On 22
November 2017, the Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull announced the
appointment of an Expert Panel to examine whether Commonwealth, state and territories law adequately
protects the human right to freedom of religion.
The Panel
delivered its report on 18 May 2018 and on that same day the Prime Minster made
it clear that he had no intention of making the report’s findings public in the
near future.
As we wait to find out whether the religious far-right has captured the castle here is a brief look back at comment on religion in politics ......
God is appearing in more
and more places around the Federal Parliament, and among all sorts of people….
God moves in mysterious
ways, and never more so than when He moves into politics. On Thursday, for
example, the Liberal Party announced that its candidate for the seat of
Greenway, centred around Blacktown, would be Louise Markus, a prominent member
of Hillsong, Australia's largest church.
The US-style,
high-energy, hand-clapping Pentecostal church, which draws its people from the
Bible belt of Sydney's north-western suburbs, attracts more than 15,000 people
each Sunday. Its Friday night youth meetings reportedly draw 2000, its
children's meetings some 1600 and its women-only gatherings more than 1000.
The church is as
entrepreneurial as it is evangelical, constantly seeking to expand its
influence through CDs, books and other media. And now it might be in line to
claim its second federal MP. It already has Alan Cadman, the fiercely right-wing
member for Mitchell - which includes Baulkham Hills, the epicentre of Hillsong
influence - as a prominent member of the flock. Greenway, which adjoins
Cadman's seat, is held by Labor's Frank Mossfield, but is highly marginal, and
the sitting member is retiring at the election.
You might have thought
someone standing for such a marginal seat would want all the media attention he
or she could get, but the Liberals' state director, Scott Morrison, refused to
let the Herald talk to her. He said she would do "local media
first".
Instead Morrison,
himself a man of "strong religious views", launched into a pitch for
the type of "faith-based programs" that Hillsong had established to
address social problems.
"In the [United]
States there is an increasing tendency of governments - particularly the Bush
Government - to get behind what are called faith-based programs," he
enthused.
"That is where
governments start to lift the constraints on the Noffses and the Bill Crewses
and others, to enable them to really help people, beyond just the material, and
give them life advice which involves faith. Those programs, I understand, have
had some great success."
Markus works for Emerge,
the Hillsong offshoot whose facilities and programs range from medical centres
and emergency relief services to drug and alcohol programs, and personal
development and recovery programs.
The CEO there, Leigh
Coleman, would not put us in contact with Markus, either. And so the views of
the Hillsong employee and Liberal candidate on the desirability of passing
responsibility for social welfare issues from secular government agencies to
religious organisations must for now remain a mystery.
Perhaps some light will
be shed when the chief pastor of Hillsong, Brian Houston, addresses Federal
Parliament's Christian fellowship prayer breakfast when next it meets, in about
a month.
A bigger mystery,
however, is the movement of God into the NSW Young Liberals. In this case,
however, God wears not the toothy smile of a Pentecostal "happy
clapper" but the dour face of the arch-conservative Catholic organisation,
Opus Dei.
Warrane College was
established in 1971. It is a residential college affiliated to the University
of NSW and owned by the not-for-profit Educational Development Association.
Pastoral care for its 125 young men (women are not permitted past the ground
floor) is "entrusted" to Opus Dei, a prelature of the Catholic
Church.
Warrane College is also
the "home" address of about one-quarter of the membership of the
Randwick/Coogee branch of the Young Liberals. Of 88 members enrolled in the
Young Libs branch, 21 list the college or its post-office box as their address,
according to a membership list seen by the Herald….
Religion and politics
has a long and often controversial history in Australia, most of it associated
with Christianity. One resolution of the relationship came with the
incorporation into the Constitution of s. 116. That section reads:
The Commonwealth
shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any
religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and
no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public
trust under the Commonwealth.
In discussions of the
religious component of twentieth century Australian politics most attention has
been given not to constitutional issues but to the link between denominations
and parties in voting and representation, Catholics with Labor and Protestants
with the Coalition, as well as the denominational character of the Labor Party
Split of the 1950s that produced the Democratic Labor Party. Professor Judith
Brett, for instance, begins her survey of the literature as follows:
It has long been
recognised that the foundation of the Australian party system had a religious
dimension, with an affinity between the main Australian nonlabour parties and
Protestantism and between the Labor Party and Roman Catholicism…..
