In June, the Government withdrew its controversial Anti-Discrimination legislation and hastily replaced it with the Respect at Work and Other Matters Amendment Bill. Because this bill was written so quickly, it has significant errors that would seriously impact faith communities:

• A ban on “hateful conduct” so broad that it could silence religious debate and disagreement.
• Laws against harassment “on the basis of sex”, which could include simple disagreement about sexuality and gender.
• A “positive duty” to prevent this harassment could see faith-based institutions and schools forced to teach against their beliefs.
• Religious exemptions do not cover this new legislation, so religious speech and faith-based institutions are not protected.

In July, a wide range of Queensland faith leaders sent a letter to Premier Steven Miles, asking him to fix the problems with the new “Respect at Work” bill. The Premier referred the letter to the Attorney General Yvette D’Ath, so a second letter asked the her for a meeting to discuss our concerns.

Faith leaders also wrote a detailed submission to the Parliamentary Committee looking into the bill. The submission detailed our concerns and provided imple amendments that would have fixed the problems without interfering with the goals of the legislation.

In August, the Attorney General’s office replied saying that “due to a heavily committed schedule the Attorney-General is unable to meet” and the faith leaders’ letter “has been forwarded to the department for a written response to be provided in due course”.

The following day, the Parliamentary Committee released their report, which failed to reference the faith leader’s submission even once, or to take our concerns into consideration.