James was the kind of boy who appears in school brochures. At his Christian school in Sydney he was a model student and staff told him he was an ideal candidate for prefect.
Then he told a staff member he was struggling with his sexuality.
The prefect opportunity was withdrawn. He was threatened with suspension or expulsion. School authorities warned him that being gay was “not God’s will”. Then the school outed him to his parents.
He travelled home alone that afternoon on the bus, knowing his parents were on their way to the principal’s office.
The damage James suffered lingered long after his school days: to his mental health, to his friendships, to his family and, perhaps most of all, to how he saw himself.
Under federal law today, what happened to James is still legal. A religious school or university can sack a teacher or expel a student simply for being gay, transgender, divorced or pregnant. Some states and territories offer stronger protections, but federal laws do not.
Most Australians don’t know this. On the campaign trail last year, a voter who told me the world had gone too woke simply didn’t believe me when I told him about this religious carve-out from anti-discrimination laws. He thought it was wrong and that it couldn’t happen here.
It does. There are other examples, too.
Karen is an ordained minister and was a senior lecturer at a Baptist Bible college in Sydney. The college itself called her an “excellent and committed educator” with a “deep and abiding faith”. In April 2020 she was fired after getting engaged to her same-sex partner. In her words: “For most people, announcing their engagement means congratulations. For me it meant getting fired.”
Karen and James came to parliament last week to support my private member’s bill to amend the Fair Work Act 2009 and the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, removing sections that allow churches to discriminate against children and employees. Speaking to the media, Karen asked a question that has stayed with me: What difference could she have made to a student such as James if she had been allowed to be open about her own life at school?
This law says to school-aged children they should be afraid to be honest with their friends and trusted teachers about who they are – right at the point when they are trying desperately to figure that out.
Our laws apply equally and to everyone, whatever their faith, background or beliefs … If a cafe, a bank or a hardware store sacked an employee for being gay, it would be breaking the law, and most Australians would be rightly appalled. Why should a school be different?
It isn’t only LGBTQIA+ Australians who are affected. Sam, a Catholic vice-principal in Tasmania, was stood down after disclosing a new relationship following the breakdown of his marriage. There was no finding of professional wrongdoing. He was told he could no longer hold a leadership role, or even teach, because the Church had not annulled his marriage, even though he had already begun divorce proceedings. He later told a parliamentary inquiry he was treated “as though I was morally compromised”.
Sam’s story, like Karen’s and James’s, is not an argument against faith or against religious schools. It is an argument for fairness within them. Millions of Australians have had wonderful, formative experiences at religious schools, including many LGBTQIA+ students and teachers. Since introducing my bill, I’ve heard from gay male teachers who braced for the worst when they spoke to their principal and were instead invited to bring their husband to the next school event. I’ve heard from students who came out and were met with open arms. Those schools prove that faith and inclusion are not at odds. The law simply needs to catch up.
Anthony Albanese promised to fix this. Before the 2022 election, he pledged to amend section 38 of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, the loophole that lets religious schools sidestep protections granted to every other student and teacher in Australia. Four years on, it’s still there. In 2024, Albanese declared that Labor would not deliver on this key election promise unless he had bipartisan support from the Coalition. That support has never come. The government has effectively handed the opposition the power to veto this reform.
The blueprint for my bill was set out by the Australian Law Reform Commission, and the amendments I propose are very similar to those Labor put forward. Under my bill, religious schools would still be able to hire on the basis of faith and also promote to significant leadership positions on the basis of faith. What they could no longer do is sack a teacher or expel a student simply for being gay, transgender, divorced or pregnant.
The Greens have said they will support these reforms in both the House and the Senate. With the government’s majority in the House and the Greens’ support in the Senate, the prime minister can deliver on the promise he made before the 2022 election.
Religion is deeply personal. Religious schools are an integral part of our education system and parents should be free to choose the school they want for their children. I understand this is a sensitive topic and that a balance must be struck.
At a time when we’re debating what Australian values really mean, however, one should be beyond argument: we all live under the same laws.
Australia is one of the most diverse, multicultural countries on Earth. What holds that diversity together is a shared commitment to the fact that our laws apply equally and to everyone, whatever their faith, background or beliefs. We don’t have one law for one group and another law for someone else.
Yet that is exactly what section 38 creates. If a cafe, a bank or a hardware store sacked an employee for being gay, it would be breaking the law, and most Australians would be rightly appalled.
Why should a school be different?
The case is even stronger because these schools are funded by taxpayers. More than a third of Australian students attend non-government schools, most of them religious, and those schools receive billions of dollars in public funding every year. Australians are entitled to expect that public money doesn’t pay for discrimination that would be illegal anywhere else.
Freedom of religion matters, and my bill protects it. Yet freedom of religion has never meant freedom from the laws by which everyone else lives. In states where these exemptions have been narrowed or removed, religious schools continue to thrive with their ethos intact.
Above all, a school’s first responsibility is to the wellbeing of its students. Every child deserves a school where they can work out who they are without fear.
The pathway is clear. All that’s missing is courage from the prime minister and the Labor Party. Write to your MP. Sometimes all a politician needs to find their courage is a little encouragement.
No student should have to take the bus ride home that James did.