QLD Anti-Discrimination Bill

In February 2024, the Queensland Government introduced a complete rewrite of the Anti-Discrimination legislation.

The Bill outlined a wide range of categories that it would be illegal to discriminate against, including sexuality, sexual activity and gender identity. They did allow for discrimination where a role had genuine occupational requirements. The example given was that a political party could employ staff who agree with their policies.

However, the bill had a completely different section for faith-based organisations. This section allows faith-based organisations to prefer to employ people of the same faith, with the conditions that the religion is a genuine occupational requirement, and that the discrimination is “reasonable and proportionate”.

These are both very problematic conditions because it means that a court gets to decide what roles in a faith organisation have faith as a genuine occupational requirement and what is “reasonable and proportionate” for a faith community.

Is it reasonable and proportionate to require a teacher in a Christian school to uphold the doctrine of the Trinity, or the church administrator to be faithful to his wife? The bill added further restrictions that were not laid onto other organisations. Particularly this line:

“To remove any doubt, it is declared that a person can not rely on subsection (1) to discriminate against another person on the basis of a protected attribute other than religious belief or religious activity.”

That means that you could employ based on religious beliefs, but not if those beliefs intersected with another attribute like gender or sexual activity. This meant that a Jewish school could refuse to employ someone if they eat pork, but not if they are also working as a prostitute. A Christian church could require employees to say they believe that sex should remain within heterosexual marriage, but cannot require them to live that way. A Muslim women’s group could refuse to employ a woman who is not wearing a hijab, but not if they were a biological male who has ‘transitioned’.

Our Response

When the bill was introduced, Freedom for Faith was asked for help. In partnership with Queensland Churches Together, we created a response modelled on the NSW campaigns. Queensland faith leaders got on board very quickly. We supported a multi-faith submission and also recommend that faith leaders co-write a letter. This letter was sent to the Premier and copied to all MPs. We also created a Contact Your MP campaign for Queensland, and emails from concerned people started rolling into MPs’ offices.

In June 2024, the Government withdrew the bill. It has since been replaced by the more limited “Respect at Work Bill”, which was passed in September.