In the context of religious institutions seeking to ban doctors and patients from engaging in the lawful conduct of assisted dying, and in regard to similar discrimination regarding marriage equality, I've made a submission to Philip Ruddock's "Relgious Freedom" inquiry, in which I call on the Panel to attend properly to robust ethical process, through ten specific recommendations.
The Panel’s Terms of Reference and its conduct published to date indicate that this inquiry’s procedural base and process are far too narrow. A Parliamentary Committee inquiry followed by a public vote on religious freedoms would be the appropriate manner for the Federal Government to demonstrate consistency of equity in its deliberations on important social policy. Failure to do so would only confirm Government bias.
The Panel’s moves to publish submissions is to be commended, and all institutional and most personal submissions should be published. However, the Panel’s approach to entertaining and encouraging private appearances without recording or transcript is to be condemned as a serious transgression of proper and transparent public consultation. Failure to publish appearance transcripts would amplify perceptions of Government and Panel bias.
The Government’s Terms of Reference additionally convey implicit bias by requesting the Panel consider whether “freedom of religion” is “adequate”, overlooking the real and present condition of its excessiveness in some contexts. Repeated forms of bias will undermine public confidence in the Panel’s consultation, its report, and the Government.
The Panel must also expressly and carefully define “freedom of religion” given the lack of clarity from the Government, especially noting that the Terms of Reference include by explicit deduction the equal right to freedom from religion.
If the Panel recommends in favour of any special legal exemptions in regard to “freedom of religion”, it obliged to publish express, coherent and reasoned principles for (a) allowing exceptions for some religious beliefs but not others, and (b) allowing exceptions for beliefs held in ‘good conscience’ by the religious, but not the non-religious. To retain credibility, the Panel must refrain from arbitrary arguments such as axiomatic and normative claims.
The Panel must also expressly recognise that religious conscience is not a special class or standard of conscience and that arguing for protection of religious but not non-religious conscience is an unjustifiable form of special pleading. Multiple sources of evidence show that the religious are, on average, no more (and sometimes less) moral, and rather less rational, than the non-religious.
Additionally, the Panel must recommend the abolition of the legal recognition of ‘institutional conscience’, a fabricated pseudo-conscience that allows remote persons (such as a religious head office) with no direct and proper right to insert itself into local, private relationships (such as the therapeutic relationship between a doctor and her patient), to dictate prejudices and discrimination, and to arbitrarily deny citizens access to lawful conduct or opportunities in which they wish to participate. A reasonable exception to this is to allow exemptions only within religious facilities whose only purpose is worship — expressly excluding those that deliver non-religious services (such as health care, education or emergency housing) to the general public, or which derive any income from the public purse.
I commend these ethical procedural considerations to the Panel and the Government.