W W W W  World Wide Web Witness Inc. Home Page     Volume  What is New

BULLETIN ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY NINE

The So-Called Folau Law

It is reported that a team including Barnaby Joyce has set its mind on new religious liberty , which some might call the Folau bill.  The attorney-general evidently hopes to do justice to this type of liberty or give it some new weight as early as July 2019, and it is noted that strong support for religious liberty is being found in the electorate.

The idea of this movement is to remove religious considerations from employment.  In itself, however, this would not give further protection to school where BOTH the employer and the employee WANT them, and thoroughly agree on what they are to be, thus allowing character and goals to remain in various specialisations, and protecting the nation of the vice of making people like mice in their rigid conformity to what would be virtually a State religion, strictly and strenuously forbidden in Section 116 of the Constitution. It is not that it is not one excellent idea to have such a bill made and passed, as that in mind; but that the move might go further and make things more sure.

What is the good thing which  it makes clear in this, that the Government is NOT to interfere in this domain in the exhibition of religious modes (excepting of course items in themselves forbidden generally, such as diminishing freedom by killing or maiming, on the part of virulent religious appetites). The constitutional barrier in Section 116 does not in some semi-religious way mean that people may not have this liberty whether because of hurt feelings or envisionment of hurt other things. It is not affirming what it denies! Rather it is a rule made, a limit declared, a part of the famous character of this decreasingly free country, where exceptions can become the rule, flat contradiction the method and negligence the assumption because of this and that, as if words no longer had meaning.

This brings up  broader theme. How can Australia seek in this field of liberty to protect its heritage, preserve human reality including humour, and avoid the depersonalised trumpery of communist enslavement, where the individual is deprived of unit significance, the State is made in the ruling god, and the fabrication that things came from nowhere for no reason. If the universe were founded on no reason where did the power to tell it so come from, and what could bind it. Such reductionism is not needed to underlie anything in any rational society, though in terms of liberty it should be allowed for those who want it ... but not made LAW for those of a broader approach in realms of ideology, conviction and conclusion.

Some Ideas on Ideological Freedom

in the case of a Democracy
such as that in Australian

People be allowed to praise or condemn on a clear basis what neither invokes, urges nor praises  physical violence to settle issues.

People be allowed to argue any case within these same non-violent limits, but no party be compelled to listen.

As far as "hate speech" is concerned, condemnation on arguable grounds relative to various positions and ideologies be left unmolested.

Religious differences or their expression be not regulated or prevented in terms of any virtual or actual government religion, or virtual religious, this being contrary to the express limits set on such intrusion by the Constitution Article 116.

Contracts or formal work agreements between people may not be made subject to religious regulation unless this be set forth as a religious item in the public presentation of the body concerned, so that participants will be able to be well aware of the case, and of what kind it is, before they choose to begin.

Indeed, people, in the case of bodies with religious commitments, who wish to be employed in such, sharing its intent, may be so, thus allowing the constitutional insistence on what might in the vernacular be termed a fair go. People may then choose their special kind of religious environment, or no ostensible kind, this being liberty for all. Functionality should be considered with freedom, so that Government does not in effect retain the power to direct table tennis champions to avoid such specialisation, and instead become oarsmen in a racing eight! The comparison for many even now is by no means excessive.

If, then, both parties, school and teacher,  have a particular religious emphasis specified and desired: if they want it this way, why prevent it ? If, for example, both a School and a would-be Staff member want the religious background in some particular way, there is no use pretending that prohibition of it is non-interference. On the contrary, it is obvious discrimination only increasing when you come to the point of  presentation and examination exclusively of unproven but popular material, in terms of some governmental religious or pseudo-religious basis. It is monstrously unfair, and the more so when contrary presentation is made irrelevant or even forbidden.

It is also unconstitutional in terms of the Commonwealth, whether in its support or action directly.