Catholic Health Australia will not stand in the way of proposals to remove Catholic health providers’ current exemption from anti-discrimination laws which allow them to discriminate in who they employ and serve on religious grounds.
Writing in the latest edition of CHA’s Health Matters, CEO Martin Laverty addressed Federal Government proposals to change existing anti-discrimination laws, released by former Attorney-General Nicola Roxon last November.
Mr Laverty said the very existence of the exemption would come as a surprise to many Catholic health sector workers.
“It will surprise them because Catholic hospitals and aged care services do not discriminate in their employment practices, and nor do they discriminate with regard to whom they serve,” Mr Laverty wrote.
“It is of course the case that Catholic hospitals, in particular, do not provide the full range of services that can be accessed in hospitals operated by governments or other non-Catholic providers. [But] to not ever provide a specific service is not to discriminate.”
The government raised concerns, last year, about the possibility of religiously-affiliated aged care services refusing service on the grounds of sexual orientation.
Mr Laverty’s said Catholic healthcare providers would not discriminate precisely because of the Catholic Church’s religious convictions about the fundamental dignity of every human person.
Mr Laverty cited the Joseph Ratzinger-penned Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1986.
“The Church provides a badly needed context for the care of the human person when she refuses to consider the person as a ‘heterosexual’ or a ‘homosexual’ and insists that every person has a fundamental identity: the creature of God,” the letter states.
It remains unclear whether the bills will ever reach the parliament following Ms Roxon’s resignation to the back bench in February and the Coalition’s enduring opposition to the changes.
The government has already junked part of its proposal after a backlash from media organisations, sections of business and the churches, citing freedom of speech and freedom of religion concerns.
Mr Laverty said even if the bills do not proceed, the proposal provided CHA with a valuable opportunity to state its actual position.
“Former High Court Judge Michael Kirby has asked why the legislation can’t be expanded beyond its current remit to also require religious schools and hospitals to lose their right to discriminate in who they provide services to. Justice Kirby’s question about hospitals is a good one. Catholic hospitals don’t discriminate in either employment practice or service delivery, so why is the current exemption still necessary?”
While CHA has indicated it will not stand in the way of removing the current exemption in relation to employment and service, Sydney law professor Patrick Parkinson told ABC Radio National’s Encounter program recently that churches’ ability to discriminate on the basis of mission remained important.
“I believe there are real threats to religious freedom in this country … largely from a very secular view of the world which has very little place for personal faith other than as a hobby,” Prof Parkinson said.
“There is an Animal Farm approach to human rights, coming particularly from the human rights lobby and that puts what they call equality or non-discrimination at the top and religious freedom … perhaps below the bottom, not even observed sometimes as a serious human right.”
With one quarter of all Australians being born overseas, and with most being people of religious faith, it was critically important for future harmony that proper respect was shown to freedom of religion, he said.
Prof Parkinson has put forward a five-point agenda for religious freedom, that people be free: to manifest their religion; to appoint people of faith to organisations run by faith communities; to uphold moral standards within their own communities; to discriminate between right and wrong; and to teach and instruct others, including the freedom to make truth claims.
“There is a lot of nonsense spoken about discrimination … very often what is required, what is asked for, is the right to select people who fit with the mission of the organisation.
Nobody would criticise Julia Gillard for wanting Labor party members or supporters in her office because that is part of the mission fit of a Labor prime minister. [For the same reason] I have absolutely no problem with a gay bar wanting gay staff.”
Prof Parkinson, an Evangelical Christian and former advisor to the Catholic bishops, said he was worried about Australia heading towards “moral monoculturalism”:
“What I mean by that, is that a new secular majority is imposing on people who don’t share those values certain values about the way we behave which are anti-thetical to people’s faith. Respect for religious freedom, respect for people of faith, means allowing them to hold a different view on moral issues.”