Weekend Wrap for 8 September 2024
Welcome to the NSL Weekend Wrap for 8 September 2024, where you can catch up on the latest secular-related news from around the country.
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At the National Level
A political advocacy group seeking to mobilise Muslim Australians before the next election says it will elevate the community’s voice on non-faith issues including gambling and domestic violence, alongside Israel’s war in Gaza. On Sunday afternoon Muslim Votes Matter, a new grassroots group, launched its national campaign in the lead-up to next year’s federal election at the Broadmeadows town hall, in the federal seat of Calwell, where it plans to back candidates. The group is planning to campaign in 32 federal seats – the majority Labor-held – with a significant Muslim population. (2 Sep 2024)
Read more at The Guardian
Australia's ambassador to Iran has been summoned to the foreign ministry office in Tehran over an Instagram post supporting Wear It Purple Day. The post, which is intended to support LGBT inclusion and visibility, remains live on the Australian embassy's official account. Homosexual activity is illegal in Iran, which is governed by Islamic clerical authorities, and gay sex can be punished by the death penalty. Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Murray Watt said, "We're very proud about the fact that our embassies promote Australian values internationally and I'm very concerned to see an overseas government seemingly take action against an Australian embassy that is upholding Australian values." (3 Sep 2024)
Read more at ABC News
Leading health experts have criticised the federal government for suggesting proposed LGBTQI+ questions should be excluded from the census because they were “too complex” – arguing similar questions are already used elsewhere. Versions of the proposed questions have been answered by 85,000 Australians in existing health surveys administered by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. But the lack of population-wide data has left large gaps in research, with leading health bodies calling on the government to reverse its decision to ensure every Australian was counted. (5 Sep 2024)
Read more at The Guardian
The Australian government is seeking to create some distance from its new special envoys on antisemitism and Islamophobia, suggesting they do not characterise their comments as official government policy. Documents obtained by Guardian Australia reveal the instructions the government has given its new special envoy to combat antisemitism, Jillian Segal, including the need to highlight “diverse Jewish Australian identities”. Similar guidance has been prepared for the yet-to-be-named special envoy to combat Islamophobia, although the government has struggled to make that appointment amid concerns in the Islamic community about its purpose. (5 Sep 2024)
Read more at The Guardian
The 2026 census questions on gender and sexual orientation that have been at the centre of a political brawl for the past week have been revealed to the ABC, despite the Albanese government declining to release the details. The ABC has learned the exact wording of the questions that had been under development by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), in conjunction with an expert panel from the LGBTQI+ community, for some months after extensive public consultation revealed an interest in more details on these issues. (6 Sep 2024)
Read more at ABC News
Around the Country
VIC: Nail Aykan is sick of politicians getting photo opportunities at a Turkish restaurant or speaking to one kebab shop owner and thinking they can rely on Muslim people for their votes. “It’s just your campaign propaganda. It’s window dressing. We want substance.” It’s why Aykan organised the Muslim Voices of Calwell group to engage with candidates in the electorate in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, and why he argued the merits of a hung parliament at the campaign launch of another group, Muslim Votes Matter, last Sunday. A separate group, the Muslim Vote, is also organising and could field independent candidates. (1 Sep 2024)
Read more at The Age
NSW: The Rationalist Society of Australia is seeking answers from New South Wales education minister Prue Car about a Christian group’s promotion of proselytising in a public school. In June, Scripture Union published a video on its social media in which two senior students talk about how they urge other students, including non-Christians, to take part in lunchtime religious activities. The state’s Department of Education has an explicit policy banning proselytising for ‘voluntary student activities of a religious nature’ in schools – such as lunchtime activities. (2 Sep 2024)
Read more at The Rationalist Society of Australia
