Weekend Wrap for 15 December 2024
Welcome to the NSL Weekend Wrap for 15 December 2024, where you can catch up on the latest secular-related news from around the country.
This is our final Wrap for 2024. We'll be back in mid-to-late February 2025. We hope you have a safe and enjoyable Christmas holiday period.
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At the National Level
Margaret Court, the former Tennis champion turned religious leader, has hit out and transgender people during a sermon at her Victory Life Church. “Transgender is wrong.” Court told her followers on Sunday during a sermon where she urged people to show support for Israel’s military action in Gaza. The 82-year-old religious leader said people need to take a stance against many movements in society including acceptance of euthanasia, abortion and recognition of transgender people. Reverend Court also called for the Albanese government to be removed, saying the message had been given to her by God to pass on to the nation. (8 Dec 2024)
Read more at OUTinPerth
Australian Federal Police taskforce Operation Avalite will be established to combat anti-Semitism following an arson attack on a synagogue in Melbourne that is now being investigated as a terror incident. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the taskforce was being stood up in response to three recent anti-Semitic attacks: the attack on the Adass Israel synagogue in Ripponlea, an attack on Jewish Labor MP Josh Burns' electorate office, and an incident in Woollahra in Sydney where a car was torched and buildings vandalised with anti-Israel messages. On Sunday, Mr Albanese committed federal funding to improving security measures at Jewish community sites. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton vowed under a government he led he would fund the installation of armed guards at Jewish schools and synagogues, and tighten migration laws to explicitly stipulate that people who commit acts of anti-Semitism would have their visas cancelled. (9 Dec 2024)
Read more at ABC News
Christian affiliation has continued to plummet in the Australian Defence Force as the proportion of service personnel identifying as not religious has surged, according to official Defence data. More than six out of 10 personnel in the permanent Defence Force now identify as not religious, yet Defence continues to deny most of them suitable secular frontline wellbeing and pastoral support. In the 2023 Defence Census, 61 per cent of personnel said they were not religious – up from 56 per cent in 2019. Christianity fell to just 34 per cent, down from 40 per cent in 2019. Yet, the Army and Air Force continue to rely almost exclusively on Christian chaplaincy – and increasingly Pentecostal and evangelical chaplains – to provide uniformed frontline pastoral care and wellbeing support. (10 Dec 2024)
Read more at the Rationalist Society of Australia
According to a new audit report published by Australian Catholic Safeguarding Ltd. (ACSL), the Christian Brothers Oceania Province has implemented 98 per cent of the National Catholic Safeguarding Standards for children and adults at risk. The Christian Brothers underwent their first safeguarding audit in 2020 and were assessed for their implementation of child-focused safeguarding policies, procedures and practises. (12 Dec 2024)
Read more at CathNews (originally published at ACSL)
The Albanese Government announced its action plan for LGBTIQA+ health this week, laying out its ambitions for improving the physical and mental health of our communities. Health Minister Mark Butler revealed The National Action Plan for the Health and Wellbeing of LGBTIQA+ People 2025 – 2035 on Wednesday, that he says “acknowledges diversity and moves us towards a system that is flexible, person-focused, committed to equity, free of stigma and discrimination.” While a number of advocacy groups have welcomed the initiative, Just.Equal Australia have labelled the plan “weak and inadequate”. Just.Equal spokesperson Rodney Croome says the government should be providing targets for improved LGBTIQA+ health. (12 Dec 2024)
Read more at OUTinPerth
Liberal senator Paul Scarr has called for Labor’s hate speech bill to be expanded to create an offence of “urging or threatening” an attack on a place of worship, amid a surge in anti-Semitism. A Senate committee scrutinising the legislation, which will make it a serious criminal offence to threaten to use force or violence against a group, has recommended the Parliament pass the legislation when it returns in February. The bipartisan committee of senators also recommended the Government establish a federal database to track hate crimes, monitor their occurrence and inform future responses. (13 Dec 2024)
Read more at CathNews (originally published in The Australian)
Survivors of clergy abuse have expressed deep concern at proposals to ban protests outside places of worship. Anthony Albanese on Wednesday backed proposals in New South Wales and Victoria to ban such protests after an arson attack on the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne and antisemitic vandalism in Sydney. Speaking about the proposals, the prime minister said he “cannot conceive of any reason, apart from creating division in our community, of why someone would want to hold a demonstration outside a place of worship”. This rankled abuse survivors, particularly those who engaged in what they describe as a respectful demonstration outside St Mary’s cathedral in Sydney after George Pell’s death, and others who have tied ribbons on the fence outside St Patrick’s cathedral in Ballarat for years. (13 Dec 2024)
