In this episode we discuss:

Episode 327

Religious Discrimination Bill

Phew … that was close

Citipointe

Thank God for Citipointe Christian College and who are they?

The Citipointe Contract

Landon Hardbottom

Citipointe Year 9 Curriculum

Noosa Connection

History of the Bill

We don’t need any Religious Discrimination Bill

Trans not Atheists

A Quick Refresher on Hierarchy of Rights and Discrimination

The Ideological Argument … again … to put it another way

Countering the Religious Ethos argument

Power Doesn’t Care about good arguments

Fear of a wedge issue

The Bill

Principles can be horse-traded

The Labor Plan by Paul Karp in The Guardian

Which Labor Members stood up?

Dominic Perrottet says religious discrimination bill is unnecessary

What Happened on Wednesday the 9th of February

Sex Discrimination Act

What Happened on Thursday

Scuttling the religion package shows where priorities lay all along

Looking back on the strategy

Teachers

I don’t trust Albanese on this issue

Labor Won’t Protect Teachers – ask Kristina Kenneally

A Reminder of private school numbers

My daughter

Constitutional concerns

The Shovel

Canberra Convoy

Scomo Stuff

April Sun in Cuba

Hair Washing

Brittany Higgins’ accused to seek trial delay after PM apology

Scomo is a liar

Ep 327 - Ukraine

The United States of Trust Me Bro.

Hypocrisy

When you have meddled in so many countries you can’t keep track

Russian Tricks

Suburban Eastern Australia, an environment that has, over time,

evolved some extraordinarily unique groups of homosapiens.

Despite the reputation of their homeland, some are remarkably thin skinned.

Some seem to have multiple lifespans, a few were once thought

to be extinct in the region.

Others have been observed being sacrificed by their own, but today we

observe a small tribe akin to a group of meerkats that gather together atop

a small mound to watch, question and discuss the current events of their city,

their country and their world at large.

Let's listen keenly and observe this group fondly known as the

Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove.

Well, hello there.

Dear listener.

This is the Iron Fist and the Velva Glove Podcast, episode 327.

It's the 15th of February, 2022, and the religious discrimination bill

has been put on the back burner, back burner for a little while at least.

So we're gonna talk about that.

There's a podcast where we talk about news and politics and sex and religion.

There'll be plenty of religion talk in tonight's episode.

Um, I'm Trevor, AKA, the iron Fist with me.

As always, Shea, the subversive.

Good evening.

And Joe the tech guy.

Evening all.

If you're in the chat room, Tony is in the chat room.

Hi Tony.

And by the way, Tony, I'm going to be in Sydney, uh, next month.

Uh, let me see.

I reckon Friday the 11th for any patrons in Sydney, we'll

get together at the usual venue.

So look out for news about that.

So that would be.

The Friday the 11th of March, I reckon.

So good to see you Tony, looking forward to seeing you then.

Anyone else in Sydney who wants to catch up with us, it's a

nice group of people down there.

We get together in a pub in the city and have a chat and um, one of the nice

things about it is that um, because everyone sort of listens to the podcast,

we've got all this Um, understanding and knowledge that's already there,

and we can just launch into topics because everybody's familiar with

them, and um, yeah, so you've never met these people before, but you can talk

about things as if you've known them all your life, so it's really good.

So, hi there to Landon Hardbottom, uh, he's in the chat room, he actually

has something to say later on, and Dice Straights and Bronwyn and

David Cox, uh, hello to everybody.

So, well, um.

You know, I send the notes to Shea and Joe a couple of days before we do this

podcast, and I tell you, the notes on this one relating to the religious

discrimination bill are pretty long.

I don't expect you to read them all, Shea, like I'm glad, because, yeah

Probably go up to 50, 60 pages of stuff there, I reckon, um, with Just trying to

explain what happened with this religious discrimination bill and maybe the history

of it and, uh, all the rest of it.

I mean, this podcast, dear listener, if you're new to us, we started off

Uh, Scott and I, we were both members of the Secular Party at the time,

and very heavily focused on religion and secular stuff, so, this is a big,

you know, moment, uh, in secularism and uh, religious discrimination in

Australia, so, it's gonna get some attention, we're gonna give it plenty,

let us know your thoughts in the chat room, and um, Yeah, well, kick off.

So, I mean, Shay and Joe, before I launch into my rants over this stuff, I'd like

to get some words in now beforehand.

What impressions did you have, um, post, you know, with the sort of

thing falling over the way it did?

Did you have any strong impressions at all?

Thank God for City Pointer.

I think this would have snuck through had City Pointer not happened.

Yes.

That's what was scary.

Um, and you kind of think, was the Principal on our side?

Was he deliberately trying to do this?

I can assure you he wasn't.

No, that's right.

I was actually prompted, uh, to go heavily into the background of CityPoint, which

we're going to do first up, because it is interesting, the whole CityPoint thing.

So, my son Joe said the same thing, that um, CityPoint was a big factor in this.

And he said, you know, why don't we organise People on our side to

infiltrate places like that and encourage them to do what they did

because it was so helpful to the cause.

Yeah, it was.

So, dear listener, City Point, of course, um, is the school in Brisbane

which, um, came out and, uh, requested that parents sign a contract.

And, uh, and, uh, of course, there was just uproar over the contents of it.

So, um, you might remember that they said in the contract, We believe

that any form of sexual immorality, including but not limited to adultery,

fornication, homosexual acts, bisexual acts, bestiality, incest, pedophilia

and pornography, is sinful and offensive to God, and is destructive

to human relationships and society.

I mean, that's, that's the tone of the contract, and Um, really, it was so

handy, as I think everyone realises, because so often the argument is, oh,

schools, they'll never do, you know, these laws are in place, but they'll

never need them, they'll never use them, it's, it's just for some really odd

occasions that perhaps something strange, like, they'll never need it, and they're

not the sort of people who'd do that.

And the city point was just great, because People everywhere could

point to it and go, well, they will, these are the sorts of people who

are out there and who will use it.

It's not just some theoretical power that will never be used.

When you read the sort of stuff these guys are saying.

The bill had said it was okay as long as you told everyone up front in a contract.

Yes.

And I think they were trying to pre empt that by getting everyone to sign a

contract saying this is what our ethos is.

Indeed.

Yeah.

That's right.

That was one of the things in this whole negotiation was.

Well.

Provided a school discloses what its ethos is, then it should be

able to do whatever it likes.

Which is crazy!

I had a gay friend who was, Oh my god, have you heard about CityPoint?

And I'm going You do realize there's a religious privilege

bill, um, that's pushing exactly this, were you aware of it?

No?

No idea.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And certainly you're right about the way it got so much coverage.

Even one of my other news podcasts that I listened to, The Briefing,

they did a sort of in depth look at it with a couple of, uh, people

who attend City Point, and it was.

You know, blended families and people who didn't actually really think about the

way this bill might be used, previously actually giving it some thought.

It's not necessarily just about, you know, gay and trans, but a whole

range of things Christians aren't for.

Yeah.

Jesus mentions divorce.

10 times, I think, and he says nothing about gay people.

Roman in the chat room says, I bet that the local libs were on

the blow straight away to the City Point people ordering them to close.

Things down fast.

The thing is Broman, the local libs are the City Point people.

. They're one, yes, they're one and the same.

Our Lord mayor, liberal Shriner Shriner, Adrian Shriner is that he's, he's an

old, he's a graduate from City Point.

Um, so our Brisbane Lord mayor, and they've certainly got their tentacles into

the liberal party in all sorts of ways.

So.

Yeah, um, I guess some of the other libs would have been on to them and saying,

shush, stop that, but um, uh, so yeah.

The other thing that we didn't talk about the last time we raised City

Point was, you know how we were talking about schools and who goes to

which school and who becomes elite?

Yes.

This mother was saying that she chose City Point partly because of the locale,

which I hadn't considered as well.

So often parents are just going, oh, it seems like a good school

and it's handy enough and it's between the two parents houses.

Let's roll with that, you know, so.

And totally different priorities.

And that's why.

Yeah.

And being a private school, I kick out the riff raff.

And they also don't accept, you know, anyone they don't want to accept.

They're hard to teach kids, the kids who are maybe disabled

physically, or Uh, intellectually.

I mean, the ones that are expensive to educate, they just say, you know,

you should probably go somewhere else.

We just want kids who are easy.

So, I mean, that's the whole point of private schools is they are able to

say no to the cohort that are expensive to teach and, uh, and just, uh, you

know, that's one of their advantages.

So, yeah.

Um, Bromman says, big strategic error though, Trevor.

