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AUSTRALIA
Must Church hire homosexuals?
Officials backs Church’s rights
A senior Australian government minister has criticized new employment guidelines and said the Catholic Church’s Centacare employment agency and other institutions have the right to dismiss employees who live “openly at variance with Church teaching.”
The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) issued draft guidelines covering staff employed by Centacare and three other “faith-based” agencies providing employment services on behalf of the government in the Jobs Network. Tony Abbott, the Minister for Employment Services, said in response, “There are serious problems with the guidelines. They show a general lack of sympathy for the principle that a religious organization has a right to maintain its own ethos.”
Abbott has pledged to protect Christian agencies from “unreasonable interference in freedom of religion,” specifically the right to hire and fire according to religious beliefs.
“This is a diverse pluralist democracy that believes everyone has a broad entitlement to live their lives as they see fit,” Abbott said. “But I don’t think an openly homosexual person has a right to be employed by an organization publicly committed to oppose that lifestyle.”
The four “faith-based” agencies are receiving over AUS$700 million over three years to take over the tasks of the old Commonwealth Employment Service.
Rejects UN monitoring
Will monitor own human rights record
In a highly controversial move, the coalition government of Prime Minister John Howard recently announced Australia will no longer report to UN bodies charged with monitoring compliance with UN human rights treaties, according to the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-fam). The government announced it was capable of monitoring its own human rights record.
C-fam noted that most UN documents have no force of law, yet UN committees often call government representatives to appear before them or send investigators to those countries. Many governments complain that new UN treaties are beginning to acquire the force of law and they are put under pressure to abide by not just the letter of the document, but also what the unelected monitoring committee determines is its spirit.
The most egregious example cited is the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Although the CEDAW document condemns prostitution, the CEDAW committee directed China to legalize it. Although CEDAW does not mention abortion, the committee criticized Ireland for having restrictive abortion laws. The committee directed Kyrgyzstan to legalize prostitution, and criticized Belarus for instituting Mother’s Day. In what may be the oddest directive, the CEDAW committee directed Libya to reinterpret the Qu’ran in order to fall within committee guidelines. Governments also complain about the growing role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in deciding UN policy.
Australia’s specific complaint comes from what it sees as unfair criticism from UN bodies and NGOs over its treatment of Aborigines and asylum seekers. The government began a review of the treaty-monitoring system last March. It’s report found that UN human rights treaty bodies “need a complete overhaul.” The report singled out for criticism the role of NGOs, which frequently override the role of “democratically elected governments.” The report, issued by Alexander Downer, Minister for Foreign Affairs, also insists the “treaty committee system work within its mandate.” Australia’s move makes it one of the first countries to pull out of the system and may encourage other countries to follow suit.
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