Read more at The Guardian
The Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has turned down a request for it to look into “unjustifiable discrimination” against non-religious Australians in public institutions and in the public sphere. In a letter to the AHRC last month, the Rationalist Society of Australia (RSA) highlighted a number of examples of discrimination against non-religious people and asked that the commission investigate or conduct further research. Joanna Maxwell, Director of the Human Rights Team, told Mr Gladman that the AHRC would not take action. (13 Dec 2024)
Read more at the Rationalist Society of Australia
Around the Country
NSW: The New South Wales premier has vowed an "urgent change" to the law that would ban people from protesting outside places of worship. The announcement comes after protesters rallied outside Sydney's Great Synagogue on Wednesday during an event on behalf of Israel's Technion University, which forced the venue to be locked down. "Demonstration and protests are important, but so is the principle that all Australians have a right to practice their faith free of intimidation or free of protest," Mr Minns said. (8 Dec 2024)
Read more at ABC News
VIC: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has vowed to help rebuild the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne during a sometimes chaotic visit to the scene of Friday's arson attack. Mr Albanese described the attack on the synagogue as an "act of terrorism" fuelled by anti-Semitism and "stoked by hatred". "One of the things that we spoke about inside with the community leaders was the fact that people have come to Australia because we are a country that is peaceful, we are a country that respects people of different faiths and are enriched by our diversity here," he said. He committed his government to "doing what we need to do to restore this synagogue, including providing whatever support is necessary financially". (10 Dec 2024)
Read more at ABC News
NSW: A cash-strapped local council will ask some of Sydney’s wealthiest private schools to pay voluntary rates in a bid to raise $1 million in extra revenue, claiming rising student numbers are piling pressure on parks and public space. North Sydney councillors voted on Monday night to request private schools and a university in its area pay optional rates, or an “in-kind contribution”, on their property holdings. North Sydney Mayor Zoe Baker said some of the largest landowners in the area were private educational institutions. “Private schools own approximately 152,566 square metres in the LGA and if that were rated as a business it would result in additional rate revenue of over $1 million.” (Letters to the editor published the next day seemed to indicate public support for these schools paying rates.) (11 Dec 2024)
Read more at The Age
NSW: For the first time in New South Wales, a new report has highlighted the data behind claims of inadequate abortion care in regional areas, showing that abortion access remains a patchy postcode lottery. Analysis has found that despite widespread increases in demand for medical abortions, almost a third of all local government areas (LGAs) in NSW did not have a doctor providing MS-2 Step (used to bring on a miscarriage within the first nine weeks of pregnancy) in 2022. (12 Dec 2024)
Read more at ABC News
QLD: In the lead-up to the recent election, Labor raised the spectre of the LNP winding back the legislation and re-criminalising abortion if it won office. It campaigned hard on the issue, despite Mr Crisafulli repeatedly insisting his party would make no changes to abortion laws and that it wasn't part of the LNP's plan. In a surprise and 'unprecedented' move, the newly elected premier has now moved a motion that changed the rules of parliament to essentially gag MPs from any debate on abortion laws. More specifically, MPs were banned from amending the Termination of Pregnancy Act or debating any motion that allowed the parliament to express a view on the law over the next four years. It was a tactical parliamentary manoeuvre that Mr Crisafulli declared would put an end to suggestions his government would alter abortion laws. (14 Dec 2024)
Read more at ABC News
NSW: The City of Sydney will consider a proposal to review its practice of opening formal council meetings with prayers. At Monday’s general council meeting at Sydney Town Hall, Councillor Matthew Thompson will present a motion requesting that council undertake a process of community engagement to understand views on the practice of reciting prayers. The motion asks that such a review consider alternative options, including replacing prayers with a secular oath or affirmation in line with councillors’ responsibilities to the community, or simply removing prayers without introducing a replacement ritual. Councillor Thompson’s notice of motion argues that council’s practice of starting meetings with prayer “does not reflect the religiously diverse and secular communities we represent”. (14 Dec 2024)
Read more at the Rationalist Society of Australia
Commentary and Analysis
Paul Gregoire: NSW Government Proposes to Extend Anti-Protest Regime to “Places of Worship”