Of course it was!

But, yes, indeed.

So, um, so yeah, um, you know, Ruddock Inquiry, we've had years of

submissions, we've had millions of words of argument about the pros and cons of

all the bits and pieces of this bill.

And at the end of the day, it came down to one word, I think, which was

transgender, and it came down to one person, who was, I think, Fiona Martin.

One of the Liberals who crossed the floor, so basically, uh, if we look

back in the history of this, um, oh, let me, yeah, I do want to go into the

history of it first, yes, I'll skip around my notes that I was preparing

for, so what we essentially had, uh, back in the dying days of the Turnbull,

uh, government, so, and we go back to episode 170, uh, in this podcast where

we were talking about this, so, um, what we had was the marriage equality laws.

Uh, had been passed, and of course, the religious right was just in

uproar that this had got through.

They were pissed, and were feeling persecuted, and to placate them,

Prime Minister Turnbull gave them and said, you can have a Ruddock

inquiry, we'll look into religious discrimination and see what there is.

And now shut up.

And so, you know, right at this moment, I've noticed

Malcolm's wife, what's her name?

I can't remember what it is, but she's been commenting on Twitter.

Lucy.

Yes.

Lucy and sort of congratulating the ones who crossed the

chamber and stuff like that.

And it's like, your husband was responsible for this.

Stop pretending to be supporting people who are now trying to fix his mess

because he's the one who started this.

by agreeing to, you know, by giving a erotic inquiry to these people.

So, you know, Lisa Turnbull, your husband, has a large,

uh, fingerprint all over this.

Anyway, so he said, yeah, erotic inquiry, you can have it.

And of course, it was stacked with religious zealots, not a single

pro secular person on the panel.

It had people like Father Frank Brennan, Jesuit priest, the same

Frank Brennan who said, if I hear a confession and somebody Confesses to

pedophilia, I will not tell the police without that person's permission.

I mean, he's one of the panellists.

There was Nicholas Aroni, Professor Nicholas Aroni, who said Religious

freedom should include the right to practice Sharia law within limits.

He was part of the panel.

So it was stacked with religious zealots.

There was a few people there who seemed neutral, but nobody who you would

certainly call on the With any sort of fame for being pro secular, if you like.

So, Ruddock Review, um, produced recommendations, which Prime Minister

Turnbull didn't like, and he was too embarrassed to reveal, if you recall.

Like, the report had been submitted to the government, and they sat

on it for months, clearly because they were embarrassed about the

recommendations that were in there.

Specifically the recommendations that we should write a law to make it legal

to expel and discriminate against gay and lesbian students, you know,

allow religious schools to do this.

So Turnbull sat on it.

It got, um, uh, shelved and sort of hidden away and that, uh,

that upset the religious zealots and eventually it got leaked.

Now, at the time it got leaked, we had a new prime minister, Scott Morrison.

And he didn't mind, not too much, because he actually liked the ideas.

So, when it got leaked, and he was asked, So you're comfortable

with a school expelling a student because they are gay or lesbian?

And he replied, It is existing law.

And that's true, it was existing law, and, uh, it was existing law in the

Sex Discrimination Act, and, and the beauty about that whole thing at the

time was, I mean, I remember chortling with Scott over this one, as, you know,

what a great backfire, because suddenly people were talking about it, and going,

what do you mean there's this law?

that allows you to do this.

We never knew that was the case, and Scott Morrison's having to

say, well, it's always there, it's existing law, it's existing law.

And he, um, unfortunately in terms of timing, had a by election coming up,

and in order to, to placate, um, the sort of the electorate, he agreed that

he would pass a law that changed that.

So that gay and lesbian kids could not be expelled by private religious schools.

So, way back then, right at the very beginning of his prime ministership.

He, uh, he basically gave that commitment, that they would be protected.

Now, since that day until, you know, the night of February or whatever

it was, he did nothing about it.

And in fact, while he was pushing through all of his religious discrimination

bills, or bill, and his various drafts and stuff, and people would say, Hey,

what about the kids being discriminated against, the young lesbian ones?

Oh, we'll get to that, but we've got to get through this first of all.

It was always pushed to the back, always going to be something

that happened down the track.

Sigh.

Um, he never dealt with it and his failure to deal with it ended

up being vital the other day.

So, um, so, uh, and of course at the time when he announced that,

um, that caused the religious zealots to feel persecuted again.

So, uh, so that's the sort of, um, background to the religious

discrimination bill and its formation.

And, um, um, so the other day, With the, with the bill, and we're going to get

into the finer details of exactly what happened, but essentially it got to the

point where Morrison acknowledged that he would as part of the whole process.

Asked legislation that would stop gay and lesbian kids from being expelled,

and people said, what about transgender?

And he said, no, can't go there.

Essentially.

And that was enough for a handful of Liberals to cross the floor, and we'll

talk about Who they were and how they did it, but essentially, there were two

who were always going to cross the floor.

Um, and it was a third one, Fiona Martin, who when she crossed the floor, that then

meant another couple came across as well.

So, really, if she hadn't There were two who were only going to cross if the

numbers had already failed the government.

So, it was really one person and one word, um, Transgender and Fiona Martin.

So, we came very close to things panning out a bit differently on the day.

I mean, it still would have gone to the Senate, still would have been

arguments, but it was very close.

And, look, as you're going to find out when we're talking about City

Point and the, uh, religious right in the rest of this episode, these

people are not going to give in.

So, okay, even if Labor wins Even if Labor did nothing, um, there will

eventually be a Liberal government and these guys will bop, you know, pop

their heads up again, by which time they would have stacked more branches and

had more members and got more numbers.

These guys play the long game and You know, while it might be over for the

moment, it's going to come back for sure.

They just got to get their numbers up again and away they'll go.

So, um, so it's over for the time being, but it's going

to, you know, come up again.

So, um, yeah, so Bridget Archer and Trent Zimmerman were the first

two to cross the floor and Fiona Martin provided the crucial vote.

They were then joined by Dave Sharma and Katie Allen, who said they would

cross the floor if the government Was already set to lose the vote, so, um, so

yeah, had Fiona not crossed, then, um, uh, who knows what would have happened.

Alright, so, we mentioned City Point, anybody want any comments before I move

on to the background now of City Point, or I'll just keep going, so, okay.

I was just thinking those two MPs, kind of like the Italians during the war.

Right.

Oh, our side's losing, so we'll cross over to the other side.

It's like, yeah, I feel strongly about this, only if

we're It's terrible, isn't it?

It is.

It is terrible, yeah.

Alright, uh, City Point.

So, so really the story begins and ends with City Point, I think.

Because City Point provided the, uh, concrete example to Australia

of what shitty religious schools are prepared to do and say.

And, um Sort of lifted the lid on on what goes on.

So but really City Point is also at the beginning of the story.

So So the City Point Church Now this I'm taking from Uh, a book called,

Taking God to, uh, maybe it was, yeah, Taking God to School by Marion Maddox.

A well thumbed copy.

She's written other books which, uh, includes God under Howard.

So, uh, so a lot of what I'm about Seapoint is actually

from Marion Maddox's, um, book.

So, um, Seapoint Church is, uh, home of the Red Frogs.

So, when you hear about The, um, Red Frog groups getting around for

schoolies, um, always on the news.

It was, it worried me.

Yeah, it made me a little bit uncomfortable when I

was at schoolies as well.

Did they?

Yeah, what's the meaning of you?

I don't really get it.

Yeah, so Like, why aren't you drinking like everyone else?

Yeah, so Red Frogs, traditionally people in their early 20s who are around

during schoolies, checking on people if they're drunk and need to be walked

home and Had the vomit wiped off them.

Tooleys.

No, that's a different, that's a different.

That's how they looked.

The Tooleys.

Just different lollies.

The Tooleys are the ones looking for sex, but, but, but the Red Frogs,

handing out Red Frogs, helping people, you know, they'll come into their

units and help them clean up and, you know, on the face of it, great.

But of course they use it as an opportunity, um, to say, hey, You

know, what do you think about Jesus?

And all the rest of it, so they use it as a selling tool

to try and get more people in.

So, so CityPoint, um, basically operates the Red Frogs, um, chaplaincy network.

And it's also home to the Christian Outreach Centre denomination.

So I can remember the Christian Outreach Centre being quite big in, as a

terminology back when I was a teenager.

Cockers they're otherwise known.

Yes.

Thank you, Joe.

COC, Christian Outreach Centre.

So, um, the college opened in 1978, so City Point did, first known as Christian

Outreach College, and this was during the first wave of new private school openings.