The Howard government is
the first federal Coalition government in which Catholics have played a major
role. While this fact has been commented on from time to time, sometimes it is
submerged under the exaggerated concentration on the religious affiliation and
personal religious background of just one of its senior ministers, Tony Abbott.
This concentration culminated in the reportage of the February 2006 debates
about the so-called ‘abortion drug’ RU-486 (see below). The general trend is of
greater significance, however, than the role of any one individual.
Historically Catholic
representation in the Coalition parties was minimal, almost non-existent, and
there was active antipathy towards Catholic MPs such as Sir John Cramer as late
as the 1950s. Professor Joan Rydon notes ‘the almost negligible Catholic
component of the non-Labor parties’ in her survey of the Commonwealth
Parliament from 1901 to 1980. Representation of Catholics in the Fraser
ministry (1975–83) was still minimal, though it did include Philip Lynch,
Fraser’s deputy for a time. But it had jumped dramatically 13 years later in
both the Liberal and National parties. National Party Catholics have included
two Deputy Prime Ministers, Tim Fischer and Mark Vaile. Senior Liberal Party
Catholics have included Abbott, Brendan Nelson, Helen Coonan, Joe Hockey and
Kevin Andrews to name just some current senior ministers. Prominent Catholics
earlier in the Howard era included Communications minister, Richard Alston,
Resources and Energy minister, Warwick Parer, and Aboriginal Affairs minister,
John Herron. By 2006, other Catholics included new minister, Senator Santo
Santoro, and up and coming parliamentary secretaries such as Robb himself,
Malcolm Turnbull and Christopher Pyne. One step behind were senators George
Brandis and Brett Mason. Prominent in another way has been Senator Bill
Heffernan, the Prime Minister’s outspoken NSW party ally and one-time
parliamentary secretary. The overall change has been remarkable.
By contrast, the place
of Catholics in their ‘traditional’ party, Labor, seems much diminished and
less obvious, despite Kim Beazley’s family connections with the church and
Kevin Rudd’s Catholic origins. Many of them appeared to be isolated in the
Catholic right faction, especially the NSW Right, and the party’s culture and
history did not encourage them to emphasise their religious belief, because it
stirred internal party divisions and conflict. Furthermore, anti-Catholic
prejudice had become endemic in the Victorian branch of the party following the
Labor Party split. As a consequence there is hardly a major federal Labor
figure whose Catholic identity seems important. Most of the leading humanists
in the Parliament are in the Labor Party and several of them, led by Dr Carmen
Lawrence, formed a cross-factional Humanist Group in September 2000 to counter
what they saw as the growing influence of religion in parliamentary debates and
decisions…..
The public presentation
of personal religious beliefs, now widespread in public life, is of equal
interest to the denominational changes that have taken place. More than any
other federal government the senior members of the Howard government have been
active, in word and deed, in emphasizing (or at least being open about) its
religious credentials and beliefs and in emphasizing the positive contribution
of Christian values to Australian society. One has only to compare the publicly
Christian approach of the Howard-Anderson-Costello-Abbott team, for instance,
to the privately Christian, even secular, approach of the Fraser-Anthony-Lynch
team in the 1970s to see that this is true.
The reason for this
change might include a combination of the so-called international clash between
fundamentalist Islam and Western Christian nations together with the particular
personalities that just happen to have emerged in leadership positions in the
Coalition. Howard himself, it should be noted, has not been the leading figure
in this development, despite the attention given to his personal
Methodism-cum-Anglicanism. Perhaps decreasing sectarianism has played a part.
Nevertheless, whatever
its origins, this has occurred to the extent that following the 2004 federal
election it drew a response from Labor in the form of Foreign Affairs shadow
minister, Kevin Rudd, who formed a party discussion group on religion, faith
and values to educate Labor colleagues and to warn them very publicly about the
dangers of allowing the Coalition to capture the growing religious vote. Rudd
and other Labor figures, while revealing a typical Labor wariness of the mix of
religion and politics, believed that ‘the Coalition is intent on exploiting
religion for political purposes.’ At the 2004 election the contrast with
Labor had been made somewhat clearer because Labor leader, Mark Latham, was a
declared agnostic. Latham was privately dismissive of religion and these
views became public on the publication of his diaries. This has led
Anglican Bishop Tom Frame to claim that in recent years ‘Labor leaders have
exhibited an open disdain for all things religious.’ By 2005 the new Labor
leader, Kim Beazley, a Christian himself, had overcome his traditional aversion
to mixing religion and politics by speaking about his own faith at an
Australian Christian Lobby conference in Canberra….
