THE Catholic Church and the Queensland Government were locked in talks last week in an effort to resolve an impasse over planned changes to the state’s anti-discrimination laws.
The row follows the tabling of amendments to the Anti-Discrimination Act by State Attorney-General Rod Welford on November 6.
A series of meetings since then between Catholic Church and State Government officials have failed to reach a resolution or compromise on the issue and are continuing.
The Church argues that the amendments would restrict religious freedom. The proposed amendments would take away an exemption granted by the 1991 Anti-Discrimination Act to allow the Church or any other religious institution to reject a teacher or any other Church employee on the grounds of sexuality or religious belief.
The first inkling the Catholic Church received of a move to amend the anti-discrimination laws came when Brisbane Archbishop John Bathersby’s office received a phone call on the morning the amendments were to be tabled in Parliament.
The archbishop and other heads of Churches were asked to attend a meeting at Parliament House that morning.
Queensland Catholic Education Commission (QCEC) deputy director Garry Everett attended on the archbishop’s behalf, where the representatives were given a briefing on the planned changes, less than two hours before they went before Parliament.
But Mr Welford told The Catholic Leader last Tuesday that the time allowed for community consultation was not unusually short and that the amendments had been given the green light by Cabinet only two days before they went to Parliament.
‘Discussions couldn’t take place until we knew where we were heading,’ he said.
Mr Welford said it was common for bills to be tabled for two or three weeks, as was the case with this bill.
The State Government subsequently sent a question and answer sheet to religious schools outlining how it saw the changes would affect them.
The Queensland Catholic Education Commission responded with its own question and answer memo to Catholic schools on the issue.
Brisbane Catholic Education executive director David Hutton entered the debate last week, arguing that atheists will have more rights under the proposed amendments than believers.
He said there was a real danger of ‘reverse discrimination’.
QCEC executive director Joe McCorley said that at present religious employers were allowed by legislation to carry out their responsibilities of employment according to the values and beliefs of their religion.
‘Under Section 113 of the bill, exemptions may be possible to religious institutions but our legal advice indicates such an exemption is unlikely to be granted as it would be contrary to the intent of the act,’ he said.