Following the increases in education funding by Whitlam, and that funding

was also tweaked by Malcolm Fraser, so that was when the Federal Government

decided to allow funding or provide funding for private schools, which

did not happen, um, prior to that.

And the Christian groups went, this is a good look.

We can start a school.

So the government will pay the money.

So until then you'd basically had the state schools and you'd

had elite, um, Catholic and Anglican sort of private schools.

And that point, City Point was an example of this new form of Christian school that

was a bit more low cost, low fees sort of school that cropped up at the time.

So, uh, it was a creation of a new sort of category of, of

school sector, if you like.

And, um, so City Point, um, became the first of a family of Christian

outreach college affiliated schools.

And, um, in this book, there's a guy Sam Hay describes the church

itself, so, uh, this is, now her book, by the way, is back, uh, let's

see, 2014 it was published, so this is still the case back in 2014.

The main auditorium is more like an entertainment or shopping centre.

This is the, um, The Christian Outreach College, Centrepoint.

Near the front entrance is a large commercial cafe, well stocked bookshop,

and extensive information booth with FPOS machines for collecting donations.

The wide entrance hall leads into a huge auditorium with over 2, 000 seats.

This is fronted by a large stage with musicians and a team of singers

energetically presenting their own compositions of high tempo music.

Five large electronic screens extend back across the back of the stage with chorus

words overlaying images of the performers.

30 minutes of carefully planned singing is followed by a well

organised welcome and announcements in a message that focuses more on

contemporary life than religious themes.

That sounds exactly like the Hillsong event that we went to a few years ago.

So, if you go onto the Centrepoint campus, you'll find the Kay

and John Gagliari Centre.

So, this is the primary school's specialist building, Year 1 students,

the Kane and John Gagliari Centre.

So who was John Gagliari?

He was a journalist, public relations advisor, world travelled

businessman, a string of achievements in religion and politics.

He was the founding chairman of the City Point's tertiary institution,

called the Christian Heritage College.

And he was a member of its Course Development Committee, he is the Media

and Communications Manager for the National Denomination of Christian

Outreach College, and he served on the International Relief Arm.

So this is John Gagliardi, obviously heavily involved in CityPoint.

Guess what?

He co founded the Australian Christian Lobby in Canberra.

This is, this is how we end up with, I mean, he's part of this whole

dominionist crowd and part of setting up the Australian Christian Lobby.

And he was deeply involved in setting up CityPoint and is part of CityPoint.

So, CityPoint isn't just some crazy, uh, new group who sprung up out of the

blue and have ruined things for the, um, Australian Christian Lobby and the other

hardline Christian groups in Australia.

Centrepoint are that group.

They are the beginning.

They're the ones who started it all.

And, you know, Gagliardi started the Australian Christian Lobby, so this

was the very centre of that movement.

Not some crazy offshoot.

Basically shot the movement in the foot, if you like.

So, um, So yeah, it comes from the very heart of the movement, City Point.

And so, when we look at just the irony of it, that they've done all this

work over all these years in setting these politicians up, in seeding these

people into power, in creating the Australian Christian Lobby, in pushing

for this religious discrimination bill.

And, um, and they were the ones who, at this point in time, stuffed it up.

But they'll be back again, but just for the moment, yeah.

So, that's interesting.

Um, I find that CityPoint has that history.

Um, so, yes.

So, setting up the Australian Christian Lobby, um, and, you know, Gagliardi

launched it, the ACL in 1995, and he formed committees, raised funds,

and he was, um, its first president.

And, And he was its patron at one stage, uh, straight out of

the heart of, of City Point.

Um, what else have we got here, so, so yeah, and of course, these

people are, are really into a form of a neo Pentecostalism, very much

into combining church and state, whereas really previously our old

fashioned churches were very much into separating church and state.

And, and, That's quite different to these guys who feel this

whole Dominionism movement that, uh Oh, the Anglicans weren't.

Well, nowhere near what these guys are.

I mean, particularly in the early days of Federation, both sides wanted, didn't

want religion taught in state schools because they didn't want the Anglican kids

becoming Catholic and being influenced by the Catholics and vice versa.

So There was a, certainly a, more of a degree, and I know myself talking to

a woman who was in the Uniting Church, one of the, one of the teachers in the

religious instruction movement, she said we stopped doing it because we

figured we should just be doing this on Sundays, what's, what's the point, and

it's too hard to get volunteers, so.

The more traditional ones I would maintain are far more keen to have church

state separation than these new guys.

I was just referring to the fact that our head of state happens to

be head of the Anglican Church.

Uh, yes, in, in the sense of our, um, our queen.

Oh, our queen, yes.

Sorry, yes.

So, um, okay.

Um, let me see, what else have I got about City Point?

Oh, there's an article about, um, The Guardian did an excellent article about,

The, um, City Point and its reach into the, uh, Liberal National Party and in

2018, when the Queensland Parliament decriminalised abortion in the state.

One of the local LNP MPs, Steve Minican, voted with his conscience and

supported the bill to legalise abortion.

Text messages shown to Guardian Australia this week, sent among City

Point churchgoers in the months after the vote, listed the nearby suburbs

within Minican's electorate and sought people there who were willing

to get political and fight back.

By February 2019, more than 40 new or transferring members had applied

to join Minican's Party branch, and the LNP executive intervened

to prevent a pre selection contest.

It's just classic of what we hear going on around the country, when they sign people

up and get them to join political parties.

Um, in this thing it says here, the Guardian says, while there is no

suggestion the church leadership was involved in recruiting

people to join the branch.

Um, CityPoint's global pastors, Mark and Lee Ramsey, have been

vocal in their support for LNP politicians and attacks on labour.

So, the senior global pastors for CityPoint One of them, Lee Ramsey,

described Queensland Premier Anastasia Palaszczuk as irrational and deplorable

and posted frequent criticisms of her in the months before the 2020 election.

And, um, and ahead of the 2019 federal election, Mark Ramsey posted

a portrait of Prime Minister Scott Morrison and said, quote, This election

is not about what party you prefer, it's about good, godly leadership.

This is the sort of entry into the political sphere that

these people are willing to do.

So, um, uh, Tony in the chat room has to go back to work.

He'll catch up with the rest of the podcast later.

Good on you, Tony.

Um, alright, um, I think as I mentioned before, there's links to the Liberal

Party in CityPoint, and Adrian Schrinner, Lord Mayor of Brisbane, is one of them.

And, um, at the last state election, the LNP selected City Point pastor

Jeanette Wishart to run in the local electorate of Mansfield.

Her campaign posters were strung along the fence line of the City

Point campus, and many of the volunteers were drawn from the church.

She now works in the office of the Leader of the Opposition, David Christa Foley.

So, there we go.

That's City Point.

Now, um, I just have to mention actually at this point that

we got some listener feedback.

And, uh, let me just try and play this for you now.

Adultery, fornication, homosexual acts, bisexual acts, bestiality,

incest, pedophilia and pornography.

Cheryl, scan our computer and devices for malware.

Someone's leaked our Pornhub playlist to the Iron Fist Velvet Glove podcast.

Thank you, Landon.

Long time no hear, but good to hear from you.

Uh, and, um, and there's a bit of a, uh, a Noosa connection with, um, this because

the Noosa church is sort of affiliated with City Point Christian College and

Robin Bristow up there has been working hard at different times trying to

highlight to people what's been going on.

Um, they were offering hydration stations which they were using,

uh, as a means of proselytising.

And they also run the local Christmas Carols event, which people were

complaining about because, rather than the normal Christmas hymns you'd

expect, they got into some quite obscure, um, Hillsong y type stuff, so.

Anyway.

Um, so that's that.

Uh, that's City Point.

That's City Point's really our beginning and our end, I think.

And our future.

When it comes to the Religious Discrimination Bill, um, right, we don't

need a Religious Discrimination Bill.

Reason number one, religious people are not discriminated against, they're

not victims, they're in charge.

Look who's in charge of this country, Scott Morrison, Pentecostal, openly.

Christian, Avert, and how many of the cabinet?

Indeed, Josh Frydenberg, Jewish, Anthony Albanese, opposition leader, has said

there is, he was raised with three great faiths, the Catholic Church, the

South Sydney Football Club and Labor.

This is not what normal people say.

No.

Mark Dreyfuss, Attorney General, Shadow Attorney General, Jewish, Christina

Keneally, bleeding Catholic, and we'll get on to Christina Keneally,

she is going to be a problem.

For the Labor Party.

She is going to be a big problem.

Yep, she's been so She was on Insiders, they had to turn it off.

