existing “anti-discrimination legal system by privileging rights of one group within society at the expense of everyone else”.
“Nor is it clear how the proposed legislation would work in relation to conflicts between, or within, different religions, unlike the situation under a balanced human rights regime. Indeed, it may encourage such conflicts by suggesting the existence of absolute rights which formerly would have been seen as needing to be balanced,” ALHR said.
ALHR said any legislation which impinges on human rights should be narrowly framed, proportionate to the relevant harm, and provide an appropriate contextual response to minimise the “overall impact upon all human rights, democracy and rule of law”.
The primary concern is that Australian legislation and judicial decisions should adhere to international human rights standards. ALHR is arguing human rights laws could not be “selectively applied” and are not divisible or hierarchal.
“All human rights are of equal importance and human rights law can only achieve their objectives if they are applied completely to all human rights,” ALHR said. “That is not what would occur under the RDB legislative package, if passed,” it said.
Naomi Neilson is a senior journalist with a focus on court reporting for Lawyers Weekly.
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