The interaction of religion with politics takes many forms. It is often divisive and contentious. This applies especially during election campaigns. The 2025 campaign has been no exception, though it has introduced new elements.
The unfinished ‘religion and politics’ business from the 2022 federal election was the matter of religious discrimination. Then–Prime Minister Scott Morrison was unable to achieve parliamentary reconciliation between the competing claims of faith-based schools and minority groups such as LGBTQIA+ students and teachers. The faith-based claims were largely prosecuted by Christian organisations, including Christian schools and the Catholic education sector, though they had some non-Christian supporters.
New Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised to resolve the stand-off but was unable to do so. He could not achieve bipartisanship with the Coalition and refused to proceed without it. To do so, he claimed, would be too divisive. It would also be difficult and probably unproductive.
This issue was highly contested and very public during the first half of Labor’s term. Although it has not gone away entirely, since the Israel–Hamas–Gaza conflict in October 2023, it has been almost completely overshadowed. The emphasis has shifted from the role of Christians in politics to that of the Jewish and Muslim communities. By mid-2024, the freedom of religion legislation was dead in the water to the regret of the ‘faith lobby’, including some senior Catholics. Others, such as the Greens, equality groups, Jewish organisations and the LGBTQIA+ community, regretted the Labor government’s abandonment of anti-vilification legislation.
The premise behind the attention given to religion and politics is that religious identity claims matter when voters determine their vote. It is also assumed that such voters take their lead from their religious groups and leaders. If religious communities are divided, then their adherents are less politically influential because they cancel each other out. The historical idea of the ‘Catholic vote’ depended on the community hanging together under church leadership and speaking with ‘one voice’. It also presumed that the community was large enough to make a difference.
Some of these assumptions no longer apply to the Catholic community. It is smaller, less cohesive, and less inclined to listen to its own leadership. But the vibe lingers on. The politics is played out in much the same way.
Who speaks for Catholics?
In this election, a plethora of official and unofficial Catholic groups have intervened during the campaign: there are too many to list, and some may be overlooked here. These efforts include the traditional Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC) statement, a more extensive statement from Catholic Religious Australia, and major agencies such as the National Catholic Education Commission, Catholic Social Services Australia, and Catholic Health Australia. Some dioceses have played an electoral role. So have lay groups like the St Vincent de Paul Society and the Australasian Catholic Coalition for Church Reform (ACCCR).
Each of these groups has a potential audience and the networks to try to reach them: dioceses, parishes, schools, hospitals, Centacare agencies, Vinnies conferences and individual reform groups. Yet in many cases it is a diminishing audience and, in some cases, an ageing one. We can only guess at the size of the attentive audience. Cutting through to citizen voters is a recurring problem, especially among younger voters who now make up the majority of the electorate. Catholic school communities are the biggest and most likely receptors of church messages, though the lines of communication, through principals to parents and staff, are long, contentious, and unreliable.
The type of church intervention varies. What emerges are many different perspectives and techniques. There is the ‘social justice’ church and the ‘professional’ church, sometimes overlapping. This striking variation is no different from the ideological differences in society at large.
Some interventions are examples of hard-nosed, modern lobbying techniques that essentially advise readers whom to vote for and whom to avoid. The National Catholic Education Commission supports the two major parties while strongly criticising the Greens. In other statements, the NCEC and its affiliates and associates lean towards the Coalition’s so-called ‘anti-woke’ agenda. Its five priorities are funding certainty; support for faith-based schools; sector neutrality; addressing disadvantage; and early childhood education.
From a quite different perspective, the St Vincent de Paul Society’s policy scorecard strongly supports the Greens and partially supports the Labor government, while finding little or no merit in the Coalition Opposition. Its four priorities are supporting a safety net for all Australians; housing security across the country; meeting the needs of First Nations peoples; and rising to the refugee challenge. Vinnies also offered a webinar and supported the ‘Say Yes to Refugees’ theme of the Palm Sunday rallies during the election campaign. CRA and ACCCR have similar, though not identical, priorities.
Other interventions are more general and reflective, offering contributions that are more softly educative. This includes the ACBC’s discussion of general principles and the self-interested focus on particular policy areas such as support for private and public hospitals by Catholic Health Australia.
There are also impressive examples of cross-church and community activism, such as the Sydney Alliance Federal Pre-Election Assembly at Westmead/Parramatta, in which the Parramatta Diocese, underpinned by the diocesan pastoral plan, played a leading role. Priests, parishioners, students, staff and the diocesan social welfare agency were among the 1,000 people present on 13 March at the Morley Centre at Catherine McAuley Westmead and Parramatta Marist High School. The meeting’s agenda included affordable housing, sustainable and affordable energy policies, and effective climate action.