Yep, she's very much pro the idea of institutions having an

ethos that needs to be protected.

And she's going to be There used to be a teacher in a Catholic school apparently.

Yes, we will get on to her.

Actually, maybe I've got that one here, let me Let me see if I've

got, um, let me see if I've got her here, uh, Okay, I'll play this one

now, see if we're talking about it.

This is, uh, Spears and Keneally.

Should religious schools be able to hire and fire teachers based on

whether they're gay or transgender?

Well, Labor also supports the right of religious schools, faith based schools,

uh, to be able to hire staff, whether it's teachers or other staff, that support

the mission and the values of the school.

I'm a former Catholic school teacher myself, uh, my children and I are

all educated in the Catholic school system, and I well understand.

It's the basketball coach that leads the prayers before you go out on the court.

It's the staff in the front office and how they deal with students.

But this is a more complex issue and so we do support it going to the

Australian Law Reform Commission.

Why do you need to further review?

Where the schools should be able to sack a teacher for being gay.

Well, in fact, I would argue that most religious schools don't want

to sack a teacher for being gay.

In my experience with the Catholic school system intimately, and as a

former Premier, my experience with faith based schools across a wide range of

faiths, that's not what they seek to do.

I think what's important here is that schools are able to.

Have staff who uphold the mission and the values of the school.

They're mission based organisations.

They're there to educate and support children's development within a faith.

But there are some intersections and there are some complexities and

so we agree that the Australian Law Reform Commission should look at it.

But, I mean, you know, as critics have pointed out, you wouldn't need to

review whether a school should have the power to sack someone based on their

race, their gender or sexual identity.

Um, shouldn't that be treated in a similar way?

Well, I would point you to, in fact, uh, the private senator's bill that

Penny Wong moved prior to the last election, where we sought to provide the

parliament, uh, with a, a, an approach on this issue and, and the government

walked Oh, I can't watch anymore.

It just I had 12 years of Yeah, I do the same thing.

I had 12 years of Catholic schooling, dear listener, and never

prior to A sporting encounter.

Did we get led in prayer by anybody?

Yeah, I mean, she actually sounded Scottish there, but, um, is she bringing

her American upbringing into this?

I don't know.

Because the basketball coach leading prayers is an American

thing, I know very much of that.

True.

She's probably brought that culture with her.

But, you know, she said most schools don't want to do that.

Well, implicit in that is that some do, and that's why you

need a law to say they can't.

Labor is going to get tied up in all sorts of knots over this, on teachers.

And also, the school's, the school's purpose is to indoctrinate children.

Yes.

Well, no, the school's purpose is to raise good citizens and not

Discriminating against people is part of that, and if that's not their

role, then why are we funding them?

Yeah, so I don't trust her.

I don't trust Albanese on this topic.

You know what I've been thinking this whole two weeks?

Is that, is that you should resign from the Labor Party and

you should run as an independent.

Well.

Like now.

Cause it's really urgent.

It's really urgent that we get more secular voices in there and you are

prepped and you have a whole team of people here who would support you.

I've already looked into the cost.

So it's two grand.

That's nothing.

We can crowdfund that in no time.

People are looking for, people are looking for an alternative.

New South Wales, the by elections they did.

You know?

Yeah, no, you can win.

No, I couldn't, I couldn't get traction.

Um, unless I win my court case.

Sure.

Get you traction.

The Australian Christian lobby, if they found out a saying this was running,

talk to me if I win my court case.

Otherwise I'm not, otherwise I'm not thinking about it.

That'd be the only way to get notoriety, but, uh, no I'm not,

uh, it's impossible to break through with these things, but, um.

It isn't impossible.

It's entirely possible.

You can have another objection, but it can't be that it's impossible

because it's entirely possible.

And there is an urgency and there is an appetite.

Certainly, I would say to people, um, vote for an independent or vote

Greens who are clearly better on this topic than Labor is and then

preference Labor and put Liberals last.

So, I think I think at least we have preferential voting where your vote

is not lost and, um, as we'll find out in the voting later, you know, at

least the Greens, uh, the Green, the one Green member, um, and certainly

in their policy are, uh, much better on this than the Labor Party and Yes.

Yeah, uh, at this stage, voted for an Independent or a Green

and Preference Labor after that.

So, um, so just back to why we don't need, uh, Discrimination Bill, I said

all the people who are in charge are actually, obviously religious, it didn't

stop them from running the country.

Um, Mark Dreyfuss I mentioned, Christina Keneally, who we've just

heard from, Governor General David Hurley, raised an Anglican, and

while wife Linda is a Presbyterian.

They both keep fit, Mrs Hurley hula hoops while reading the Bible every morning.

That it is their faith, they say, that binds them.

Also, when Funderal Parliament is in session, the Parliamentary Christian

Fellowship meets fortnightly.

About 60 members from all sides attend.

That's more than a quarter of parliamentary members go to

Christian fellowship meets.

A quarter of the population doesn't go to, you know, Christian fellowship

meets, um, and not all the Christians in Parliament attend the fellowship.

Uh, 30% How much of that is a boys club, though?

Well, I don't know, I mean, it could be girls, there's probably,

there's women in it, I'm sure.

Oh, possibly.

What I meant was, how much of it is networking and, and less about your

faith and more about being seen to be.

Indeed.

But the point is, it's not considered a disadvantage in

the parliament to be religious.

That's my whole point is, you know, religious people are the ones in power.

It's a disadvantage to be non religious.

Also, um, when they're taking their, when they're being sworn in, um, in

the lower house, 37 lower house MPs made an affirmation compared to 114

who swore oaths on religious texts.

So, this just gives you an idea, even the Ruddock report, after

reviewing 15, 000 submissions, found, by and large, Australians

enjoy a high degree of religious freedom, and that basic protections

are in place in Australian law.

Ruddock himself said afterwards, quote, we didn't find a lot

of evidence of actual material discrimination that would be of concern.

But where we did, we brought it forward and some recommendations

to help deal with it.

Like, even the Ruddock report said, couldn't really find anything significant.

Nothing to see here.

Exactly.

Um, so there is not evidence of discrimination, except Dear listener,

when it comes to teachers, what's come out in the last, you know, few years

and even more in the parliament with examples given, and I haven't read

all of Hansard yet, are the number of examples of teachers who are discriminated

against in religious schools and sacked because of some contravention

of some religious tenet that that particular institution happens to have.

They're the ones who are actually genuinely facing discrimination.

And they're the ones who were completely ignored by both

sides in this whole debate.

I mean, it got down to just kids, transgender kids, teachers, gay, lesbian,

transgender, they all forgot long ago.

Divorced?

Divorced?

IVF?

Wanting?

What, what, what percentage of religious teaching jobs, sorry, what percentage of

teaching jobs are in religious schools?

40%.

So, in high school, in high schools in Australia, 40 percent of high school

students are in private religious schools.

40%.

40%.

So, as an industry, as a teacher and a math teacher, um, yeah, so presumably

it equates to the jobs as well, like it would be a roughly equivalent, no?

Well, no, because state schools have a lower, sorry, a higher

number of pupils to teachers.

Maybe, so it could be even more, it could be getting close to 50%.

If you're a math teacher, you might well find that half of your The jobs in

your industry are in private religious schools and if you are gay or lesbian or

atheist or your wife's on IVF in terms of Catholic, I mean, a whole range of

different things you could be up to, you're excluded from participating.

And the party of the working man, the party that's designed, has just

said to the teachers, well, fuck you.

It's a pathetic level of debate, isn't it?

Um, you know, it's, it was, the level of debate was really poor because nobody

could talk about balancing of rights.

Nobody could talk about manifesting your belief.

All it came down to was painting a picture of a victim, which was in

this case, transgender kids, and then tugging at the heartstrings of

people to try and make them feel bad.

I mean.

The, the calibre of debate has been extremely poor.

I mean, it was a waste of time writing all of those submissions to Ruddock.

All of the legal arguments that were made, all of the deeply philosophical

ones that talked about the hierarchy of ethics and needs, it's a complete

waste of time because, um, In the end, these, there's two categories, there's

the extremely religious, zealots.

They're just going to do whatever they possibly can do

to promote their world view.

Don't give a shit what anybody else thinks.

And then the non zealots I just either don't have the time or the intellect

to stop and think about these things and are really, first off, what's

going to help me get re elected?

And then secondly, you know, is there a victim here I can, I can feel empathy for

and tugs at my heartstrings and gets me over the line sort of thing, like without

any real intellectual thought going into this, the calibre of debate was pathetic.

So, so teachers were, you know, ignored in this thing.

