Tuesday 16th January 2018

PO Box 5142
Hughesdale
VIC 3166
Australia
Tel: 0412701657
andrewfrancisoliver@tpg.com.au

To: The Ruddock Review On Human Rights And Religious Freedom

Dear Mesdames et Messieurs,

Herewith my submission to the Ruddock review on human rights and religious freedom.

Yours Faithfully,

Andrew Oliver (signed copy to follow by post)

Table of Contents
A Personal Introduction........................................................................................................................................3
What Is Religion? ..................................................................................................................................................4
What Is A Religious Drive? ....................................................................................................................................5
What Is A Religious Value? ...................................................................................................................................6
Section 116 ...........................................................................................................................................................7
How Constitutional Are Australia’s Human Rights Legislation? ...........................................................................8
Last Attempt To Amend S116 And Its Consequences ..........................................................................................9
Discrimination.................................................................................................................................................... 10
What Should The Ruddock Review Recommend? ............................................................................................ 11
A Personal Introduction

I have few memories prior to third-grade primary school. In third-grade I was identified by my teacher Ms
Bosworth as semiliterate, and it was decided that each Tuesday walking home from school I was to pick up a
copy of Look And Learn magazine from the newsagent with a view to my attaining literacy by immersion in
reading. By the end of fourth-grade I had picked up the basics of reading. I was promoted to high school
two years later despite never becoming competent at essay composition.

At the same time, I was being indoctrinated into Presbyterianism by Sunday school teachers at the local
Presbyterian Church. My primary school later became notorious for having the wife of the local League Of
Rights leader as religious instruction teacher. Religious Instruction was compulsory, even though sex religion
and politics were forbidden topics.

In fifth grade and sixth grade I continued to read Look And Learn reading avidly stories about world Wars
one and two. Some dirt about British Imperialism such as the treatment of soldiers convicted of cowardice,
being shot at dawn after being tied up in barbed wire so that one is shot in the back, was included by some
writers by way of historical accuracy.

In fifth grade and sixth grade I remember being introduced to science and mathematics by Mr Sparks, who
was never my regular teacher. In fifth grade feeling the scorn of my regular teacher, when I was being
questioned one day, I thought of whether Jesus would take sympathy upon me and my involuntary
expressions had me thrown out of that teacher’s class and transferred into a joint fourth fifth grade class
Mrs Williamson’s class. I came later to understand that my previous regular fifth-grade teacher was a
militant atheist.

Such are the remembrances of things past.

Given that my best marks were in science and mathematics, I proceeded to high school whilst continuing to
attend Presbyterian Sunday school. A parental decision discontinued the Look And Learn subscription and
commenced a Scientific American subscription. I began to understand the world through an appreciation of
scientistic theism. Rejecting the idea that the world is 4004 years old, usually put that the world began in
4004 BC, and accepting the claims of the geologists that the world was millions or hundreds of millions of
years old, did not displace the simple faith I had been indoctrinated into.

In fourth form browsing in the local Council library, I discovered Karl Popper. I read his The Open Society
And Its Enemies cover to cover in fourth form. Next I discovered Bernard Crick’s In Defence Of Politics
George Orwell’s Homage To Catalonia and Albert Camus’ The Rebel. The simple faith began to fade.

In the middle of fifth form, the Minister of the thenceforth local Presbyterian Church departed for another
appointment. I was intimidated by my mother into ceasing to attend church. In sixth form reading Norman
Feather’s Vibrations And Waves and trying to solve for constant nodal lines on infinite plane wave collisions I
began to appreciate physics in a new light as having possibilities, essentially in the language of today the
possibility that light cone integrals and kernel functions might underlie quantum mechanics in such a way as
to allow 3D printing. More and more reading of science and mathematics caused me to wonder why any
God would be interested in one planet amongst billions?

Later impressed by some of the arguments of the intelligent design crowd, about the computational nature
of reality, the law of pre-computation, that an inflation phase of the Big Bang had a universal singularity that
pre-computes tables of the transcendental functions of the laws of physics, I became a formal agnostic.

One can’t refute that such a universal singularity might exist. But certainly one could question whether such
a universal singularity would be interested in old Scripture, rather than well-written books like JS Mill’s On
Liberty or CS Lewis’ The Abolition Of Man.
What Is Religion?
Having recounted some of my life experience I can say in all sincerity that I understand religion both from
the religious standpoint and from what I see as a formal agnostic secular standpoint.

