Weekend Wrap for 25 April 2026
Welcome to the NSL Weekend Wrap for 25 April 2026. The Wrap covers Australian secular politics — religious privilege and funding, religion in public schools, discrimination laws, voluntary assisted dying, and many other related issues. If someone forwarded this to you, you can subscribe on our website.
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This Anzac Day, as the nation observes its rituals of remembrance, the week behind it has been one of quiet but consequential movement on secular ground.
The most important story is from NSW, where a parliamentary inquiry released findings on 23 April confirming that right-wing extremism in Australia is not a fringe irritant but an organised, escalating threat — and that LGBTQIA+ people are among its most deliberate targets. The report documents co-ordinated harassment campaigns, the cancellation of LGBTQIA+ events under threat of violence, and a sharp rise in both online and in-person hatred. Advocacy groups are calling on the NSW Government to implement the recommendations in full. The government has until October to respond formally. Until then, presumably things proceed as they are.
The second story worth holding in mind is the one that hasn't yet happened. The Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion must deliver its interim report by Thursday 30 April — five days from publication of this edition. That report is expected to focus on intelligence and policing failures before the December 2025 Bondi attack, and the Commission has confirmed it may include recommendations about matters requiring urgent action. No public hearings have yet been held; the first block begins in Sydney on 4 May. From a secular governance perspective, what the Commission says — and, critically, what it does not say — about the exclusion of LGBTQIA+ people from the 2026 hate speech legislation's vilification offence will be worth watching.
In Queensland, the opposition introduced a private member's bill this week to close the legal loophole that has shielded the Catholic Church from vicarious liability for clergy abuse since a 2024 High Court ruling; a loophole that the ACT and Victoria have already moved to close, but which the Crisafulli government has left open for over a year. Abuse survivors gave evidence at the announcement, describing the loophole as something that "just kills you" when the law says no to people who have already survived so much.
And across the Nullarbor, the campaign to replace WA parliament's daily Christian prayers with inclusive reflection picked up a significant endorsement — from the ACT Legislative Assembly itself.
News this week
VIC: Response to the Inquiry into Anti-Vilification Protections (15 Apr 2026)
Civil anti-vilification protections under Victoria's Justice Legislation Amendment (Anti-vilification and Social Cohesion) Act 2025 commenced on 15 April 2026, repealing the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 and incorporating expanded protections into the Equal Opportunity Act 2010. For the first time in Victoria, civil law prohibits vilification on the basis of disability, gender identity, sex, sex characteristics, and sexual orientation, not just race and religion. A person who is publicly subjected to conduct that a reasonable person with a protected attribute would consider hateful, contemptuous, reviling, or severely ridiculing now has civil redress through VEOHRC and VCAT. The law preserves exceptions for religious expression, artistic work, and academic discussion conducted reasonably and in good faith. Criminal vilification offences covering the expanded attributes commenced earlier, in September 2025. Additional, stronger harm-based civil protections, including expanded VEOHRC powers, commence on 30 June 2026.
Read more at the Victorian Government website
WA: LGBTQIA+ voices needed as WA guardianship laws come under scrutiny (17 Apr 2026)
GRAI (GLBTI Rights in Ageing Inc) is calling on older LGBTI West Australians and their supporters to share their experiences with the state's guardianship and administration laws as part of a review of the existing framework. GRAI has flagged particular concern about how the laws interact with the needs of older LGBTI people, including those in same-sex relationships whose partners may be bypassed in substitute decision-making arrangements in favour of biological family members who may be estranged, hostile, or simply unknown to the person's care team. Submissions from the community are being sought to inform reform of laws that have not kept pace with the diversity of family structures among older Australians.
Read more at OUTinPerth
QLD: Institutional abuse victims call for closure of legal 'loophole' in Queensland (19 Apr 2026)
Queensland's Labor opposition has announced it will introduce a private member's bill seeking to close a legal loophole that prevents some victims of institutional abuse from suing religious organisations for the actions of clergy. The loophole stems from a 2024 High Court decision finding the Catholic Church not vicariously liable for abuse perpetrated by a paedophile priest, on the basis that priests are not technically "employees." Since that ruling, the ACT and Victoria have passed legislation expanding organisational liability to cover abuse by volunteers and clergy; Western Australia has introduced similar legislation but it has stalled in the upper house. Queensland's LNP government under Premier David Crisafulli has not acted in the more than twelve months since the High Court decision, drawing criticism from shadow attorney-general Meaghan Scanlon, who said the government needed to "stand with victims." Crisafulli pointed to a more recent High Court ruling from February 2026, suggesting it "might very well close that loophole" at a federal level. Abuse survivors Diane Carpenter and Val Cooper spoke at the announcement. Carpenter described the legislation as giving survivors "a pathway to justice."