Um, I, uh, I I downloaded the Hansard from the 9th of February.

So, uh, 216 pages.

Now some of that is actually stuff that wasn't to do with the

Religious Discrimination Bill.

There's other bills earlier in the day.

But if you do, the 9th of February was the day and the following morning

that all this debate happened.

And do a word search.

How many times does the word faith appear in Hansard that day?

535 times.

Christian, 105.

Muslim, 66.

LGBT, 57.

Gay, 56.

Transgender, 28.

Atheist, 6.

Satanist?

I didn't put it in.

If it, if it was in there, it would have been, hope we don't get any of those.

It would have been derogatory.

I mean, I mean, a bill that talks about Religious discrimination.

In all of the words of that day, faith could be mentioned 535 times, and

Christian 105, and atheist was just 6.

I think that might have been just one guy.

Ugh.

And, remember, not one atheist, humanist, rationalist, or pro secular

group was invited to appear before the two parliamentary committees.

That compares to 41 appearances made by religious lobbyists or religious groups.

I believe the Pastafarians managed to get an audience.

Was that at one of the Parliamentary Committees, or it might have

been at some other thing?

I can't remember.

Yeah.

So this is according to a guy from the Rationalists who said that.

So um, so, you know, in a sense, to me, the debate was kind of hijacked

to some extent by gay and lesbian issues, because it's, it never got

off the ground on, on atheists.

Like, to you rationalists out there, the Atheist Foundation, National Secular

Lobby It was a complete failure to, to address the, the rights of non religious

people in the, in the whole debate.

When you look at those statistics and when you look at the debates in the

news, I haven't gone through the whole Hansard, but, um, it was only the

LGBTQ community who was able to cut through and, and pull the heartstrings

of some of these politicians.

None of them were swayed by the poor atheist, who might decide that he wants

to teach math at a religious school.

Yeah, but nobody cares about the atheists.

Correct!

There's a small percentage of the population.

They never vote.

Correct.

It's not like they have a bigger voter lobby than the ACL.

Yeah.

We've completely Do you have a personal story?

In me?

It seemed to be, yeah, it seemed to be a lot of the framing of

the debate was personal stories.

I don't have a personal story, really, of being discriminated against.

Yes.

But give me time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, so, um, you know, as we point out, we'll get on to teachers in a

moment, so, uh, maybe I should jump ahead to teachers, seeing we're on,

seeing we're talking about teachers.

So, um In the Hansard, students were mentioned 118 times,

teachers were mentioned 71 times.

So, now this is, uh, an article from The Australian.

So they don't have a, you know, they wouldn't be pushing the barrow of poor

teachers necessarily in the Australian.

So, um, article in the Australian which was, Religious schools have

sacked, demoted or transferred teachers for being gay, using

IVF, divorcing or having sex while single, a teacher's union has warned.

Liberal Party Senator Andrew Bragg is demanding the federal

government protect teachers as well as students from discrimination.

And he said a large number of teachers have been sacked just for being gay.

He said, teachers wouldn't be sacked for being black, they're sacked for being gay.

I think that's wrong, that's something I want to fix.

There's a Liberal Senator.

Where are the Labor Senators?

So this is the union, I believe, for teachers in the private sector.

The Independent Education Union represents 75, 000 private school

teachers and has apparently been lobbying the Morrison government

to include them in its legislation.

Um, it's detailed how a divorced female Catholic school teacher

was given a formal warning and demotion after a male colleague's

car was seen outside her house.

Divorced female Catholic school teacher.

Another teacher was sacked for falling pregnant out of wedlock and settled out

of court for 14 weeks pay in lieu of parental leave, is according to the union.

Um, these are just little war stories from this union.

A Catholic school principal told a married teacher who fell pregnant using

IVF after a two year fertility struggle.

Her child had been conceived in sin and asked her to resign.

A regional Catholic diocese executive director told an assistant principal

he was, quote, not in a genuine Catholic marriage because his wife's

first marriage had not been annulled.

So the National Catholic Education Commission downplayed the union's

case studies as anecdotal cases that are impossible to prove.

But the, um, union Branch Acting Deputy Secretary Pam Smith said she'd

personally intervened in cases of teachers being sacked or pushed out.

She said the cases were all real, but teachers did not want to be identified

for fear of losing work in other schools.

Makes sense.

It does.

One teacher was a co I was going to say, what happens here for a swinger?

Yeah, well, we'll get to that.

Um, one teacher was a coordinator at a Catholic school with 10 years experience

and she was dobbed in by a parent who saw her walking in a shopping centre with

her long term female partner and child.

She was called in and told a complaint had gone to the bishop, so you'll

lose your leadership position, and she left the Catholic sector.

Um, uh, another guy gutted when he was sacked for being gay.

Um, University of Tasmania research fellow Bronwyn Fielder, who was collaborating

with the University of Sydney on research into LGBTI teacher discrimination, said

she'd interviewed dozens of teachers who had been sacked or asked to resign

from religious schools over sexuality.

Richard Colvin, committed Christian, was effectively forced to resign from

her job at Ballarat Christian College in 2019 after refusing to sign the school's

Statement of Faith, declared marriage can only be between a male and a female.

And a woman.

So this Miss Colvin, she had a husband, she's got three children, she

grew up in an evangelical Christian household, and she's been a missionary.

And she taught at the college for six years, uh, no, eleven years.

Um, but when she read the Statement of Belief, she said she couldn't sign

that, and she was hoping they could agree to disagree, and she was called

in and told she'd have to resign.

And, um So, you know, married evangelical with kids who just

says, that's wrong, out you go.

Um, so, um, so while I don't trust Albanese on this issue, he said,

um, also, um, so yeah, when, when Ruddick Inquiry said they couldn't

find cases of discrimination.

They just didn't ask enough teachers in religious schools.

That's where they needed to go.

Um, right, um, Albanese on this issue, quoted in the Australian,

saying, sadly, discrimination on the basis of faith is all too real.

Mr Albanese said, it might be a Muslim woman or a Sikh man being vilified on the

streets because of what they are wearing.

It might be a group of Jewish or Christian students being

attacked because of their faith.

Well, that's bullshit, Albo, because that's not what the Ruddock Inquiry found.

Um, uh, so, what are they doing about the vilification of Jews

from the, um, Muslim pulpits?

That's right.

Or the vilification of Satanists in every pulpit.

Oh, that was that, yes.

Yes.

That's right.

Yeah.

Um.

Just religion for religion.

Yeah.

Even on R.

N.

Breakfast, there was a Islamic man who came on the interview and was

just like, I don't want this law.

Yep.

You're not in church.

I know people in Christian, who are Sikhs, who are in Christian hospitals,

who are really fearful right now.

They're about to lose their jobs, like.

This is not good.

Even the United Church came out and said we don't need this law.

Dominic Perrette!

Perrette!

A Catholic with so many kids he can't count, he's got to check his watch

to ask how many kids have you got.

Even he said, don't need this law, it's too much trouble for what it's worth.

Just back on the numbers, we mentioned before, um, Uh, it's 41%

of kids of Australian kids are in private schools in secondary school.

Um, this outweighs the OECD average, which is 18%.

Um, compare us to the USA.

So 41% of our high school students are in private schools.

In the US it's 8%.

In Canada, it's 6%.

And lower again.

Yes, but they have religious freedom in America.

Yeah.

You know what?

They don't get government money.

That's what it's all about.

They don't get government money and it's because their constitution has

about two words that are different, um, and they're not allowed to.

So, um, so yeah, New Zealand, Finland and Sweden are even less than 6%.

We are such an outlier in, in the number of kids who are in religious

schools, in secondary school.

And it's.

All goes back to Golban, Mother Celeste, threatening to close the

school immediately and the other two schools in Golban if, because the toilet

block was so disgusting and she didn't have the money and so the government

bailed her out and that was it.

The floodgates opened.

See they should have just resumed the school.

They should have.

Compulsory purchased it and said okay.

You don't have to teach, that's fine.

Yep, see you later.

Thanks for that.

We'll take the buildings and off you go.

Ah, dear me.

Alison in the chat room says bloody toilets.

You right, Alison?

Alright, um, sorry, do you want to John was asking if all of

this is going in the show notes.

Yes, they are, John.

So, it'll be a long batch of show notes, but yep, it's all there.

Okay.

Um, I said before that the debate was really poor, that it just got down to

Poor trans kids, I feel for them, have to protect them, that's with no deep

intellectual sort of things happening.

So, because nobody else will do it, I'm going to, just to give

you the quick ideological sort of argument in this whole thing, um.