The religious attitude is characterised by psychological drives where one would rather starve or abstain or
decline to comply with a political policy one disagrees with on the basis of religious conscience. That is why
in World War I certain would-be soldiers were recognised under the law as religious conscientious objectors.
The religious psychological mindset is different to the psychological mindset of those driven by political
policy.

Most religions have food rules. Christians are said to be opposed to cannibalism, and would rather starve.
Even if marooned by an aeroplane accident in the Andes. Jews are said to want their food kosher from
recognised sellers of kosher food, in rules I don’t understand. However, it is worth remembering that
persecution of religious Jews by vegans making cant claims about animal cruelty was known in the 1930s in
the lead up to World War II. The fact is that humans need phosphorus and nitrogen compounds and
chelated trace metals in their diet for proper nutrition. One might philosophise about all the little fishes
about how the sailors who ended up in Davy Jones’s locker being eaten by the fishes through layers of
predation end up on our plates as flake battered in flour, with the fact that the recycling of phosphorus and
nitrogen and chelated trace metals requisite to human nutrition makes a pure vegan diet untenable.

This does not mean that I want to persecute religious people about their food rules. That there was some
historical reasons why these food rules got adopted is a matter for history. If for example demonstrators
outside a Halal butchers being rude to regular customers get refused service for berating regular customers,
I do not find this discrimination objectionable. Rather proprietors of single family religious food businesses
should be prepared to recommend other businesses as places to obtain food in the local area.

We all need to eat. In a small country town there might only be one supermarket one hotel one milk bar and
one bakery. Local people in need of basic sustenance deserve non-discriminatory service provided they too
treat the workers with due respect and tolerance. Workers have rights too. Workers have a right to be
treated respectfully and with mutual toleration of diverse faith and opinion.

In the big city that has so many food businesses that a better policy is to require refusal of service to be
accompanied by recommendation to a business likely to provide service.

More to the point the question is whether religious people who want to operate food businesses if of
fundamentalist bent should be sent to re-education camps? My understanding is that after the Vietcong
won the Vietnamese war, Vietnamese Catholics were targeted, and many sent to re-education camps.
Rather, should religious people of fundamentalist bent be proscribed from employment and dumped into
unemployment ghettos? This is the sort of thinking that helped cause World War II.

Just as a doctor who won’t perform abortions on the basis of alleged religious conscience is now forced by
the Victorian law to refer some patients to a doctor who will, proprietors of food businesses should likewise
be forced to refer some unreasonable customers to a business that will serve them. As I have argued
everyone in the ideal world would treat people with respect and tolerance. Workers in small businesses
likewise deserve to be treated respectfully and with due tolerance.

On the other hand the government is supposed to treat all citizens as equal under the law. Logically this
should apply to government funded businesses. If about 5% of Australians are churchgoing Catholics, why
are about 20 to 40% of hospitals owned by the Catholic Church yet funded by the state? Religious
organisations that rely upon state funding are asking for it if they discriminate against citizens on any
number of grounds.
What Is A Religious Drive?

Standard psychology posits drives and desires conscious and unconscious and semiconscious. Those of the
population described as religious people tend to manifest so-called religious drives which inherently are
about starving abstaining or declining to comply with a political policy known but scorned. The psychology
of religious opinion and belief is that often religious people don’t describe the political policy known but
scorned for fear of having it imposed upon them.

If one believes in live and let live, in having a community where peaceful coexistence between religious
subcommunities and the citizenry at large exists, then it is a matter of drafting laws that are accommodating,
that accommodate religious people with their food rules and at the same time are fair to the citizenry at
large who do not believe. If for example one was a churchgoing Catholic dumped in a nursing home by
relatives on the basis of waiting lists, where the food is awful, and one is offered sausages to eat on a Friday
which one feels one can’t eat, or the same situation in a hospital or a hospice this is a breach of the right of a
churchgoing Catholic to eat. That is one reason why the Catholic Church try to run nursing homes et cetera
et cetera.

This is one reason why it would be a good idea to reduce government expenditures on nursing homes
hospitals and hospices with a view to personal superannuation accounts funding them. In order for
government funded bodies to be non-discriminatory might mean religious people simply being un-
accommodated and left to starve.