NSW: Sport is at the pointy end of the growing divide between private and public education in Sydney. Scots College once had an altitude training facility for its sports teams. Shore has underwater cameras in its pool. Cranbrook has four tennis courts and two playing fields. Four private schools on the “golden mile” of the upper Pacific Highway have 17 basketball courts between them. Yet in Sydney’s inner west, 12 public primary schools have just pulled out of their only regular interschool sports competition because the buses they need to get to poorly drained council playing fields are too expensive and unreliable, and the teachers don’t have the time to attend. (3 Sep 2024)
Read more at The Age
TAS: Two former Tasmania students have given harrowing evidence of their experience of bullying and discrimination during their high school years. A parliamentary committee is holding public hearings into the subject and has received dozens of submissions from former students, schools and parents. Former Catholic student Sam Watson said the church’s stance on same-sex marriage had made coming out as gay in high school in 2015 more difficult. “While most staff and students were supportive, I experienced a number of comments and indirect actions that simply would not have occurred to non-LGBTIQA+ students. Shortly after I came out, the Archdiocese circulated the Don’t Mess with Marriage booklet to every student, making it clear to me that as a person my school system did not want my rights to be equal." (3 Sep 2024)
Read more at The Mercury
WA: Earlier this year Bunbury PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) mum, Hazel Wood, called on the Cook Government to reinstate the Inclusive Education WA strategy (previously part of the federal Safe Schools program) after former Premier Mark McGowan stopped funding in 2020. Wood wrote to Education Minister, Tony Buti, and Youth Minister, Hannah Beazley, to urge the reintroduction of the program. Recently Buti wrote back, saying the Cook Government would not do this. (4 Sep 2024)
Read more at Out in Perth
TAS: Attempts to reduce discrimination in Tasmanian schools run the risk of reducing religious freedom in the fashion of dictators and totalitarian regimes, the Australian Christian Lobby says. The comments came during a Parliamentary Committee hearing into bullying and discrimination in Tasmanian schools. Australian Christian Lobby director of policy and research Christopher Broheir said the ACL did not support bullying but had concerns about the tenor of some efforts to crack down on discrimination. (4 Sep 2024)
Read more at The Mercury
SA: Last week, Greens member Robert Simms introduced his Equal Opportunity (Religious Bodies) Amendment Bill into the Legislative Council, proposing to remove exemptions provided to religious bodies such as schools and service providers. In his speech in parliament, Mr Simms said it was “difficult to comprehend” that South Australia continued to allow some forms of discrimination against LGBTIQ people. The exemptions in the state’s Equal Opportunity Act allow religious schools to fire teachers and religious welfare service providers such as shelters to refuse service on the grounds of sex, sexual orientation and gender identity. (5 Sep 2024)
Read more at The Rationalist Society of Australia
QLD: A coalition of Queensland’s religious leaders says the Miles Government’s proposed overhaul of workplace sexual harassment laws could force faith-based institutions to teach against their beliefs on sexuality and gender. Planned law changes introduce a ban on creating a work environment that is “hostile on the basis of sex”, which church groups believe could leave them vulnerable to legal action for refusing to appoint women to leadership roles or having separate prayer areas for males and females. (5 Sep 2024)
Read more at CathNews (originally published in The Australian)
VIC: Private schools are pocketing thousands of dollars more per student in taxpayer funding than similar public campuses just down the road, according to a new education union report. Using Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) data, the union compared the income per student of Werribee Secondary College and MacKillop Catholic Regional College, located 1.6 kilometres apart in Melbourne’s south-west. Despite having fewer students with high needs, MacKillop received $1689 more per student in government funding in 2022. Factoring in all income sources, which includes fees, the Catholic school received almost 50 per cent more per student than its neighbour, according to the union. Two comparable independent schools in the same federal electorate – Al-Taqwa College and the Islamic College of Melbourne – also received significantly more government funding. (6 Sep 2024)
Read more at The Age
QLD: Members of church group 'The Saints', accused of causing the death of eight-year-old Elizabeth Rose Struhs, who died on 7 January 2022 at her family's home in Toowoomba after six days without her prescribed insulin shots, have denied they acted in a criminal conspiracy to deny her medication. The girl's father, Jason Struhs, said he still had faith and that God would bring Elizabeth back from the dead. Elizabeth's father and Brendan Luke Stevens, the 62-year-old leader of The Saints, are charged with Elizabeth's murder. (6 Sep 2024)
