Last year, I had the opportunity to take a bird's eye view of the nation, chairing the diverse committee charged with reporting back to government the community's thinking about human rights protection in Australia.
It is fashionable to claim discussion about an Australian human rights Act is just the concern of elites. Of the 35,000 people who sent submissions of any sort, 33,356 expressed a view for or against a human rights act, and 87 per cent of those who expressed a view were in support.
The majority of the 6000 persons who attended one of the 60 community roundtable discussions held the length and breadth of the country supported such an Act. The independent research resulting from a random telephone survey of 1200 persons turned up 57 per cent in support, 14 per cent unopposed, and 30 per cent undecided.
My committee recommended that the Australian Parliament enact a federal Human Rights Act.
Our recommendations have evoked diverse reactions in church circles. While Catholic bioethicist Nicholas Tonti-Filippini has described a Charter in the form recommended by my committee as 'a toothless tiger', Cardinal Pell has described our recommendations as a Trojan horse which 'will be used against religious schools, hospitals and charities by other people who don't like religious freedom and think it shouldn't be a human right'.
I doubt that the Australian public is much interested in a toothless tiger or a Trojan horse.
Over the years, I have often been involved in public advocacy of policy positions consistent with Catholic social teaching and with the Church's moral tradition. I don't claim that all bishops have agreed with my analysis as to how Church teaching is to be applied when making law or public policy, rather than how it is to be applied when simply enunciating what is moral or preferable behaviour for the individual wanting to live a good life.
This is the first time I've been on the other side of a public inquiry process, trying to respond to various Church voices putting sometimes contrary views on an issue of law or public policy. What were we to make of the varying formal positions on a Human Rights Act put forward by the governing bodies of the three major churches?
The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC) 'noted that much discussion has been about whether or not there should be