250 people attending a rally in Hobart today campaigning against the federal government’s proposed religious discrimination laws.
Organisers say those attending heard a diverse range of advocates extol the value of Tasmania’s strong anti-discrimination laws and condemn federal intervention to water these laws down.
Speakers included disability advocate, Fiona Strahan, Women’s Health Tasmania director, Jo Flanagan, LGBTIQ equality advocate, Sam Watson, former Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Commissioner, Robin Banks, young Indigenous woman, Nunami Sculthorpe-Green, and MC and LGBTIQ health worker, Tracey Wing.
Equality Tasmania spokesperson, Rodney Croome, who also spoke at today’s rally, said the event had shown that the current laws worked to benefit a diverse range of people.
“Today’s rally showed the diversity of Tasmanians who have benefitted from our world-leading Anti-Discrimination Act and who will adversely affected if it is watered down by federal intervention.”
“Today’s rally called for the State Liberal Government and Federal Labor to stand up to the Federal Government meddling with our strong state discrimination protections.”
“It also called for other states, and the Commonwealth, to adopt Tasmania’s anti-discrimination laws, given how effective these laws have been in fostering a fairer and more inclusive community.”
The Federal Government’s proposed Religious Discrimination Bill explicitly overrides section 17 of the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Act, which protects a broad range of Tasmanians from humiliating, intimidating, and insulting language, by allowing such language if it is in the name of religion.
A similar attempt by the State Government to allow religious hate speech in 2017 was voted down by the Tasmanian Upper House.
“I believe the overwhelming majority of Tasmanian people of faith would say they do not want the legal right to humiliate and intimidate their fellow Tasmanians”, Croome said.
Fiona Strahan and Nunami Sculthorpe-Green gave the rally examples of hatred and discrimination in the name of religion against people with disability and Indigenous people.
Jo Flanagan drew attention to the the provision in the Religious Discrimination Bill allowing health services to be denied on the basis of the provider’s religious belief and how this will disadvantage women and LGBTIQ people in rural Tasmania.
Robin Banks talked about how the Religious Discrimination Bill is the first discrimination law in Australian history that will take rights away rather than strengthen them.
A delegation of Tasmanian community advocates will travel to Canberra in October to lobby federal members to oppose the Religious Discrimination Bill.
Source: Media Release