Religion and politics is
also more prominent, though not widespread, in public appointments. The most
controversial Howard government appointment in this context has been that of
Archbishop Peter Hollingworth as Governor-General in June 2001. Hollingworth at
the time of his appointment was Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane…..
The most recent
development in religion and politics has been the emergence of the Family First
Party. The emergence of this new party at the 2004 federal election was just
one aspect of the larger relationship between the Howard government and
evangelical Christians. Despite the success of FFP it remains a less
significant phenomenon than the direct influence of evangelical Christians
within the Coalition. Evangelical lobby groups, like the emerging Australian
Christian Lobby, are another notable element of this evangelical story……
Hansard, excerpt from Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison’s maiden
speech in the House of Representatives, 14 February 2008:
I turn now to the most
significant influences on my life—my family and my faith.
Family is the stuff
of life and there is nothing more precious. I thank my family members here in
the gallery today for their support. It is my hope that all Australians could
have the same caring and supportive environment that was provided to me by my
parents, John and Marion Morrison, and my late grandparents, Mardie and Sandy
Smith and Douglas and Noel Morrison, whom I honour in this place today. My
parents laid the foundation for my life. Together with my brother, Alan, they
demonstrated through their actions their Christian faith and the value they
placed on public and community service. In our family, it has never been what
you accumulate that matters but what you contribute. I thank them for their
sacrifice, love and, above all, their example. To my wife, Jenny, on
Valentine’s Day: words are not enough. She has loved and supported me in all
things and made countless sacrifices, consistent with her generous, selfless
and caring nature. However, above all, I thank her for her determination to
never give up hope for us to have a child. After 14 years of bitter
disappointments, God remembered her faithfulness and blessed us with our
miracle child, Abbey Rose, on the seventh of the seventh of the seventh, to
whom I dedicate this speech today in the hope of an even better future for her
and her generation.
Growing up in a
Christian home, I made a commitment to my faith at an early age and have been
greatly assisted by the pastoral work of many dedicated church leaders, in
particular the Reverend Ray Green and pastors Brian Houston and Leigh Coleman.
My personal faith in Jesus Christ is not a political agenda. As Lincoln said,
our task is not to claim whether God is on our side but to pray earnestly that
we are on His. For me, faith is personal, but the implications are social—as
personal and social responsibility are at the heart of the Christian message.
In recent times it has become fashionable to negatively stereotype those who
profess their Christian faith in public life as ‘extreme’ and to suggest that
such faith has no place in the political debate of this country. This presents
a significant challenge for those of us, like my colleague, who seek to follow
the example of William Wilberforce or Desmond Tutu, to name just two. These
leaders stood for the immutable truths and principles of the Christian faith.
They transformed their nations and, indeed, the world in the process. More
importantly, by following the convictions of their faith, they established and
reinforced the principles of our liberal democracy upon which our own nation is
built.
Australia is not a
secular country—it is a free country. This is a nation where you have the
freedom to follow any belief system you choose. Secularism is just one. It has
no greater claim than any other on our society. As US Senator Joe Lieberman
said, the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not from religion. I
believe the same is true in this country.
So what values do I
derive from my faith? My answer comes from Jeremiah, chapter 9:24:
... I am the Lord who
exercises loving-kindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in
these things, declares the Lord.
From my faith I derive
the values of loving-kindness, justice and righteousness, to act with
compassion and kindness, acknowledging our common humanity and to consider the
welfare of others; to fight for a fair go for everyone to fulfil their human
potential and to remove whatever unjust obstacles stand in their way, including
diminishing their personal responsibility for their own wellbeing; and to do
what is right, to respect the rule of law, the sanctity of human life and the
moral integrity of marriage and the family. We must recognise an unchanging and
absolute standard of what is good and what is evil. Desmond Tutu put it this
way:
... we expect Christians
... to be those who stand up for the truth, to stand up for justice, to stand
on the side of the poor and the hungry, the homeless and the naked, and when
that happens, then Christians will be trustworthy believable witnesses.
These are my principles.
My vision for Australia is for a nation that is strong, prosperous and
generous: strong in our values and our freedoms, strong in our family and
community life, strong in our sense of nationhood and in the institutions that
protect and preserve our democracy; prosperous in our enterprise and the
careful stewardship of our opportunities, our natural environment and our
resources; and, above all, generous in spirit, to share our good fortune with
others, both at home and overseas, out of compassion and a desire for justice.
