The Rationalist Society of Australia has called for strong protections for non-religious people under any proposed reforms to anti-discrimination laws in New South Wales.

Last month, in a meeting with the New South Wales Law Reform Commission, the RSA said any recommendation to protect religious people from discrimination should also equally protect non-religious people from discrimination on the grounds of religion and belief. 

The Law Reform Commission invited the RSA to attend a consultation meeting to discuss discrimination against non-religious people as part of its review of the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 (NSW).

RSA Executive Director Si Gladman told the Law Reform Commission’s commissioner, Tom Bathurst, that the RSA would support the addition of a new protected attribute for religion and belief in the Anti-Discrimination Act as long as it was a shield against discrimination and not a sword for discrimination.

Mr Gladman said recent history at the federal level had shown the public strongly rejected proposals where governments, backed by religious lobbyists, sought positive religious rights at the expense of the rights of others.

If New South Wales were to introduce religion as a new protected attribute as part of revisions to the Anti-Discrimination Act, then the wording of the legislation needed to provide the same protection to non-religious people, he said.

The state’s anti-discrimination laws include prohibitions on vilification on the basis of religious belief, affiliation or activity, but, as the 2018 Religious Freedom Review noted, it is not unlawful in New South Wales to discriminate on the basis of a person’s religious belief or activity, including on the basis that a person does not hold any religious belief.

At the meeting, Mr Gladman presented to the Law Reform Commission numerous examples of non-religious people facing discrimination on the grounds of religion and belief in New South Wales.

These examples included some that were detailed in the submission to the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Universal Period Review into Australia’s human rights, such as: the imposition of acts of religious worship in the state parliament and local governments; the disruptions to normal learning time for non-religious children due to the Special Religious Education program in public schools; the employment practices that limit chaplaincy/student support roles to religious people in public schools; and government-appointed faith advisory bodies that provide opportunities to faith leaders to influence government policy while excluding non-religious voices.

Mr Gladman reminded the Law Reform Commission that Australia is party to various international human rights commitments and declarations, including the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, and the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, that treat religion and belief equally.

The consultation was also an opportunity to provide insights on the great diversity of the rapidly growing non-religious population, which includes people who identify as rationalist, humanist, atheist, non-religious, secular, and ex-religious. 

While the RSA acknowledged religious schools had a right to appoint people to certain positions with a genuine occupational requirement for adherence to particular religious beliefs, it told the Law Reform Commission that it supported removal of exceptions that provide a blanket ability to discriminate on numerous grounds.

Si Gladman is Executive Director of the Rationalist Society of Australia. He also hosts ‘The Secular Agenda’ podcast.

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Photo: Eric Ward on Unsplash.