"Just when it appeared that NSW premier Chris Minns had exhausted all possible avenues to further expand the draconian NSW antiprotest regime, the top Labor minister has pulled yet another rabbit out of his hat, and this time the potential prohibition would entail no more demonstrations outside places of worship. The idea hasn’t come in a vacuum, of course, as the proposal was sparked by an arson attack perpetrated upon the Addas Israel Synagogue of Melbourne in the city’s southeastern suburb of Ripponlea at around 4 am last Friday, 6 October, which caused injury to one individual, as well as significant damage to the building itself. But besides the recent protesting outside of the Great Synagogue – by Sydney’s pro-Palestinian movement, which includes numerous Jewish people and was protesting an entity involved in the genocide-drive – most of these actions in the past have involved churches. When people have protested outside of Christian churches it has most often been in relation to the child sex offences of the clergy and the broad coverup of these crimes on the part of the church. Following such demonstrations, however, politicians do not commence pontificating about the vilification of Christians and nor has the government cried for further bans on public demonstrations. Indeed, along with his strong conservative advocacy for the suppression of the right to protest, the NSW premier also represents the devout Christian voice in state parliament, so it might be that the current gaps in rationality involved the reasoning behind the proposal to ban protests outside of places of worship are convenient distortions to advance an old gripe regarding church protests." (13 Dec 2024)
Read more at Sydney Criminal Lawyers
Lucy Hamilton: The ABC in Hungary: why “Christianity” and “woke” are weapons of war
"Some of the most dangerous people in the world right now are those normalising and sanitising fascistic politics. It was not just in the banal media discussion that preceded Donald Trump’s re-election; it can also be found at the ABC, including on Radio National lifestyle programming. One of the tropes to look for is the placing of the concept “woke” in counterpoint to “traditional” and “Christian” values. “Woke” has become the radicalising rightwing catch-all term to demonise everything inconvenient to their goals. It must no longer be used naively to describe people who are alert to systemic injustice (as its origins in Civil Rights politics denoted). It is now a poisoned term, deployed as slander against any selected enemy in the right’s efforts to build coalitions to hold power." (14 Dec 2024)
Read more at Pearls & Irritations
Karen Barlow: Politicising the Melbourne synagogue attack
"Four days after the Adass fire and after days of opposition and media criticism for not breaking a three-day Perth visit, the prime minister offered a plea for unity outside the burnt synagogue. 'This arson attack is an act of terrorism,' he said. 'It was fuelled by anti-Semitism and it was stoked by hatred. We’re a country that needs to come together and unite.' Albanese stood with locals, inspected the damage and vowed to help to rebuild Adass. ... 'There’s a sense that we as a society and particularly the federal government have allowed this to occur,' the Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin told reporters outside the synagogue. 'This is something that requires deep reflection on the part of the prime minister and the government.' The federal opposition went further, with frontbencher Jane Hume accusing Anthony Albanese of 'emboldening and enabling' the perpetrators and being 'missing in action' in the wake of the firebombing." (14 Dec 2024)
Read more at The Saturday Paper
Events and Campaigns
A petition by lawyer Dr Judy Courtin is calling for a reversal of the recent High Court decision that religious institutions can't be held liable for the sex crimes of their members as the offending priest or member is not technically employed.
Read and sign the petition at Change.org
Go Gentle Australia have released The State of VAD, a report collating and analysing available VAD data from all jurisdictions for the first time.
Download the report here
The full videos of presentations and panel discussions from the 2023 Secularism Australia Conference are now freely available for viewing on the Secularism Australia website and on YouTube!
The Australia Institute are calling on federal parliament to pass truth in political advertising laws that are nationally consistent, constitutional and uphold freedom of speech. View the petition at The Australia Institute
The Human Rights Law Centre are running a website for those who want to support an Australian Charter of Human Rights & Freedoms.
Visit the Charter of Rights website here
A change.org petition has been started, calling for churches to lose their tax-free status and for "the religious influence of churches in Australian politics and society" to be limited. It's currently up to 31,000 signatures. View the petition at change.org
The Australian Education Union is running a campaign calling for “every school, every child” to receive fair education funding. It's currently up to 95,000 sign-ups. Support the campaign here.
The Human Rights for NSW alliance has launched a campaign calling for NSW to pass a Human Rights Act.
That's it for another week!
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