First of all, it's, it's an ideology, religion, so, um, and

there are two simple concepts.

Firstly, religious belief is just an ideology.

Being a Christian is like being a Communist, a Libertarian, a Monarchist,

a Republican or a Neoliberal.

It's about subscribing to a set of ideas.

On the other hand, race, gender, disability, sexual preference

are inherent characteristics.

With no ideological content.

So when there's a battle of competing rights, and then the battle of

protection from discrimination, inherent characteristics must

trump ideological identities.

So to give you a simple example, you could criticise Margaret Thatcher

for being a neoliberal, but you could not criticise her for being a woman.

One is an ideology.

One is an inherent aspect of her.

And when there's a battle between those two things, then you must

give preference to the inherent.

Um, aspect of somebody where they've got no choice.

Secondly, uh, holding a belief is different to manifesting a belief.

No one should or could be stopped from holding a belief.

Can't stop you thinking something.

But manifesting a belief involves acting out that belief.

And those actions could conflict with our general laws.

If we excuse people from general laws simply because they hold a religious

belief, And this would make religious doctrine superior to the law of the land.

If religious doctrine supersedes general laws, then there's no point having laws.

If we say religious people can ignore anti discrimination laws,

then we must say there's no point in having any anti discrimination laws.

This comes from Antonin Scalia.

He was the most pro religious Supreme Court judge in the

history of the US Supreme Court.

He made this very point.

In the case of Employment Division versus Smith.

Here's a case where some Indians were claiming spiritual, um, uh, religious, um,

needs to smoke an illegal drug, peyote.

And the law of the land was, can't smoke that, it's an illegal drug.

And he was saying, it doesn't matter what your religious belief

is, you can't manifest that if it's contrary to the law of the land.

If we just say to people, oh, it's a religious belief, you can go ahead and do

it, then what's the point in having a law?

So, none of that gets discussed in any of the, uh, debate

that's, uh, been put forward.

So, um, they'll also talk about, sometimes they'll talk about the International

Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and in particular Article 18, that

Australia is a party to, which says, everyone shall have the right to freedom

of thought, conscience and religion.

This right shall include freedom to have or adopt.

A religion or belief of his choice and freedom.

With others, to manifest his religion or belief in worship.

I'm sort of paraphrasing it there, but essentially everyone's got the

right to freedom of religion and the right to manifest their religion.

That's Article 18, Paragraph 1.

But in Paragraph 3 it says, just in relation to that bit about manifesting

one's religion, it's subject only to limitations prescribed by law.

And are necessary to protect other people's fundamental rights.

So, when people talk about the International Covenants, yes, it talks

about a right to believe and a right to manifest your belief, but it makes

the point, when it comes to manifesting that belief, to carrying it out, It's

actually subject to other people's rights when it comes to manifesting.

Yeah, but also to protect the morals of others.

It's a bit of a scary language in there.

It is, yes.

So, um, so this will become interesting because, um, somewhere down the

track, when this law is eventually passed, either by a crazy Albanese

Labor government, Or by a Peter Dutton Liberal Government in three years time.

Or a Josh Frydenberg Liberal Government.

Or a Michaelia Cash Liberal Government.

Oh God!

When it's eventually passed, and it will, um, then there'll be a

challenge to it under the Constitution.

Because in order for the Federal Parliament to make laws in relation

to this stuff, it's got to have an ability under the Constitution.

And the Constitution doesn't have, uh, anything in it that says, oh, the

Commonwealth has a right to make laws with respect to religious discrimination.

What they'll be relying on is the external affairs power, where they say, well,

we signed this international covenant.

And because of that international government, the federal

government can make these laws.

End.

We on the secular side will challenge that and we'll say, hang on a minute,

that covenant specifically said you couldn't make laws that allowed

people to manifest religious belief.

In contravention of other people's rights.

So the, you've gone beyond what the, uh, um, Article 18 says.

That'll be an argument down the track.

And I think the What gets me is, um, I can stand up and go, I think

Jewish people are disgusting pigs.

You know, this is part of my Islamic faith.

That's fine.

I think Jewish people are disgusting pigs.

It's because of my Nazi beliefs.

That's abhorrent.

That's illegal.

You know.

The two sets of beliefs.

Why, why is one privileged over another?

Yes, it's inconsistent.

It's um, so, now what you do here is this whole religious ethos argument.

So, let's deal with that to some extent.

Um, and you heard Christina Keneally talking about it to some extent as well.

It's this idea of institutions.

Having an ethos in that Christians, in particular, want to gather together to

the exclusion of other people because that is part of the ethos of being a Christian

and of the institutions they create.

Um, so, Michael Callaghan, he's head of the Christian Legal

Think Tank, Freedom for Faith.

He told The Guardian that, um, religious discrimination was different

to other forms of discrimination because it was inherently about

people who gathered together.

Right.

This isn't a tricky legal argument, it's a nature of religious belief that

people don't have it in isolation.

You've never heard of silent prayer?

It's not just an individual right, it's actually a right to gather with others.

It's a right to teach children, it's a right to gather on the basis of belief.

And um Nobody's stopping them teaching children.

No.

Just not in school hours.

Yes.

Um, so, I say that the right to gather together to worship is fine.

The right to exclude others when worshipping is fine.

I mean, you get together for your Sunday sermon.

You don't want people standing up in the aisle saying, There's a load of nonsense!

Stop!

But haven't there been a whole load of cases that say it's not

right to have a men's only club?

We'll get to that in a sec.

Um, Okay.

Yep.

So, um, So the right to gather together to worship is fine.

To get together to worship is fine.

To exclude others when worshipping is fine.

This is my view.

The problem is, when the gathering is not for worship, but is for normal

community activities such as, Education, work, or leisure, and religious groups

want to exclude non religious from those worship, you know, so called,

uh, from those non worship activities.

That would divide and cripple our society.

Of course, religious groups say that worship activities cannot be separated

from other lifestyle activities.

I disagree.

If you really want to do that, then it's hypocritical to take the benefits

of an integrated society while erecting your own gated community.

Go and fucking live on Libertarian Island if you want that.

So, they want the benefits that flow from a civilisation that is integrated and

a movement of people allows us to have all the wonderful things that we have.

Yet when it chooses them, they want to be able to say, no,

gated community, not part of it.

This is not good for our community, in terms of the success of our community.

And it's not good for the individuals who get discriminated against.

I just don't buy the argument that, uh, the entirety of

somebody's life and activity is always religious in its nature.

That's just BS, um, and, uh, that's, that's the sort of religious ethos

argument that Christina Keneally and others run, and it just gets run and

nobody pushes back ever and says, hold on a minute, what do you mean a

religious institution has an ethos?

What do you mean it applies in these situations?

That's bullshit.

Never.

It just slides on through.

So, um, so yeah, I've spoken about that.

Um, really,

these religious zealots are going to come back with this.

And they're going to keep going, and they're going to win, because

the whole Dominionist movement has been an amazing success, and it's

all happening while we're asleep.

And they are actively working to put religious zealots in position of power

because the rest of us just are asleep.

They've taken over the Liberal Party, and on this occasion

they were one number short.

And the way things are going, the next time they won't

be, they'll cruise through.

So, uh, so it will come back.

And, you know, just in relation to the Seven Mountains thing, um, you

know, the whole idea is that you seed Christian people to become

leaders in the Seven Mountains.

And the Seven Mountains are education, religion, family,

business, government slash military, arts slash entertainment and media.

And, um, you know, clearly They're working on the Liberal Party, uh, clearly they've

just got an influence in the Labor Party as well, Christina Keneally and Albanese.

Even in the reporting of this, like I know when the National Secular Lobby

was meeting with the ABC and complaining about not getting coverage for what they

were trying to do, I had the feeling that the people they were meeting with

in the high echelons of the ABC had to be the response they were getting.

Made them deeply suspicious that at least one of the persons was highly

religious, and a bit of investigating, it seemed that that was the case.

I mean, um, they're already in positions of power.

It sounds all very Conspiratorial, doesn't it?

It sounds um, like I should be with an Australian flag and

marching at Canberra as part of the convoy when I'm saying this.

But these people are admitting to this!

Yeah, so um, so there we go.

Um, let's just talk about So what do we do?

Do we quit and join the Liberal Party?

No, no, no.

Stay in the Labor Party and agitate.

And just put, just keep putting motions through.

Yeah, and try and get better candidates and keep arguing.

And in the meantime, vote Green and Independent, um,

and then preference Labor.

And say, see, here's the problem.

Sorry.

I think that's, I think that's it.

But, um, unless you win the court case, in which case we'll

talk again about Euromagus.

