QLD “Respect at Work” Bill
The Queensland Government introduced The “Respect At Work” Bill in June 2024, to replace the failed Anti-Discrimination Bill.
This legislation was much more restrained and was primarily intended to implement the recommendations from the Federal Respect at Work report, including preventing sex-based discrimination. Generally speaking, a goal that we can all support!
However, there are still significant issues. In the section on sex-based discrimination, the definition of “sex” is expanded to include the sex a person was, or has been, or has changed to. This risks introducing the whole transgender debate into a bill intended to stop women from being harassed for being women.
In addition, the bar for offense is very low. Harassment on the basis of sex happens if a person engages in the conduct either with the intention of offending, or in circumstances where a reasonable person would have anticipated the possibility that the other person would be offended, humiliated or intimidated.
In the broader discussion of sex and gender, positions of belief from both sides can often be defined as demeaning by the other side, and offense is very easy to anticipate. Some activists have declared activities such as “misgendering” or “dead-naming” as inherently demeaning.
On the other side, activists define men transitioning into women to be demeaning to biological women.
On top of this, the legislation creates a positive duty for organisations to prevent discrimination and harassment, including harassment based on sex. However, what is harassment based on sex? In this broad definition of “sex” and the low bar of “reasonably expect to offend”, is teaching a biblical view of sexuality and gender harassment? We know it will likely be considered offensive.
The second problem with this bill is the vilification section. A person must not, because of the gender identity, religion, sex, sex characteristics or sexual orientation, etc. of another person or a group of persons, engage in a public act that a reasonable person would consider hateful towards, reviling, seriously contemptuous of, or seriously ridiculing the other person or members of the group.
Three things to note:
First the word “hateful”. It does not mean the same thing as inciting hatred. In fact, there is no legal definition of “hateful”. Which usually means the courts must fall back on the ordinary English meaning. Well, the ordinary English meaning of “hateful” includes: arouses hate, deserves to be hated, full of or expressing hate, or unpleasant; dislikable; distasteful. So what will a court decide that a reasonable person would consider hateful?
On top of this, the definition of a “reasonable person” is shifted to only include members of the affected category. What an average person, or even a judge, may find “reasonable” is not relevant. Only the offended category gets to decide what is “reasonable”. If you said something about Christians, would a reasonable Christian find it hateful? In addition, actual harm does not need to have occurred. It is enough that a “reasonable” member of the category would consider the conduct hateful. This is extraordinarily broad and we have no idea how a judge would rule, which leaves everyone with complete uncertainty.
The third problem is the exemptions. As with all similar laws, there are exemptions for good faith actions, for academic and artistic purposes. But in most equivalent legislation this list would also include religious purposes. But this one doesn’t.
Now most of these problems would go away if the Government got rid of the word “hateful”, and replaced it with something clearer, like “inciting hatred towards”, which has legal precedent. But as it stands, this combination of factors makes this legislation very dangerous to freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
Our Response
Freedom For Faith made a submission detailing all the problems with the bill. We also helped coordinate a letter to the Premier, signed by a wide range of faith leaders.
We also coordinate a Contact Your MP campaign in Queensland, encouraging individuals to write to their MP to voice their concerns about the bill.
In early August, the Parliamentary Committee released a report, and they failed to acknowledge or reference our submission, and there is no evidence that they paid attention to our detailed analysis of the problems or our proposed solutions. In addition, the Premier passed the faith leaders letter on to the Attorney General and the Attorney General’s office just replied saying she was too busy to meet.
On September 10, 2024 the Queensland Parliament passed the “Respect at Work” bill, without fixing any of the problems we highlighted.
However, we were encouraged that the Liberal National Party, Katter’s Australian Party and Independent MP Sandy Bolton all spoke out against the dangers this bill poses to religious freedom and freedom of speech. Many of these MPs used our legal analysis and echoed our concerns. Others spoke about how many letters and emails they have received from faith communities.
