RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION BILL AND RELATED LEGISLATION
Religious worship is essential to most people's lives. This is true for non-believers as well as believers once we recognise that freedom of religious worship includes the freedom not to worship.
Once we accept that proposition the only generally acceptable basis for freedom of worship is equal freedom for everybody. Each person when considering their own claim to be able to worship freely, would reject a proposal that gave them less freedom to do so then another person.
Religious belief is primarily a matter of individual conscience. However, freedom of religion also encompasses the freedom to manifest one’s belief in community with others and in public. This is because witness in words and deeds is bound up with the existence of religious convictions.
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Press Freedom Inquiry
The QCCL welcomes this Inquiry, given the recent raids by the Australian Federal Police on media organisations who published disclosures from public sector whistleblowers. In 2019, Australia has also slipped several places in the World Press Freedom Index[1] due to a range of laws that infringe upon public interest reporting and the ability of journalists to protect their sources. The most concerning of these laws are discussed below.
In the absence of any explicit protection of freedom of speech and a free press in Australia's legal framework, it is critical that whistleblowers and the Australian press are provided with necessary protection to enable them to fulfil their democratic roles of holding the Government to account and keeping the public informed.
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Peaceful Assembly Act Works fine
The Council welcomes yesterday’s decision by the Chief Magistrate to reject the Brisbane City Council‘s application to prohibit the protest march in the city this morning.
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New Police Powers Relating to Protests
The Premier today released a statement in which she said there was evidence that protesters were arming themselves with booby traps, which could harm those who remove the protestors from a place of protest.
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Submission to Queensland Parliament on Youth Bail Reforms in 2019
The necessity for the reform of the law of bail contained in this Bill is made clear by the statistics that 80% of children in detention are on remand and only 16 percent of young people on remand go on to receive a custodial sentence and therefore the vast majority of them are spending unnecessary time in detention.
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Submission in relation to Voluntary assisted Dying
In other words, having regard to the unbearable pain and suffering of those with terminal or incurable illnesses a well-informed person could not reasonably reject VAD so long as it was only permitted in circumstances where all reasonable steps had been taken to protect the interests of the vulnerable
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Submission in relation to the change to the definition of murder
The Council supports a subjectivist approach to the criminal law. Subjectivism relies on the notion that individuals can be considered culpable for harm only where they were at the material time aware of the risk of causing that harm, and thus were able to avoid it. This means that it is important that the defendant voluntarily causes the outcome, either by consciously running the risk of that outcome or by actually intending it.
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Cancellation of Citizenship – Committee Doesn’t Go Far Enough
"Citizenship is person's basic right for it is nothing less than the right to have rights.”
“Citizenship is not a license that expires upon misbehaviour. Where does the principle underlying this legislation stop? Could a citizen be deprived of her nationality for evading tax or social security fraud?”
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