Read more at ABC News
WA: ACT Legislative Assembly encourages WA committee to “consider” removing daily Christian prayers (19 Apr 2026)
The Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly has entered the debate about religious observance in the Western Australian parliament, with ACT Clerk Tom Duncan submitting to WA's Procedure and Privileges Committee that it should "consider" whether the practice of daily Christian prayers "needs to be updated" to better accommodate non-Christian members. Duncan noted that the ACT abolished the Lord's Prayer in 1995, replacing it with a moment of silent prayer or reflection, and offered that model for the committee's consideration. His submission joins a growing body of submissions to the same inquiry: Labor MP Dave Kelly submitted that there was "widespread" support among his colleagues for replacing prayers with a moment of quiet reflection, and former WA Parliament Clerk Kirsten Robinson argued that while tradition matters, Western Australia "has a diverse and multicultural society, and the composition of the Parliament has evolved accordingly". The Tasmanian upper house became the first state parliamentary chamber to remove the Lord's Prayer last year. WA's lower and upper houses currently require members to stand for exclusively Christian prayers — including the Lord's Prayer — at the opening of each sitting day.
Read more at the Rationalist Society of Australia
National: New details reveal possible 'urgent' recommendations in antisemitism interim report (21 Apr 2026)
A much-anticipated interim report from the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion is due to be delivered to Governor-General Sam Mostyn on 30 April, and the Commission has confirmed it could include recommendations about issues requiring "urgent or immediate action." The report will not draw on private hearings (as none have been held yet) but instead on notices to produce, submissions, and meetings. The interim report is expected to focus primarily on the security agencies and any intelligence failures before the 14 December 2025 Bondi terrorist attack. Former disability royal commission chair Ronald Sackville said it was likely to be confined to examining police and intelligence agency conduct, with a fuller set of recommendations in the December final report. Public policy expert Scott Prasser described the process as "rushing," noting that public hearings (where a commission typically establishes its factual record) do not begin until 4 May. From a secular governance standpoint, what the Commission ultimately says — or declines to say — about the exclusion of LGBTQIA+ people from the 2026 federal vilification offence remains the key question to watch.
Read more at SBS News
NSW: NSW inquiry finds LGBTQIA+ people among key targets of right-wing extremism (23 Apr 2026)
A major New South Wales parliamentary inquiry has established that right-wing extremism poses a growing, co-ordinated, and specifically targeted threat to LGBTQIA+ people. The Measures to combat right-wing extremism in New South Wales report, handed down on 23 April, found that LGBTQIA+ Australians are among the communities most directly and deliberately targeted by extremist ideology, alongside Jewish communities, women, Indigenous Australians, and ethnic and religious minorities. The report documents organised intimidation, cancellations of LGBTQIA+ events under threat of violence, and a documented sharp rise in both online and in-person anti-trans and anti-LGBTQIA+ hatred. Evidence found that 85 per cent of trans and gender diverse respondents reported increased online hate, while 39 per cent reported more in-person abuse. The committee found that extremist groups are actively working to normalise anti-LGBTQIA+ prejudice in mainstream political discourse. Equality Australia CEO Anna Brown called on the NSW Government to implement all recommendations in full, including expanding the serious vilification offence to cover conduct inciting hatred on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity — a gap that the 2026 federal Combatting Antisemitism Act did not address. The government has until 23 October 2026 to formally respond.
Read more at Q News
Commentary and analysis
Neil Foster: Australian Journal of Law and Religion - Vol 7 (17 Apr 2026)
The latest volume of the Australian Journal of Law and Religion has been published (and is freely available online here.) In particular I would like to commend the prize-winning essay by Jacob Carson, a former student of mine, on the important issues around teaching of religion in public schools. The journal covers the intersection of law and religion in Australia and internationally, and is a useful reference for tracking academic debate about religious privilege, exemptions from anti-discrimination law, and the secular state.
Read more at Law and Religion Australia
Chris Bonnor: Australia's school system is driving inequality — not fixing it (20 Apr 2026)
Here, Chris Bonnor maps the structural feedback loop through which Australia's public/private school divide entrenches inequality across generations. Most non-government schools in Australia are faith-based institutions, heavily subsidised by federal funding and operating under exemptions from anti-discrimination law that public schools do not have. Bonnor does not frame the issue that way, but the policy implications are directly relevant to anyone thinking about the structural relationship between government funding, religious schooling, and educational equity.
