‘A pox on both their houses’: Senator warns of voter backlash if religious freedoms not protected
A senior Liberal has warned both the Coalition and Labor face a voter backlash at the next election if the Australian Parliament does not legislate sweeping protections for religious believers.
NSW Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells has launched a petition to pressure the Morrison government to pass a religious freedom act.
She said religious Australians have been mobilised by the legalisation of same-sex marriage in 2017 and the recent sacking of rugby player Israel Folau, after he expressed his religious views online.
“Ordinary people of faith are now, understandably, asking the question: if I quote my Bible, will it get me into trouble?”, Senator Fierravanti-Wells said.
After the Coalition’s tax cuts passed Parliament last week, religious discrimination looms as one of the next major agenda items for the federal government. Attorney-General Christian Porter began briefing government MPs on details of a new religious discrimination bill on Friday.
But Senator Fierravanti-Wells warned a minimalist bill that “merely substitutes religious discrimination for sex discrimination or racial discrimination” will not make voters’ concerns go away. The NSW Liberal said Prime Minister Scott Morrison had “created a greater expectation that he will do something substantial” on religious freedom, pointing to his public appearance worshipping at a church service during the election campaign.
Noting swings against Labor in seats with high levels of religious voters in western Sydney, Senator Fierravanti-Wells said concerns about religious freedom “moved votes” at the May election. The former minister for international development – who quit the frontbench in protest against Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership last year – said both sides of politics ignored peoples’ concerns about religious rights at their peril.
“It might turn out to be a [small] pox on both their houses,” she said.
Last week, Senator Fierravanti-Wells launched an official parliamentary petition calling on the public to pressure the upper house to ensure “freedom to manifest one’s religion” would only be limited by the the need to protect public safety, health or the rights and freedoms of others. She said the Folau matter had “hardened my resolve on this issue”.
The government announced it would introduce a religious discrimination bill late last year, in response to the Ruddock review into religious freedom. Mr Porter held a meeting of about 22 MPs government MP in Canberra on Friday, where he showed them a PowerPoint presentation on the bill. Other MP briefings are expected to take place in the coming weeks.
Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce was among those who attended Friday’s meeting. Mr Joyce, who is reserving his final judgment until he sees a copy of the bill, said he is worried about people being sacked for issues that don’t have anything to do with their jobs.
“An Australian has lost their job on issues that have nothing to do with his job of catching a ball,” Mr Joyce said of the Folau sacking. “You might not agree with his views but he was employed to play football … he didn’t run out with Leviticus all over his jersey.”
When previously asked about his plans for the religious discrimination bill, Mr Porter has likened it to other existing acts that prevent discrimination based on certain attributes – such as disability, sex, race and age.
“I don’t think that that would be a very contentious bill, necessarily, it follows a very standard architecture,” he said late last year.
Less conservative Liberals have so far praised Mr Porter’s handling of the issue, saying he is steering a sensible path through a complex area of law.
Labor and crossbench MPs and other community groups – including church groups – are yet to see any details of the bill, which is understood to have already had more than 50 drafts.
The bill is expected to come before Parliament later this year, but not in time for the next sitting of Parliament which begins on July 22.
Judith Ireland is a political reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based at Parliament House
Coercion Code - "Dark Times are upon us" 
The very people who hate christians preaching the gospel, are the very ones who have the platform to preach their own sjw religious NWO doctrine , which is full of hate & bigotry against God, his Word and christians. It’s a doctrine where evil is called good and good is called evil, just as the bible warned would happen. It’s a doctrine where an unborn child is hated, called evil and a parasite by them, and the unborn child’s blood is shed daily, whilst they laugh and jump around with such demonic glee over their actions. It’s a doctrine where God himself if they choose to believe he even exists, is deemed to be just a God of love, and not a Holy Righteous God who will punish unrepentant sin. It’s a doctrine where love is considered to be shown by tolerance & acceptance of ones sins, instead of being able to show what will happen if one remains unrepentant . It’s a doctrine where sin is only considered sin if you are a christian, a man and a white person.
It’s a doctrine that says male and female are not biological, but a social construct brought about by the patriarchy , and a person can be any gender they want or no gender at all, or change their gender through out the day.
It’s a doctrine that says all men especially white men are misogynist, violent and evil, and that the world will only get better if women have total control and rule.
It’s a doctrine where their causes are not just fought for,but worshipped and fawned over, as if they are gods themselves.
It’s a doctrine where just saying you are a person of love, tolerance and acceptance, elevates you to being such a wonderful person ,despite any of your character flaws and sins.
It’s a doctrine that preaches that the world needs to be under a socialist.marxist regime to get the utopia many are searching for,but will never find,because it does not exist in reality in that regime.
It’s a doctrine that says either there is no God, and you are God, or that God and his bible are wrong, or His Word doesn’t mean what it did back when it was written, and that if God does exist, he himself has changed his mind on what he considered sin long ago.
It’s a doctrine that the illuminati brought in, so their god satan can be worshipped, and put on the throne, and where humans are thought to have transcended to a higher level of consciousness, when in fact what they have transcended to in reality, is a higher level of self righteousness, and look at me aint I so wonderful syndrome. This is the only doctrine that is allowed to be preached, unless of course you are of the religious persuasion that these sjw lefties fawn over, and pretend to love, tolerate and accept, so they aint seen as a phobe themselves.
We just sit back and say, They may be able to change Gods laws into their own in every land.
They may be able to stop his True Word from being preached, and charge christians with a hate crime.
They may be able to accept every sin, and call it not sin anymore.
But they will never be able to change the fact that judgement day is fast approaching, and that God will one day judge the world according to his bible. That what he said was sin back when it was first written and given to man, he still calls sin today. That he will still call sin on judgement day, because he is a God that changest not, and he is the same YESTERDAY,, TODAY and FOREVER