It’s not the first time Australian schools have been given a choice of a religious school chaplain or a secular welfare officer, and for some schools the decision can be divisive.
New Education Minister Jason Clare has moved quickly to change the school chaplains program.
Lukas Coch/AAP
Schools currently rely on third-party providers that require all those who apply to do student counselling and community work as school chaplains to have a committed Christian faith.
Sri Lankan students march during a protest over the economic crisis outside the residence of prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa in Colombo, April 24, 2022.
AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena
The backbench Liberal revolt that pushed a protection for transgender kids through the House of Representatives, and thereby inadvertently doomed Scott Morrison’s religious discrimination legislation, has bitten deeply with the PM and senior ministers.
This week, we finally see religious discrimination debated on the floor of federal parliament. But what do voters actually think about the issues behind the bill?
Comments made during class discussions about 9/11 often put Muslim students on edge, according to a researcher who interviewed 55 Muslim students in and around the nation’s capital.
Religion was a common theme in some of the cases to come before the nine justices in the recently concluded Supreme Court term. Three experts help explain what is at stake.
Mayflower ashore on the banks of the Thames in 1624, being broken for parts.
Dr Mike Haywood (used with the kind permission of The General Society of Mayflower Descendants)
COVID-19 has delayed progress on a religious discrimination bill. A new study warns countries like Australia are not the bastions of religious freedom we think they are.
A Hindu bride on her wedding day.
EPA-EFE/Shaizaib Akber
To afford sufficient protection to marginalised people in society - such as women in minority religious communities - the state must recognise and regulate religious marriages in a nuanced way.
Women in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh neighborhood are protesting a new Indian citizenship law that they say will discriminate against Muslims, women – and, particularly, Muslim women.
Burhaan Kinu/Hindustan Times via Getty Images
A round-the-clock strike of Muslim women in a working-class neighborhood of Delhi is India’s most enduring pocket of resistance to religious discrimination, inequality and gender violence.
Amid the hyper-political debate on issues like religious discrimination, we sometimes lose sight of the broader direction of discrimination law and the need for thoughtful, strategic reform.
In Rio de Janeiro, practitioners of the Afro-Brazilian faiths Candomble and Umbanda are increasingly under attack by evangelical crusaders.
AP Photo/Leo Correa
Robert Muggah, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)
As evangelicalism spreads across Brazil, some of Rio de Janeiro’s most notorious gangs see minority religions as an affront to God. And they’re using guns to spread their gospel.
Christian Porter is confident the Coalition can pass a religious discrimination bill, despite criticism from many groups to his exposure draft legislation.
Lukas Coch/AAP
Rather than asking, “How can we best address religious discrimination in Australia?”, Christian Porter is saying, “This is what we’re doing about religious discrimination; any objections?”.
If this bill had been law when Rugby Australia sacked Israel Folau, he might have chosen to pursue a federal discrimination case.
Joel Carrett/AAP
Michelle Grattan discusses the increasing strain on the Australia-China relationship following the arrest of Dr. Yang Hengjun, and the government’s draft religious discrimination legislation.