Religious freedom is at risk in Australia, says a new report. The Australian Christian Freedom Index (ACFI) report draws on documented cases, a review of legislation across nine jurisdictions, and a survey of more than 10,000 Australians.
The lead author of the report is Kurt Mahlburg, senior editor of Australia’s largest Christian news site, The Daily Declaration, with input from ten other academics and activists with expertise in law, theology, public policy and religious freedom advocacy.
Ninety-two per cent of Christians who responded to the survey said it is riskier now to affirm their beliefs in Australia than it was five years ago.
Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP congratulated the initiative “for bringing to light recent attempts to minimise the role of faith in everyday life and exclude it altogether from the public square.”
Bishop Tony Percy also welcomed the report, saying that “the right to religious freedom is being plundered in Australia.”
The ACFI survey was skewed towards active Christians, but their responses paint a worrying picture.
Of the 10,808 respondents, 73 per cent felt pressured to keep their beliefs private in public, online or at work; 42 per cent had experienced hostility, threats or harassment for expressing a Christian worldview; and 25 per cent believed that they had been denied opportunities in work, volunteering or leadership.
The report collates a number of high-profile cases of discrimination and hostility – Rugby Union star Israel Folau lost his job due to alleged homophobia; businessman Andrew Thorburn was forced to resign as CEO of Essendon, the AFL club, because of his prior association with a conservative Anglican church; and tennis icon Margaret Court was pilloried over her views on sexuality and marriage.
But it also quotes dozens of ordinary citizens who were vilified for expressing orthodox Christian views.
“I was studying a BA at Monash University in Melbourne,” wrote one respondent.
“In an essay for a Psychology course, I included quotes from the Bible along with quotes from other sources. I was told that if I quoted the Bible again, I would automatically fail the subject.”
Here are some of the ACFI’s findings.
The law is moving in one direction.
Across the country, 74 acts of parliament have nobbled religious freedom over the past 25 years – half of them in the past five years.
The mechanisms range from criminalising certain forms of pastoral support to vilification laws, to healthcare mandates that override conscientious objection, to making institutional funding conditional on compliance with policies which are at odds with Christian convictions.
Victoria is the most restrictive state in the country.
The report found Victoria was “the most restrictive state by a large margin”. Western Australia was the least restrictive.
“The chilling effect is outrunning formal discrimination.”
Paradoxically, only 25 per cent reported actual marginalisation, but 73 per cent felt pressured.
“The majority of Australian Christians surveyed are already modifying their behaviour and censoring their own speech in anticipation of consequences that, in many cases, have not yet materialised,” the report says.
Christian schools are under sustained regulatory pressure.
More than 80 per cent responded that schools were restricted, heavily restricted, or not free in organising teaching, counselling, hiring or enrolment in accordance with their principles.
Healthcare is the most pressured sector.
Above 90 per cent believed Christian hospitals and healthcare workers are not free to operate according to their beliefs. The first comprehensive report on religious freedom for Christians in Australia has found that it is “a fading star in the constellation of liberties”.
The Australian Christian Freedom Index (ACFI) is the first systematic audit of the legislative, institutional, social, and cultural pressures on Christian belief and expression.
This perception was reinforced when the ACT government seized control of Calvary Public Hospital in 2023.
Obviously, Christians in Australia are not persecuted as savagely as they are in places such as North Korea, which is regularly described as the worst place in the world to be religious, let alone a Christian.
But that doesn’t mean that persecution is illusory. The ACFI points out that “persecution” is a matter of degree.
It uses “an analytically precise tool” describing eight stages: ridicule, harassment, discrimination, defamation, attack, detainment, torture, and martyrdom.
There are numerous instances of the first four stages and isolated instances of the fifth stage including the stabbing of an Orthodox cleric in 2024 during an evening service, and the ramming of the Canberra headquarters of the Australian Christian lobby by a van loaded with gas cylinders in 2016.
One effective form of harassment is termed ‘lawfare’.
Hobart Archbishop Emeritus Julian Porteous was forced to spend nine months defending his pamphlet “Don’t Mess with Marriage” before the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Commission. The complaint was eventually withdrawn with no costs awarded.
The report makes a number of recommendations.
The main two are ambitious legislative reforms. It suggests that a referendum be held to amend the Constitution to establish a positive right to freedom of speech and freedom of religion or that parliament enact an Australian Freedoms Act.
The former Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Glenn N. Davies, praised the report for its incisive critique.
“Like the frog in the pot, most Australians are not aware of the diminution of religious freedom, but this careful and comprehensive analysis provides ample evidence that we must speak up against this demise in our country, ‘humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God’, which our Constitution implores us to do,” he said.
