Evangelical church pastor Margaret Court says all Australians need to stand up to Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan.
“I want to implore all Australians to stand in this time for freedom of speech.” Reverend Court said in a video posted to the Victory Life Centre’s YouTube page.
The former tennis champion turned preacher said the decision of the WA government to stop Martyn Iles from the Australian Christian Lobby hiring state owned venues for his speaking tour was “a blatant disregard of freedom of speech”.
“Martyn Iles, Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby, was unable to hire the Albany Entertainment Centre of the Perth Concert Hall because his views do not line up with the present WA government.”
“I want to call on all Australians to action, call and write to Premier McGowan, or your local MPs and say ‘this is not right.'” Reverend Margaret Court said. “We need to be a voice at this time, come on Australia, stand up and be a voice of truth.”
LGBTIQ+ rights advocates have praised the Western Australian government for taking decisive action against the Australian Christian Lobby’s presentation.
Martyn Iles appeared on the Credlin program on Sky News on Thursday night and accused the Western Australian premier of making one rule for himself and another for everybody else. Iles said prior to the state election the Labor party had used venues managed by the Perth Theatre Trust, but after the election had barred other groups from hiring the facilities.
“These are publicly owned, tax payer funded venues, and yet the politics of the Labor party is welcome, they’ve had heaps of Labor fundraisers, they’ve had heaps of different politically motivated events for the Labor party, but the policy given to us literally was ‘because your views are not our views – you’re cancelled.'”
Iles said the response was what you would expect in an authoritarian regime and he suspected the government’s policy was probably illegal under the state’s Equal Opportunity laws and in contravention of the Australian constitution.
The lobbyist said that he expected the opposition to the Australian Christian Lobby stemmed from their stances on euthanasia, their campaigning against abortion and their opposition to same-sex marriage.
“We hold a number of traditional Christian views on things.” Iles said, highlighting that his organisation had hundreds of thousands of supporters across the country. “If they’re going to cancel that, then are they saying that ‘okay, Christians de facto are in that category of disagreeing with the government – so okay they’re cancelled.'”
“I wonder if they are a bit high on their own popularity at the moment, they don’t feel they need anyone, and they’ve forgotten key constituencies.”
Iles said the Australian Christian Lobby is looking at legal options over the issue.
OIP Staff
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