Well the Australians are
going back in history. The first guy to get involved was man named Norman Makin
who was actually not considered a right-winger, he was a long-time Ambassador
to the United States, but was an early Cold warrior and saw The Family as a
useful vehicle for working with the Conservative side of American politics
during the Cold War. More recently, I would just bump into - in the documents
-minor Australian politicians, Bruce Baird, a fellow named Ross Cameron, and I
suppose Peter Costello has been involved, and I don't know how involved and I
just, that's not something I followed up on……
The religious makeup of
Australia has changed gradually over the past 50 years. In 1966, Christianity
(88 per cent) was the main religion. By 1991, this figure had fallen to 74 per
cent, and further to the 2016 figure. Catholicism is the largest Christian
grouping in Australia, accounting for almost a quarter (22.6 per cent) of the
Australian population.
Australia is increasingly a story of religious diversity, with Hinduism,
Sikhism, Islam, and Buddhism all increasingly common religious beliefs.
Hinduism had the most significant growth between 2006 and 2016, driven by
immigration from South Asia.
The growing percentage of Australia’s population reporting no religion has been
a trend for decades, and is accelerating. Those reporting no religion increased
noticeably from 19 per cent in 2006 to 30 per cent in 2016. The largest change
was between 2011 (22 per cent) and 2016, when an additional 2.2 million people
reported having no religion…..
Even though the 2016
Census revealed that
more than 30% of the Australian population identify as having “no religion” – a
label that overtook the Catholic faith figure – Christianity’s effect on
Australian politics is far from waning.
Surprisingly, Christians
currently number more than 40% of the Coalition government and about 30% of the
Labor opposition. This is high for a nation labelled “secular”….
Kevin
Rudd, Tony
Abbott and former Liberal senator Cory
Bernardi moved Christian values from the periphery to the centre when
they declared their strong convictions on faith and policy….
When federal parliament
is in session, the Parliamentary
Christian Fellowship meets fortnightly, with about 60 members from all
sides of politics in attendance. This is more than a quarter of total
parliamentary members.
Not all Christians in
parliament choose to attend the fellowship. Anecdotal evidence suggests that
guest speakers, prayer and Bible studies with focused discussions are regular
features of these meetings.
2. Faith-based delivery
of social and community services
A senior Mormon recently
elected to a powerful position in the Victorian Liberal Party has been accused
of not being a legitimate member, fuelling tensions over the rising influence
of ultra-conservatives in the state branch.
Three weeks after
winning a coveted spot on the party’s administrative committee, infectious
diseases specialist Dr Ivan Stratov has had his membership thrown into doubt,
amid allegations that he did not get the necessary approval to join the
Liberals after initialling running as a Family First candidate at the state
election in 2010….
He’s the most unlikely
Liberal Party powerbroker.
The son of a leftist
migrant from the Soviet Union; brought up atheist in Melbourne’s suburbs; the
first Mormon missionary to baptise new believers in Ukraine in the early 1990s.
But nearly three decades
later, HIV specialist and doctor Ivan Stratov is part of a new conservative wave
that’s seizing power in the Victorian branch.
An Age investigation
has confirmed with senior church sources that at least 10 of the 78 people
elected to the Liberals’ administrative bodies at the party’s April state
council are Mormons.
This amounts to nearly
13 per cent of all those now in key positions within the Liberals’
organisational wing, compared to just 0.3 per cent of all Australians who are
members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Combined with
conservative Catholics, evangelical Christians from churches such as Victory
Faith Centre and City Builders, the religious right-wing now has unprecedented
sway in Liberal Party politics.
And Stratov – a
senior Mormon who won a coveted spot on the administrative committee – is
their most influential figure.
When conservative
Liberals embarked on an anti-Safe Schools roadshow across Victoria last year to
highlight concerns about the program, Stratov was a headline act.
When state MPs debated
changing euthanasia laws, the scientist whose papers are peer reviewed, sat on
a panel at the party’s Exhibition Street headquarters warning them against it…..
And when acolytes of new
state vice-president Marcus Bastiaan and federal MP Michael Sukkar embarked on
a takeover of the Victorian branch, Stratov was one of Bastiaan's key
lieutenants…..