Read more at Pearls & Irritations
John Frew: Funding, advantage and Australian schools: Why inequality persists despite reform (22 Apr 2026)
John Frew discusses how public funding, tax concessions, and organised philanthropy combine to produce cumulative advantage, each layer building on the others in a way that widens the gap between well-resourced and under-resourced schools. The majority of Australia's non-government schools are faith-based institutions, and it is overwhelmingly those schools that hold established philanthropic networks, development offices, and donor relationships.
Read more at Independent Australia
Steph Cousins: Non-discrimination is a core Australian value. We must defend it. (23 Apr 2026)
Refugee and migration advocate Steph Cousins takes direct aim at the Coalition's new migration policy, which would discriminate against visa holders based on country of origin and attributed "values" — explicitly singling out Gazans as a "high-risk cohort." Cousins argues that non-discrimination is itself a core Australian value, one that visa applicants are explicitly asked to commit to, and that projecting nefarious intent onto whole groups by country of origin is its antithesis. Yet another example of how religious and cultural identity are being weaponised in immigration and social cohesion debates.
Read more at Pearls & Irritations
Laura Koefoed: Debunking all-gender bathroom misinformation campaign by Australian Christian Lobby (25 Apr 2026)
QNews has published a detailed fact-check of the ACL's campaign against the National Construction Code 2025 all-gender bathroom provisions, finding the lobby's central claims to be misleading. The ACL has claimed the code will "replace" up to half of all male and female toilets with shared facilities; QNews found this misrepresents the provisions, which set a ceiling rather than a requirement on how many toilets may be designated all-gender, and which do not remove the mandatory default of separate male and female facilities in most buildings. Under the NCC definition, an all-gender facility is a fully enclosed, single-user space — not a mixed open-plan arrangement. The ACL's commissioned polling claiming 87 per cent of Australians oppose the changes was also scrutinised: no publicly available methodology was disclosed, with no information on question wording, sample size, or survey design. The piece notes practical benefits of all-gender options for parents with children of a different gender, carers of people with disability, and LGBTQIA+ people who face harassment in sex-separated facilities.
Read more at Q News
Opportunities for action
CURRENT
WA: GRAI (GLBTI Rights in Ageing Inc) is calling on older LGBTI people and their supporters to share their experiences with guardianship and administration laws, as Western Australia launches a parliamentary inquiry into the system. Community members are encouraged to share their experiences by emailing chair@grai.org.au. Submissions to GRAI should be received by Friday 22 May 2026.
National: States and territories have until Thursday 1 May 2026 to decide whether to adopt provisions in the National Construction Code 2025 allowing optional all-gender toilet facilities in new public buildings. Tasmania has already opted out following an ACL campaign. NSW, WA, and other states have not yet declared their positions. The changes are voluntary for developers and apply to new builds only. If you support inclusive building design, write to your state Building Minister.
National: Dying With Dignity NSW has an opportunity for people to send a message to Attorney-General Michelle Rowland and ask her to make changes to improve VAD availability (by using telehealth). For people in regional areas and those who are unable to travel it is more difficult, or even impossible, to access VAD. This could be easily fixed by excluding VAD from telehealth prohibition. Visit their campaign here.
National: Go Gentle Australia's 2026 State of VAD Report this week made a compelling case for a straightforward amendment to the Commonwealth Criminal Code: remove the restriction that treats electronic communication and telehealth discussions about voluntary assisted dying as potential facilitation of suicide. This one-line fix would allow dying people — particularly those in regional and remote areas — to consult with VAD practitioners via telehealth rather than being required to travel repeatedly for in-person appointments. A central Queensland man died waiting for VAD access because of bureaucratic prescription mail rules. This is a discrete, fixable federal legislative problem. Contact your federal member or senator to call for the amendment.
ONGOING
The Rationalist Society of Australia is running a Change.org petition calling on the Australian War Memorial to take direct responsibility for the Anzac Day Dawn Service and end the imposition of Christian worship on a national commemoration. Read and sign the petition at change.org.
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
The Australian Education Union is running a campaign calling for “every school, every child” to receive fair education funding. Support the campaign here.
The Human Rights for NSW alliance is running a campaign calling for NSW to pass a Human Rights Act.
Our activities
NSL is involved in the joint 2026 Census - Not Religious? Mark 'No Religion' campaign aiming to improve the accuracy of census religion data. Visit the campaign website to learn more.
As always, the full videos of presentations and panel discussions from the 2023 Secularism Australia Conference (co-organised by NSL and other groups) are freely available for viewing on the Secularism Australia website and on YouTube!
More coming soon!
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