Yeah, all right.

Yep.

It'll be a brief conversation.

So, um, so Labor's tactic in this was to seek amendments to the bill, um, things

to do with, um, some of the hate speech and other things, but if their amendments

weren't in the bill, um, then Labor's tactic was to seek amendments to the bill.

So, um, so Labor's tactic was to seek amendments to the bill, um, things to

do with, um, some of the hate speech and other things, but if their amendments

weren't in then they were going to pass the bill in its entirety

and seek amendments in the Senate.

So, they openly said there were things in the bill that they didn't like but

rather than vote against the bill, they were going to let it, they're

actually going to pass in favour of the bill and argue about it in the Senate.

Hmm.

And and that is in fact what they did so In the Parliament, the Religious

Discrimination Bill was dealt with first.

We'll talk about the Sex Discrimination Bill in a moment, but the bill, the

Labor Party tried a few amendments around the edges of it, all got knocked back.

So they voted, they voted in favour of the Religious Discrimination Bill,

with the idea we'll go to the Senate and we'll argue again up there.

What did you think of that tactic?

I found it really galling and really distressing.

This is so Gutless.

And the reason was, because they didn't want to be wedged.

So they wanted to be able to say to some imam in a Western Sydney electorate,

Well, we tried to, we passed the bill.

Don't blame us.

We passed it.

We're in favor of it.

Look, we, we actually voted for this.

They think they're avoiding the wedge by saying we passed the bill.

I still think Morrison is going to run the next election, on.

I tried to pass the bill and Labor wouldn't let me.

Don't let facts get in the way of a good argument.

Exactly.

I mean, there'll be all sorts of bullshit in the next election about

Labor wanting to introduce death taxes and being a high taxing government.

I've already seen, I think it was the Courier Mail, it was one of the Murdoch

rags, saying it doesn't matter what you feel about Morrison, he's obviously

the right person for the next election.

I think I saw that too, yeah.

Yes.

I mean, so, so Morris will be out on the hustings with the religious people

saying you can't trust Labor, they stuffed up my, um, attempts to pass this

bill, I tried my best, they wouldn't let me, you'd better vote for me again so

I can get it done, finish the job off.

I mean, it doesn't, I still think he'll just lie.

Someone would finish him off.

He'll just lie about.

The fact that Labor voted for the bill in the end, and he'll make the

point, which is valid to some extent, that they said they were going to vote

against it in the Senate, and they're going to disrupt it there, so, um, I

think, I think he'll still convince the same, uh, groups that he's their

man and Labor's bad, and Labor can't be trusted on this issue, don't vote Labor.

He'll make a compelling argument for it.

Yes.

I just don't think that it was a sound strategy to vote against it, hoping

to, whole small target thing, uh, I, I still think you'll be able to make it

up and say, you're clearly against it.

And that's not really making it up.

It's the truth.

You'll actually be able to mount a truthful argument.

Look, read between the lines, look at the strategy, look at what they're doing.

They're clearly not wanting to let me do what I wanted to do.

You can't trust them on religious discrimination.

And So, I think he can still run that wedge if he wants

to, and of course he, he will.

And, you know, it was only I think he does seem a bit rattled, like even

today he came out with his new wedge, which is, um, that the Labor Party is

supportive of criminals or something, so he's trying to get legislation through

around deporting people who commit crimes.

Yes.

Even though it's been, like, quite obvious that Alex Hawke already has,

you know, god like powers around who can come in and who can't, so, like,

he's just going to find one of these issues and he's just going to keep at it.

It's like China.

I mean, all along the way, Labor has been in lockstep with

the government about China.

Yes.

Dutton comes out, because it's all clearly China wants a Labor government, you know.

And they've been in lockstep the whole way.

The same with ASIO.

ASIO supposedly is worried about Labor candidates who were, um, you know,

susceptible to foreign influence.

And the a o chief has said, I never said anything of the, of the kind.

And Albanese had to come.

Albanese had to come out and say, I get briefed by a O all the time.

They've never said anything like that, but that doesn't stop them from saying it.

No un unlike government ministers who fly up to Manila on a regular

basis and the a FP, were warning about susceptibility to blackmail.

Indeed.

So, um.

The Speaker of the House, um, has instructed Peter

Dutton to never repeat that.

Really?

Today.

Wow.

Okay.

Yeah.

So, um, but it's probably too late.

Yeah.

Look, I've got in the show notes, I won't go through it all now, I've got,

um, articles that talk about which Labor members in the party room were saying,

no, we should vote against this bill.

and which ones were saying we should vote for the bill and argue it in the Senate.

So I won't go through them all, maybe at another time,

but it'll be in the show notes.

Um, and so yeah, so on the day Labor moved some amendments, they weren't passed.

Labor and the government passed the Religious Discrimination Bill.

The people who voted against it were the Independents and the Greens, and

it was after the bill had passed.

And sent off to the Senate that we then had the discussion over

the sex discrimination bill.

And an amendment to that was moved by an independent, uh,

Rebecca Sharkey, initially saying, making it illegal to discriminate

against students and teachers.

That got knocked back by the government and the Labor Party.

And then she put up another amendment saying, basically, protecting students.

And that got up, and Labor finally voted for something, and as I said

before, members, uh, half a dozen members, no, five members of the

Liberal Party crossed the floor.

And that's why we ended up with, uh, changes to the amendment to the proposed

bill that says, um, religious institutions can't expel gay, lesbian, or trans kids.

And, um, and of course That then goes to the Senate, and the Christian Lobby

basically said, hold on a minute.

What do you mean we can't expel gay kids, lesbian kids and transgender kids?

If there's any risk that this goes any further, we cannot risk

this happening, shelve everything.

So the Religious Discrimination Bill and these amendments to the Sex

Discrimination Act are shelved because The religious lobby went, holy heck,

we're going to lose some rights here.

So, it just shows that, um, that, uh, basically, all along the way, um, uh,

Once changes were made to protect LGBTQI children, the Christian groups just didn't

want it and neither did the government.

They gave up at that point.

So for all their talk about wanting protection from discrimination,

they actually wanted to keep their ability to discriminate.

Yes.

It's such a sad and sorry tale of Australian politics.

It's just ugly.

See, there you are.

There's a good wedge issue.

Yes.

Because the vast majority of the population are going, look, it's fine

to discriminate against the teachers, but you can't do it to the kids.

Yes.

And so surely Labor could stand up and go, well, we voted to protect the kids

and the Liberals wouldn't even do that.

Yes, that's what they'll say.

That's kind of what they're saying, yeah.

But, you know, Morrison will frame it as in, I tried to

get religious discrimination through, they wouldn't let me.

And, you know, they're going to listen to Morrison and they're

not going to listen to Albanese.

Um, he'll have enough, uh, ammunition to create a word salad that sounds

appealing to the religious groups.

Um.

I guess the only thing I probably would say in Albo's defense is, I imagine that

room full of all those leaders and all the factional stuff would be pretty hot.

And for, for, to keep this small target, he must have a lot of goodwill.

Like, I think it must be a testament to his character, that he's

keeping all his people in check.

That, that, like, so many of those leaders must be thinking, I don't know

if this small target thing is going to work, I got into leadership so I could

stand up for what I believe in, just going to keep doing this, are we Albo?

And he says yes, and they do.

Must be he, they're looking at the polls, aren't they?

I guess so.

I guess so.

They must, but they must trust his political maneuvering.

Mm-Hmm.

Um, yeah.

Look, I noticed that when that poll came out, the murder press

got even more agitated about how untrustworthy elbow was.

Yes, yes.

So, um, uh, it's interesting, my daughter in Sydney rang me up and she said, Dad,

my news feed is full of all this stuff about religious discrimination stuff.

Isn't that what you've been banging on about for the last six years?

Yep, six years ahead of my time.

So did she like one of your posts or?

No, it's like just in her news feed or whatever.

It's just all this discussion about it.

Yeah.

So, um, yeah.

So, yeah, there we go.

If you're in the chat room, keep chatting away there.

Um, uh, let me see.

Good comments.

Keep them coming.

All right.

I think that rounds out the sort of religious discrimination

talk for the time being.

Wow, that's an hour and a half already.

Is that right?

Is it?

No.

Is it?

Oh yeah, it is.

Holy, jeez, there we go.

Well, it's an hour and 25 minutes.

Yeah.

Let's talk about something far more Uplifting.

The, uh, the guys in Canberra, the convoy.

They're not asleep, are they?

No.

They've just picked the wrong team, I think.

Oh dear, dear listener, have you?

