Dr Brad Pettitt, leader of The Greens in Western Australia, has welcomed the WA Government’s announcement that it will introduce sweeping changes to the state’s Equal Opportunity laws, but says he has concerns about carve-outs for religious-based institutions.
While Labor will have the numbers to pass the legislation in the Legislative Assembly, it will likely need the support of The Greens to pass the legislation through the upper house. Dr Pettitt said his party is ready to work with the government to make the legislation the best it can be.
On Tuesday afternoon, Premier Roger Cook and Attorney-General Tony Buti announced that the long-anticipated legislation would be introduced to Parliament today. The reforms would update the state’s 40-year-old laws, add more protected attributes and introduce new vilification protections.
Answering questions from the media, Dr Buti said the new legislation would retain some exemptions for religious-based organisations, including provisions relating to student enrolments and the hiring of teachers.
“In regard to religious schools, there will be an exemption allowing them to discriminate at the point of hiring a staff member, or enrolment of a student, purely on the basis of religion, not on the basis of any other attribute.
“Once someone is hired or enrolled, the institution would only be able to have the exemption where religion was an inherent requirement of that occupation,” Dr Buti said.
“Not sexuality. I want to make that quite clear. The exemption is purely on religion, not sexual orientation or sexuality.”
Dr Pettitt said he welcomed the introduction of the legislation but remained concerned about the religious-based exemptions.
“We’ve been talking directly to teachers who have been impacted by this, and we really do want to see those carve-outs eliminated, ideally, or at least minimised. It’s something we’ll be working on with the government because people should be able to be in a workplace and not be discriminated against.”
Dr Pettitt said the legislation needed to be structured in a way that recognised people’s lives change over time, particularly for young people.
“This is not just about teachers. This is also about students, where young people change over time as they grow up, and we need to make sure we’ve got really robust legislation that protects young people and recognises that gender and related aspects of identity can be fluid and change over time.
“We need to protect them. We need to make sure we’ve got legislation that protects young people and, in fact, all West Australians against discrimination.”
Dr Pettitt said there was likely to be a range of views on the legislation when it reached the Legislative Council and that The Greens were eager to work with the government to pass the bill.
“We’re really keen to sit down with government and make sure we can take this legislation forward. We’re keen to see this passed.”