Read more at SBS News
Commentary and Analysis
Si Gladman: Andrew Leigh’s rose-coloured religious glasses
"Putting aside for a second all the abuse and financial scandals that have engulfed faith communities in recent decades, consider how conservative religious leaders and lobbyists have spearheaded opposition to many positive social policy advancements that have made modern Australian society vastly better, and more compassionate and caring. Many of those nicer religious folk tried their best to block same-sex marriage and voluntary assisted dying laws. Dr Leigh's views on religion provide an interesting backdrop at a time when religious lobbyists are putting intense pressure on the Albanese government on a number of fronts – and particularly in Dr Leigh's portfolios." (31 Aug 2024)
Read more at Rationale Magazine
Jay Daniel Thompson: The new “Satanic Panic”? Responding ethically to online anxiety over the devil and all his works
"Over the last eight years, the spectre of Satan has haunted many online conspiracy theories. The most famous of these is associated with QAnon, a group premised on the belief that Donald Trump is secretly trying to save the world from a cabal of Satanic, vampiric elites. Some activists have even argued that the devil resides in the detail of COVID-19 vaccines. ... Ideologically, the Satanic Panic reflected an emergent New Right, whose key players included conservative evangelicals, and their hostility towards those progressive movements (feminism, anti-racism, gay liberation) that were supposedly threatening the nuclear family and a properly Christian way of life. ... Senator Ralph Babet, leader of the United Australia Party, issued a media release describing the [Paris Olympic opening] ceremony as 'demonic and deranged'. The statement goes on to blame 'woke elites' for 'parading transgenderism and giving the middle finger to Jesus Christ'." (2 Sep 2024)
Read more at ABC Religion & Ethics
Brianna Morris-Grant: Health research institutes say scrapping LGBTI+ questions from the 2026 census leaves Australia's 'invisible' populations at greater risk of harm
"Eight major health research institutes, including the Australian Human Rights Institute and the University of NSW's Kirby Institute, have now called on the federal government to include questions on gender and sexual orientation in the next census. ... They said the questions had already "undergone rigorous testing" and the decision to not include any of them was "not sufficient". They added inclusion was "crucial" to providing equal public health access. "When populations are invisible in the census, they are at increased risk of marginalisation and disadvantage," the statement said." (4 Sep 2024)
Read more at ABC News
Graeme Watson: Did the government decision on the census give us the “nastiness” anyway?
"The whole debacle has led to accusations that in the wake of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum loss, the Albanese Government has started jumping at the shadows of any potential culture war. The decision has opened the door for a wide range of accusations to be made about LGBTIQA+ communities by conservative commentators, the exact kind of divisive debate Labor have said they were saving us from. On Sky News the commentors had a field day with issue." (5 Sep 2024)
Read more at Out in Perth
Paul Gregoire: Albanese’s Singling Out Trans People from the Census is a Move from the Morrison Playbook
"Victorian coroner Ingrid Giles handed down her findings on the Inquest into the Death of Bridget Erin Flack, a 28-year-old trans woman, who took her own life in December 2020. And the coroner’s court inquired into her suicide death due to the fact that around the same time as it received notification of it, four other trans women had also taken their own lives in similar circumstances. The coroner identified a number of systemic issues that were leading to trans women taking their own lives, including a failure of police systems to prioritise such cases, and a lack of adequate gender-affirming and culturally appropriate healthcare available, and these failures are in part due to a dearth in data regarding transgender and gender-diverse people in the community. 'Robust data is needed as a matter of priority to inform health, wellbeing, and suicide prevention initiatives in the TGD (transgender and gender diverse) community,' Giles outlines in her report." (7 Sep 2024)
Read more at Sydney Criminal Lawyers
Events and Campaigns
Equality Australia has launched their #CountUsIn2026 campaign, advocating for all LGBTI+ people to be counted in the 2026 census.
Read more and sign up on Equality Australia's website
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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