A secular approach to the state where the state is non-discriminatory under the principle of equality before
the law where sport religion and recreation are defunded by the state and instead funded by private
individuals involves probably a restriction on government spending to no more than one third of GDP, in
order to free up expenditures on matters where religious people fundamentally disagree with militant
atheists to be from private expenditures including private expenditures from personal superannuation
accounts.

This would be an example of where utopian communism and communities of believers just don’t agree
about the role of the state.
What Is A Religious Value?

Values are normally thought of as particularly strong drive objects. Religious values would be particularly
strong drive objects at variance with common political policy. But, most religious values such as revelatory
enlightenment marriage for life valuation of Scripture et cetera are things which don’t necessarily involve
violence to others providing the others convert. Some religious people view most political values as
contemptible. Yet in this world where we are enjoined to live and let live and have respect and tolerance, it
is unfortunate that the religious psychology is more inclined to certainty than those whose epistemology is
more scientific.

That said, I find indoctrination of miners with religious fundamentalism through teaching ignorance of
science and mathematics unsupportable. Schools run by religious fundamentalists should be defunded.
Section 116

I happen to think that section 116 is perfectly drafted. How I wish that the High Court had not read it down
to nothing. I find unsupportable federal public funding of school chaplains, inter alia.

Section 116 states:-

The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious
observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a
qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.

I note that in 1988 there was an attempt to add coverage of the states to section 116. Opportunistic and
unprincipled religious organisations fearing defunding opposed this change. There is a view in constitutional
law that such a refusal counts as a standing resolution of the people until the matter is next determined.
There is another view that the clause should not have been read down to nothing in the first place. Given
that most of the funds come from the federal tax revenues nowadays, I’d say religiously funded bodies are
sitting ducks for High Court defunding if the black letter of the law conservative judiciary take charge.
How Constitutional Are Australia’s Human Rights Legislation?
The Racial Discrimination Act is clearly intra vires.

There is a court of opinion of the extreme states righter’s that the Sexual Discrimination Act 1984 and the
Disability Discrimination Act 1982 are ultra vires in that despite being well intentioned sincere in terms of
being promoted by outcomes based political policy they inherently relate to state matters beyond the scope
of the external affairs power.

That said, where should Australia go in the early twenty first century saddled with an 1890’s horse and buggy
constitution. I’d opine that the first task for reform is to authorise a Human Rights Charter on the Victorian
model by getting a 51 (xxvia) human rights power added to the federal grounds for expenditure section.
Recognising that this could be actively facilitated by a High Court advisory opinion power, that should be
sought too. There’s really no other way forward.
Last Attempt To Amend S116 And Its Consequences

Noting that the people rejected the Constitution Alteration (Rights and Freedoms) Bill 1988, yet has recently
by plebiscite passed a limited standing resolution demanding gay and lesbian marriage legalisation, I think it
is urgent to put things right on a proper black letter of the law basis by getting human rights added as a
section 51 power head by referendum to so do.
Discrimination

Can government legislate for good manners and civility? Should respect and tolerance be imposed by re-
education camps?

Or should, contra wise laws be designed with layers of variant policy exceptions to allow different
subcommunities to co-exist? On a live and let live policy?!

Recently the Catholic Church has come under attack in part because of leadership failure but in part because
of its very own teachings on shotgun weddings. Priests would coerce pregnant teenagers to marry the boy
that got them with child, and some women later regret forced marriages to boys with no common interests
marriages set up for the divorce court sitting ducks for failure.

My honest opinion is that in these matters fundamentalist Islam is worse than fundamentalist Catholicism,
but both are not the best policy.
What Should The Ruddock Review Recommend?

I proffer my Australian Charter Of Human Rights Responsibilities Payments And Remedies Bill 2020 as what
I’d submit your enquiry should recommend the government adopt.

Furthermore, publicly funded schools should be required to teach reason science and critical thinking. When
children enter High School they should be capable of deciding to believe or not believe and if parents try to
coerce them to participate in religious practices against their will the family court should be able to
intervene and have government funded lawyers to represent said children in the name of freedom of
religion.

Now if section 116 was implemented is all its glory in federal and state government policy, we would be
getting somewhere in separation of church and state …