The South Australian government will “consider” the Rationalist Society of Australia’s call for it to abolish blasphemy and sacrilege laws.
In a letter last week, the state’s Attorney-General, Kyam Maher, told RSA Executive Director Si Gladman that he appreciated hearing the RSA’s views on the issue. However, Mr Maher gave no guarantee that his government would remove blasphemy and sacrilege from the state’s laws – even though charges continue to be laid for sacrilege.
Following the Tasmanian government’s decision to abolish blasphemy laws last year, the RSA wrote to Mr Maher late last month, urging him to take similar steps to modernise South Australian law in line with community expectations.
Mr Maher acknowledged that South Australia retained common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel, and the offence of sacrilege in the state’s Criminal Law Consolidation Act 1935.
“I appreciate receiving the views of the RSA on these offences, and I will take them into consideration,” he said.
“As you have noted, the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel may still be operational in South Australia, however this is by no means certain. I note that the Australian Government’s commissioned 2018 Religious Freedom Review: Report of the Expert Panel stated: ‘[t]o the extent that there have been no prosecutions since 1871, claims that the offence has lapsed under the common law doctrine of desuetude are not unreasonable’,” he said.
However, charges of sacrilege continue to be applied to South Australians for breaking and entering a “place of divine worship” and committing an offence, or breaking out of a place of divine worship after committing an offence. The penalty can carry a sentence of life imprisonment – the same as for murder.
Mr Gladman told Mr Maher that sacrilege and blasphemy laws had no place in modern-day South Australia.
The 2018 Ruddock report on religious freedom recommended that any jurisdiction that still had statutory or common law offences of blasphemy should abolish them.
The RSA originally called on the South Australian, Tasmanian, New South Wales, Victorian, and Australian Capital Territory governments to abolish blasphemy from their law books in January 2023.
In December last year, Tasmania’s Attorney-General Guy Barnett thanked the RSA for having brought the issue to the Liberal state government’s attention. In late October, the Tasmanian Parliament passed the Justice and Related Legislation (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill 2024, which included clauses to remove blasphemy provisions from two existing acts of parliament.
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Si Gladman is Executive Director at the Rationalist Society of Australia. He also hosts ‘The Secular Agenda’ podcast.