Abstract
Australia is the only western democracy without a comprehensive human rights instrument and has only limited protection for religious freedom in its constitution. It was Australia’s growing religious diversity—the result of robust political support for multiculturalism and pro-immigration policies in the post-war period—that led to the first public inquiry into religious freedom by an Australian statutory body in 1984. Responding to evidence of discrimination against Indigenous Australians and minority religious groups, the report detailed the need for stronger legal protections. By 2019, Australia’s religious freedom ‘problem’ was focused almost solely on the extent to which religious organizations should be allowed to discriminate against LGBTIQ people. Using the What’s the Problem Represented To Be? approach to policy analysis, this paper explores the changing representation of the ‘problem’ of religious freedom by examining all public, parliamentary and statutory body reports of inquiries into religious freedom from 1984 to 2019. In their framing of the problem of religious freedom, these reports have contributed to a discourse of religious freedom which marginalizes the needs of both those who suffer discrimination because of their religion and those who suffer discrimination as a result of the religious beliefs of others.
Highlights
This paper explores the construction of the problem of religious freedom in Australia from a policy perspective
Discrimination and Religious Conviction (DRC) devoted considerable attention to religion and education, including parents’ and children’s rights, which were described as the thorniest problems . . . for it is in education that we find the most contention about such apparent paradoxes in determining which rights take priority over others: parents’ rights to have their children educated in the beliefs of their choice or no belief at all, religious groups’ rights to perpetuate traditions and beliefs by passing their culture on to the generation, and the right children have to receive an education that adequately prepares them for the world
Neither did the reports explore the meaning of of ‘freedom’ or ‘religious freedom’ and why it is important, other than to articulate the assumptionsor that: religious beliefs, when they are held, are a fundamental aspect of an individual’s identity; religious diversity is good for society; religious freedom is important and needs to be protected; and that an individual’s decision to not hold a religious belief must be respected to the degree that it is protected in law (WPR2, WPR4)
Summary
This paper explores the construction of the problem of religious freedom in Australia from a policy perspective. It uses the What is the Problem Represented To Be? While seeking to address ‘the problem’ of religious freedom—consistently articulated as a (perceived) lack of protection under Australian law—the reports have constructed alternative problematisations of religious freedom that have shaped and influenced the ongoing public policy conversations and debates about religion, law and society.
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