Conservative Senator Cory Bernardi has launched himself back into the religious freedom debate, with a push to make freedom of speech trump all other human rights, including anti-discrimination laws.
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Senator Bernardi tabled his Australian Freedoms bill on Tuesday afternoon, a bill that puts freedom and the right to protect the family above race and other discrimination laws. It would require the government to explain each time it tables new legislation how the laws give freedom priority over other rights.
It comes as the Coalition prepares laws to protect religious freedom, but navigates tricky territory between some who want religious discrimination banned in the same way as sex, race and other forms of discrimination, and those who want religious freedom given stronger protection.
Senator Bernardi, the conservative who split with the Liberals, said "rights are cannibalising each other".
"Some key rights are unalienable and essential to the human condition. Adding ever more rights is nonsensical. Parliament must ring-fence Australia's key freedoms."
As Israel Folau fights his sacking over his anti-gay tweets, Senator Bernardi also took aim at "PC corporate fascism", as employers placed "myriad PC prohibitions" on the private lives of employees "either due to pressure from sponsors, Twitter and social media or from the PC busybodies increasingly nesting in their own human resources or communications branches".
The right to freedom was being "gradually whittled down, crowded out and competed away" in an era of politically correct identity politics, he said in a speech accompanying the tabling of his bill.
The term "discrimination" had worryingly broadened and "now seemingly also includes criticism, critique and anything other than endorsement, celebration and praise". Anti-discrimination laws were becoming weapons to ostracise opponents and drive them out of the public space, Senator Bernardi said.
And at the same time as he is pushing to elevate religious freedom, he also warned that a religious freedom act, unless handled carefully, "gravely risks a slippery slope towards blasphemy laws".
They could be weaponised by "certain religions" to shut down criticism of a particular belief.
Senator Bernardi attacked the LGBTIQ community as "imperialistic and aggressive" since winning the same-sex marriage debate in 2017.
Kirsten Lawson
It's about the truth for me. That means asking questions. Then asking more questions. On the best days, we get answers.
It's about the truth for me. That means asking questions. Then asking more questions. On the best days, we get answers.