They're not asleep because of the diarrhea they've got.

Yeah.

These guys are frightening.

Um, if you haven't seen some of the stuff going around YouTube and Twitter

with the video footage of these people, I've got a little bit here.

I'm not sure how long I'll keep playing.

I'll play some of it just so you get a bit of a taste for what was

going on in Canberra with this, uh, With this Canberra convoy.

Here we go.

All you do is help pedophiles, isn't it?

Hey, since the vaccine came out, what happened?

A 50,000 cases a day.

Does that work?

It's not working, isn't it?

How you going?

What does your mother think of you just leave alone?

Bloody disgraceful.

He's doing his job leave alone.

I asked him what station he works for and he can't tell me he's not doing his job.

He's doing his job.

For who?

Leave him alone.

Before her, what is wrong with you?

Go away.

What is wrong with you?

You walk away.

Other people in this country don't have a job right now, why should he have one?

And do you know mainstream media was given 41 million dollars of tax relief

to make the COVID thing what it is today?

You should go to jail.

You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

Don't you dare.

I'm not touching you, mate.

Don't you spit on me.

I'm not even spitting on you.

Why the fuck should you sit in a desk for six hours a day as a child, every

single day, and indoctrinate them?

I believe in God, so, uh, he's my leader.

He's my father.

Not, not these people.

Satanic worshippers.

Freemasons.

Um, Rothman child taking children and raping them and killing them.

You know, we do know that blood is important, and it's

important to the elites.

The Illuminati, the Cabal, you know, those types of words are

now bubbling in the mainstream.

We understand why blood's important to them, and they're trying

to interfere with our blood.

You're so blank in your face!

You have a heart!

You are us!

You are flesh!

You are blood!

Then stand with us!

Protect the children!

Stop protecting the pedophiles!

We want peace!

I probably should have given a language warning before that, sorry.

Um, I noticed that they were very agitated about the Rothman Childs.

Yeah, that's you.

It's like, no, no, no.

So if you're going to be anti Jewish, it's the Rothschilds.

That's right.

And they're after the bloods.

Maybe the anti cigarettes, wasn't Rothmans a brand of cigarettes?

Yeah, it was Rothmans, it was a brand of cigarettes.

Maybe that's it, she's, she's confused.

Look, the um, there's more of it in that stuff, but of course they were anti

vax, and they were anti mask, and anti sort of government control, but there

was a lot of pedophilia anger in there.

From these people, the various ones that are talked to, as if there

was some well known pedophilia ring, other than the Catholic

Church, operating in this country.

And, uh, it's clearly Yeah, there was the Anglicans as well.

Yes, clearly imported nonsense from America, where these people are just

going and adopting this American argument.

A lot of stuff about, uh, sovereign citizens.

So, Sovereign Citizen Movement is basically, uh, you know, the whole setting

up of Australia's constitution was invalid and you can just remove yourself from

government control by declaring certain things, um, so, you know, these people

don't want a change of government, they want government erased, essentially,

this sort of Sovereign Citizen Movement.

Uh, a lot of godly stuff, a lot of Christian references, a lot of flags.

And a little bit of, uh, Nanobots and Tinfoil Hats.

Like, just a motley collection of misfits and just plain nutters in that group.

I feel so sorry for the police and security and Yeah, everyone

else you had to just witness

the mob.

Well, according to, um, Meryl Dory, who of course is the Australian anti vax

nutters or whatever they're called, uh, there were a million people at Canberra.

Yes.

Oh yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Lots of doctored photos.

So there's really good stuff on YouTube and Twitter where sort of

citizen vloggers go out and just talk to these people and you get all that

sort of stuff and, um, check some of it out because I didn't really see

that in the mainstream media so much.

Um, just exhibiting the nuttery of these people and the, just

the horribleness of them.

So.

And is that, is that, um, because of the way they treat them?

Like, it would be probably dangerous by the sounds of it, or Some of

the journalists to go down there?

I think, yeah, well, I don't know, but they could have just gone in plain

clothes and just interviewed people.

I don't know, like, which, what a lot of these people seem to do.

Um, they're too crazy to be dangerous, I think.

I don't know, like, you're in a, I don't know.

I think they probably are getting to the side of dangerous.

There was that crazy woman there who looked like she was going to

try and spit on the cameraman.

Yeah, so that was, you're right, maybe it was too hard for a badged

mainstream media group to turn up.

You're right, it probably could only have been these sort of privateers

who could do it with safety and really get in amongst them.

Maybe that is why, but certainly Did you see the, um, the article in the Guardian

of somebody who was A complete COVID conspiracy and has now changed their mind?

No.

What caused them to change their mind?

Um, how nice the police treated her when she was arrested.

Really?

Yeah, basically arrested her, all her, all, basically her friends

had said, Oh yeah, um, go and stand in front of the convoy, stop,

stop traffic or whatever it was.

And then when she was arrested, they all ran away.

And then the police were nice and said, look, you've been so helpful because, you

know, gave all the details, uh, and, and then we're sharing their stories about

how difficult it had been policing during the times of COVID and what they'd seen.

And she was going, well, hang on, this is a completely different

story from what I've been hearing.

And it planted that seed in her mind.

Um, and there were, yeah, just a bunch of things.

Once you, once you got that initial seed, you start seeing

the cracks in the arguments.

Right.

It was, um, but you know, how much QAnon and, and how the belief that the

election had been stolen from Trump.

Yes.

All of that came as one big package.

Yeah.

Um.

So if they can be talked around, would it not be prudent to send some people

down there to address their concerns?

What you have to do is, it seems you have to arrest them nicely,

um Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

I don't mean, give them what they want, but I mean it's really, I think

it's really not taking over, but it's getting like Uh, a very wide audience

in America and, you know, some of their grievances are, you know, real to them.

I think all of their grievances are real to them.

To, to, um, you know, to the Christians, the Satanists are horrible people.

Yes.

It's, it's not that they're making this up.

You know what they believe is absolutely real to them.

It's not, they're just spouting this for the hell of it.

Yeah.

Mm-Hmm, . So shouldn't we talk, talk them through it.

It, beyond talking to these people, they're a rabid mom.

I reckon if, if, if you can get a one-to-one conversation.

And you don't try and push your point and ask them and get them questioning.

It's possible, but they need to be open to the possibility that they might be wrong.

And you need to, it's a time consuming process and you have to do it one on one.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't hold out much hope.

I think a lot of these people were isolated and feeling

abandoned by the government.

And I think, I think had there been proper social infrastructure in place

to look after them, they wouldn't have been ripe for conspiracy theories.

Yes.

People are going, oh, you know, I don't like the way this has happened

to me, therefore COVID isn't real, rather than, and therefore

we need better social services.

We need better unemployment benefits.

We need Except the typical protester in the January 6th Capitol riots

was actually well to do American.

Like they weren't, they weren't hard up Americans.

Lots of them flew in and took time off and had the money to, to go there.

Like, my understanding is that, is that that January 6th capital riots was made

up of surprisingly affluent middle class American who was just nuts and it wasn't

really a social security downtrodden poverty type of person involved.

That's true.

And it seems like they're getting better funded all the time.

Yeah.

I was listening to a really interesting podcast about this, because I think

I probably have 10 or 11 people who I would say are in my close inner

circle have all become victims of this.

So I'm constantly listening and certainly of Joe about how we can persuade them.

They must be persuadable.

Is that because you're hanging around with nurses all the time?

No, it's flight attendants, it's yummy mummies, it's Gold Coast hairdressers.

Wellbeing, exactly.

You're in the wellness industry, the Pete Evans crowd.

Yeah, and, but I also think that, you know, these are all people

who've been profoundly impacted.

You know, their parents have died while They've been here and their families in

Europe or, you know, they've all got a really like painful story and yeah, so

anyway, I'm babbling, but yeah, I don't, I can't, I can't, Don, the trouble is,

Don's got a comment here, the trouble is Shady's people will not believe anything

outside of their own narratives, you know, I can't give up on, on my people.

It's, it's a bit like.

There must be a way.

Yeah, well.

I'll point you to some videos about something called street epistemology.

Okay, and if you've got any videos to counter the bizarre videos about people

having tremors and fits after they've been vaccinated, that would also be good.

The problem is, uh, any evidence you give will be mainstream media, will be Totally.

That's totally, yeah.

They just won't believe it, so it's a question of sitting down.

But they send me stuff, so I'll just say, look, I've been

willing to hear you guys out.

Perhaps you'll give me a run on it.

It's more, what about that do you find convincing?

Yeah, what's, what's the best arguments in that?

Um, how do you know it's true?