In the lead up to the election, a number of conservative Christian groups were concerned about Labor’s pledge to make changes to the Equal Opportunities Act. Under the proposed changes, Christian organisations would only be able to employ someone of the same faith where it was an “inherent requirement” of their job, putting in jeopardy the exclusively Christian staff of many faith-based schools.

Christian Schools Australia and the Australian Christian Lobby encouraged Christians to send letters to local candidates and direct to the Labor leader Daniel Andrews’ office. In its written response, Labor gave an assurance there may well still be room for schools to argue their case for teachers to be of a particular faith, an assurance those arguing against the change haven’t accepted.

Now the election has been won by Labor, CSA and ACL say they’re not backing down. ACL Victoria’s Dan Flynn says “The battle is far from over,” and is calling for an independent review of the legislation.

Meanwhile, CEO of Christian Schools Australia, Stephen Doherty says they’ll be “stepping up [their] efforts” in the new year.

With the probability of a diverse and potentially conservative-leaning Upper House, both groups are hopeful the legislation could be defeated, although the make up of the Legislative Council won’t be decided for at least another week and a half.

“We’ll be speaking to the incoming Government, Members of Parliament, as well as the upper house,” says Doherty. “Before the election we had hundreds if not thousands of Chrsitains writing to candidtates and we’ll continue that in the new year with people writing to the newly sworn in members as well as members of the upper house.”
ACL’s Dan Flynn says just because Labor were elected, they shouldn’t think they have a mandate on this particular issue.

“There were bigger issues driving this election result, and so the win by the ALP in this election should not be ready by the ALP as a mandate from the people to enforce this equal opportunity change.”

One of the most controversial issues during the election campaign was the building of an east-west tollway, which prompted a lot of grassroots campaigning. But Flynn says religious freedom was also an issue which generated a lot of letters to candidates and should be acknowledged by the new Government.

“If there was one issue that sparked enormous grassroots protest it was this issue. So he should listen to these concerns which were raised across all spectrums of the church.”