Jewish Council Says No To Liberal Leader Matt Guy’s Proposal To Change Victoria’s Anti-Discrimination Law
Image: Victorian Liberal leader Matt Guy.
The peak body of Australia’s largest Jewish community, the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, has said that the organisation is not looking for a change to the state’s newly-enacted anti-discrimination laws.
The JCCV’s statement came after Victorian Liberal leader Matt Guy promised to change the law so that religious schools could hire staff on the basis of their faith and allow them to discriminate against LGBTQI staff.
The JCCV told Australian Jewish News that they have not sought a change in the provisions of the Equal Opportunity Act (EOA), enacted by the Daniel Andrews-led Labor government that prohibits religious schools from sacking or refusing to hire LGBTQI staff.
‘No Need For Change’
“The JCCV is comfortable with the present legislative settings. In particular, we understand that the larger Victorian Jewish day schools have not expressed a desire to exercise this power or a need for it,” President Daniel Aghion told AJN.
The heads of prominent Jewish schools – Mount Scopus Memorial College principal Rabbi James Kennard and Bialik College principal Jeremy Stowe-Lindner told AJN that they opposed any form of discrimination in their institutions.
The Victorian Parliament in December 2021 passed the Equal Opportunity (Religious Exceptions) Amendment Act and removed the exemptions granted to religious schools from anti-discrimination laws.
The new law, which came into force in June 2022, prohibited religious organisations and faith-based schools from sacking or refusing to hire staff on account of their sexuality, gender identity or marital status. The schools could consider the religious beliefs of a staff member only for roles such as religious studies teacher or to recruit priests, ministers, religious leaders or their members.
Catholic Archbishop Backs Guy
On October 17, 2022, the Islamic Council of Victoria had issued a press release saying that opposition leader Guy had “committed to amend the Equal Opportunity Act (EOA) ‘to allow for the right of a faith-based organisation to employ a person that aligns with the religious organisation’s values’”.
The ICV said Guy had promised that the new law would “protect the ability of Islamic schools and other faith-based schools to uphold their religious ethos.”
Catholic archbishop of Melbourne, Peter Comensoli, supported Guy’s proposal, reported The Guardian. The archbishop said that the law should protect faith-based schools to employ staff who share their “faith, values and mission”.
