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In an his­toric meet­ing in Syd­ney on Mon­day, Prime Min­is­ter Scott Mor­ri­son met with 21 lead­ers of major faith com­mu­ni­ties in Aus­tralia to dis­cuss progress in the government’s plans to intro­duce a Reli­gious Dis­crim­i­na­tion Bill lat­er this year (see pic­ture).  The Jew­ish, Catholic, Angli­can, Unit­ing Church, Hin­du, Mus­lim, Bud­dhist, Greek Ortho­dox, Cop­tic, Assyr­i­an and Melkite com­mu­ni­ties were among those rep­re­sent­ed at the meet­ing.

ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim, who rep­re­sent­ed the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, hailed the meet­ing.

“There can­not be many oth­er coun­tries in the world in which the head of gov­ern­ment can have a con­struc­tive con­ver­sa­tion over one and a half hours with such a diverse range of faith com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers on as sen­si­tive a top­ic as reli­gious free­dom  and dis­crim­i­na­tion,” he said.

“Each of us out­lined what was of impor­tance to our respec­tive com­mu­ni­ties not only with regard to the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion but also in terms of Australia’s broad­er cul­tur­al atti­tudes with regard to reli­gion”, Wertheim said.

“There was a large mea­sure of agree­ment in the room about many of the prin­ci­ples that the gov­ern­ment is grap­pling with in seek­ing a fair and work­able bal­ance between reli­gious free­dom and com­pet­ing rights and free­doms.  This sends a pos­i­tive mes­sage to the world about how effec­tive­ly Aus­tralia oper­ates as a mul­ti-faith and mul­ti­cul­tur­al soci­ety”.

Wertheim empha­sised that the gov­ern­ment is still work­ing on the draft leg­is­la­tion, and that there will like­ly be fur­ther con­sul­ta­tions as the process unfolds.  “We all wel­comed the Prime Minister’s assur­ance that the gov­ern­ment is ‘not rush­ing this’ and will con­tin­ue to pro­ceed in a mea­sured and con­sid­ered way.”

“The Prime Min­is­ter praised the role that reli­gious belief has played in com­mu­ni­ty build­ing”, Wertheim said. “From the tenor of his com­ments and respons­es to our con­cerns, I felt reas­sured that the rights and free­doms of peo­ple of faith to prac­tise and preach their beliefs, and the rights and free­doms of faith-based schools and insti­tu­tions to oper­ate in accor­dance with their ethos, will con­tin­ue to be pro­tect­ed in accor­dance with inter­na­tion­al norms”.

PM Scott Mor­ri­son (cen­tre fore­ground) with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of major faith com­mu­ni­ties. ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim is in fore­ground imme­di­ate­ly to the right of the PM.

Con­tact
Peter Wertheim AM | co-CEO
ph: 02 8353 8500 | m: 0408 160 904 | fax 02 9361 5888
e: pwertheim@ecaj.org.au | www.ecaj.org.au