Conservative columnist Caleb Bond has added his voice to those saying the federal government’s Religious Discrimination Bill is a complete waste of time.
“The Religious Discrimination Bill doesn’t need to exist,” Bond said during appearance on Sky News last week.
The Herald Sun columnist said the fact that the Prime Minister was now considering creating other amendment bills to protect other kinds of freedoms showed that the legislation put before parliament in it’s final sitting day is not going to work.
“The problem with enshrining one person’s rights or freedoms in law is that they will always, inevitably, impinge upon someone else’s rights or freedoms. So you have to start deciding whose rights or freedoms are more important than another persons.” Bond told Jenna Clarke on The Front Page.
Bond said the Prime Ministers promise to moderate Liberals that he’d tackle changing the Sex Discrimination Act to ensure protections for LGBTIQA+ students showed the process was out of control.
“If you didn’t have the Religious Discrimination Bill in the first place this wouldn’t be an issue. I’ve said this many times, the Israel Folau clause is one where you could end up with someone employed at a Christian organisation, goes off spouting about how bad Christianity is, and that organisation would have no grounds to sack them – because they are express a genuinely held personal belief. Which is one of the things enshrined in this bill.
Bond said the whole thing was “silly”.
“This is not a road that the government had go down, but lets not forget that this was a dodgy deal that Malcolm Turnbull did to get the same-sex marriage plebiscite though, it never needed to be done in the first place, this bill is a dud.”
Clarke said she agreed with Bond’s assessment.
They’re not the first conservative commentators to call out the situation as a wrong move by the Morrison government. Peta Credlin has also said the government should have abandoned the legislation.
“Often the best things governments can do is avoid making a bad situation worse by passing new laws that can end up having unintended unforeseen consequences, on balance a commitment to legislate for religious freedom, as opposed to merely believing in it, is one that best never have been made.” Credlin told her viewers last month.
“As things stand by leaving so late in the term to introduce, this legislation we can be confident won’t pass the parliament. This whole debate will turn out to be perhaps more about striking an election pose than making a difference before polling day.” Credlin said.
Graeme Watson
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