Other Religious Voices
The domestic Australian aftermath of October 2023 shifted attention from Christian voters to the smaller Muslim and Jewish communities. Christian leaders have expressed their views on antisemitism, Islamophobia and Middle East politics during the campaign, but inevitably they have taken a back seat to the ethnic communities directly affected. Religion and politics have become ethno-religion and politics.
These Australia-wide ethnic communities share the same limitations as the Catholic community, as their voices are quite diverse. Unlike Catholics and other Christians, they are concentrated in a small number of electorates in Sydney and Melbourne where the number of Muslims and Jews reaches 10–20 per cent of the voting population. This may be just high enough to make a difference, though they remain smaller than the Christian community.
The so-called ‘Muslim’ electorates include the Labor-held, largely working-class seats of Blaxland and Watson in Western Sydney, and Calwell, Macnamara and Wills in Melbourne. These are among the prime ‘Muslim’ targets. The so-called ‘Jewish’ electorates include the middle-class seats of Wentworth in Sydney, and Kooyong and Goldstein in Melbourne, held by Teal Independents elected in 2022. These are the ‘Jewish’ targets. Some of these are safer seats, but several are marginal.
Who speaks for the Muslim community?
The working-class Muslim community has traditionally been fragmented and politically disorganised. It has lacked recognised national leaders. This has contributed to reduced political effectiveness.
The Labor seats are being challenged by pro-Palestine Muslim independents, supported by various groups including Muslim Votes Matter (MVM). MVM is also generally allocating preferences to the Greens over both Labor and Liberal candidates. Other Muslim groups include Stand4Palestine, which is calling on mosques not to host politicians who have supported Israel. The minor Australia’s Voice party, led by Labor defector Senator Fatima Payman, is also campaigning against Labor.
The driving force behind these campaigns is the belief that the government has been insufficiently supportive of the Palestinian cause. Other issues are secondary. MVM recognises that the Muslim community also supports the rights of its faith-based schools to determine hiring of their staff. This puts them at odds with Greens policy, but the difference has been accommodated through consultation and a promise by Greens leader Adam Bandt of his party’s respect for conflicting rights.
The situation is complex. Muslim voters have established party allegiances and have tended in the past to support Labor in working-class electorates. However, in the 2017 same-sex marriage plebiscite and in the 2023 Voice referendum, they expressed a different view. Ministers Ed Husic and Anne Aly are Muslim MPs within the government. Yet some Muslim voters might be ripe for change. In both the 2024 UK and US elections, there is some evidence that Muslim voters were mobilised to desert their traditional Labour and Democrat allegiances.
Who speaks for the Jewish community?
The situation in the Jewish community is equally complex. It includes many groups highly critical of the Albanese Labor government for being insufficiently pro-Israel, both domestically and in voting at the United Nations. These groups include established peak organisations often known colloquially as the ‘Jewish lobby’. They are well-resourced, highly professional, and well-organised with an established profile.
These include the Australian Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the Zionist Federation of Australia, and the Anti-Defamation Commission. All have been active campaigners.
There is also a more pro-Palestinian view represented by another more ‘progressive’ body, the Jewish Council of Australia, which supports the government’s position. Jewish Labor MPs, including the Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus, and the member for Macnamara, Josh Burns, have also pushed back.
Religion and politics are about participation as well as party choice. Religious voices have played an important part in encouraging the former, though the latter grabs more attention. Yet often church voices deliberately steer clear of endorsing parties, choosing instead to elevate the democratic process itself. In a widely disseminated homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, Fr Frank Brennan wisely concluded that ‘there is no one way that a Catholic should vote.’ In practice, that is the case, but that doesn’t mean that discerning Catholics should not be asked uncomfortable questions.
Christianity has diverse representatives in the Australian polity. Traditional centrist and progressive denominations, like the Anglican and Uniting churches, are now matched by the activist evangelical Australian Christian Lobby and by the growing influence of the Pentecostal community.
The Catholic community, which is the largest Christian denomination, speaks with many voices, probably too many for maximum effect. While these voices may not explicitly disagree with one another in public, they certainly demonstrate their differences vividly through their stated priorities. Some stick to generalities, but others, like the NCEC and the St Vincent de Paul Society, produced scorecards rating the parties. This leads sometimes to strong explicit support for one or other of the major parties, and at other times to support for or opposition to the Greens. This method, however, often fails to adequately consider Independents, despite their increasing popularity and attractiveness to voters.
In the 2025 election, Christians have shared the stage with Muslims and Jews. The biggest international and domestic issue of all, the Israel–Gaza–Hamas confrontation, has largely sidelined the former and elevated the latter to deserved prominence. That is how 2025 will be remembered. We don’t yet know the consequences of this focus for the federal election outcome.
John Warhurst is an Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University.