Relief as Australian Human Rights Charter Put on Hold
Catholic Communications, Sydney Archdiocese,
9 Mar 2010
Rocco Mimmo
Leading Sydney lawyer, Rocco Mimmo, founder and chairman of the Ambrose Centre for Religious Liberty, believes freedom to practice one's religion freely and openly is all important and to this end, insists the Catholic Church has a vital role to play in public debate.
He believes this is crucial, particularly at a time when the Federal Government's National Human Rights Consultation Committee has recommended Australia adopt a Human Rights Act. The Brennan Committee as it is known advocated a national Charter of Rights be adopted in October last year. But it now appears the Government has decided to put the implementation of human rights charter or act on hold.
"Which is a great relief," says Mr Mimmo, who believes rather than a Charter of Rights, Australia may end up with a Parliamentary committee which will scrutinise bills that come before the House for compatibility with the international instruments on human rights.
Such an arrangement, he believes, would pose far less of a threat to religious freedom, citing what has happened in Britain since the UK adopted a Charter of Rights in 1998 as an example of why Australians should be wary of creating its own Charter of Rights.
"Increasingly the Act in Britain has been interpreted as individual rights and the state and public authorities have been called on to mandate lifestyle choices in the name of equality and/or human rights," he says and gives a recent example where in a British debate on anti discrimination laws, one of the provisions left open centred around whether or not a religious institution could refuse to admit acknowledged homosexuals for priestly training.
Other interpretations of Britain's Charter of Rights have led to other troubling examples which included the Anglican church being forced to employ a homosexual as a youth worker and pay him compensation for initially refusing him employment; an English nurse being fired from her job after offering to say a prayer for the 78 year old woman she was caring for and the owner of a hairdressing salon being ordered to employ a Muslim even though she kept her hair covered at all times as part of her religion. There was even one instance where after buying a house next door to a church in London, the new owners complained about the noise made by the choir during services so all music and singing was banned.
To combat instances such as these and cherry picking interpretations of a Bill of Rights, leaders from Australia's Catholic, Anglican, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu and Jewish religious communities, banded together to fight restrictions on religious freedoms, and in particular to voice their national Charter of Rights.
"While freedom of religion and belief is affirmed throughout international law as a fundamental human right, in practice it can be treated as if it is a limited concession granted by the state to allow space for individual or organised eccentricities," the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell said at the official launch of the Ambrose Centre for Religious Liberty in April last year.
Cardinal Pell is a founding member of the Ambrose Centre's Board of Advisors as are the Senior Rabbi of the Great Synagogue, Jeremy Lawrence; the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen; prominent Buddhist leader and Adelaide academic My-Van Tran; Hindu leader, Mr Gambhir Watts and Brisbane lawyer and member of the Australian Federation of Religious Studies, Mr Haset Sali.
"Under the meaning of equality all people are considered equal, but what this means in reality is that religious institutions and communities become second class citizens, losing rights to manifest religious doctrine," says Mr Mimmo. "This means there is a denial of what religions and the priesthood stand for which drives religious communities into private spheres where they cannot speak up for what they stand for, nor can they influence public policy."
If Catholics and other religions are to defend their diminishing freedoms, they must take part in the public debate and have input into public policy, he believes.
This question and just how the religious freedoms we once took for granted are quickly eroding, will be discussed in detail by Professor Gerard Bradley, an expert on constitutional law and religion at America's Notre Dame University, Indiana, and leading theologian and scholar, Dr Michael Casey, who is private secretary to Cardinal Pell.
The discussion between these two experts, who will explore the importance of religious values in public life and the rise of radical secularism to the detriment of religious liberty, will be held at 7.00 pm tonight, 9 March in St Benedict's Hall at the University of Notre Dame Sydney's Broadway Campus.
The public is welcome at this event. To find out more about the event log on to the Amrose Centre for Religious Liberty at www.ambrosecentre.org.au
