Unsurprisingly, the Anti-Discrimination Amendment (Religious Freedoms and Equality) Bill 2020 was blocked in the NSW Parliament last week.
The Government and Opposition uniting to vote against the Bill 29-4 in the Legislative Council on 23 February.
While there was a clear recommendation from the Parliamentary Inquiry into the Bill last year, see our Briefing, to protect people of faith from discrimination this was going to occur through an alternative NSW Government Bill. The NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman announced in his Media Release following that Inquiry that the 'NSW Government will introduce a bill in Parliament to amend the
Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 (NSW), adding religion to existing
protected grounds of disability, sex, race, age, marital or domestic
status, homosexuality, transgender status and carer’s responsibilities.' He went on to say that ' plans to await the passage of the Commonwealth Bill through Parliament
before finalising the detail of NSW reforms, to enable it to consider
the interaction of Commonwealth law with NSW reforms and to avoid
constitutional inconsistency'.
With the Commonwealth legislation now on hold, and this private member's Bill rejected, we will be contacting the NSW Attorney-General to seek to bring forward the introduction of amendments to the NSW legislation to provide these long overdue amendments.