By George Christensen

Nation First exposes Tasmania’s proposed assault on religious liberty and parental authority through sweeping conversion practices legislation.

• The Greens’ bill threatens religious guidance and parental authority.
• Seventeen faith leaders have backed a legal analysis opposing the bill.
• Consent does not remove conduct from the proposed definition.
• Churches and schools face reporting duties and institutional liability.
• Tasmania’s MPs must reject this attack on freedom.

Tasmania’s Greens are proposing powers that reach into conversations between parents and children, pastors and parishioners, and Christians seeking help to live according to their faith. Their Conversion Practices Prohibition Bill gives officials a dangerous instrument for policing religious life. Tasmania’s MPs must stop it.

A legal analysis coordinated by Freedom for Faith and backed by 17 church and faith leaders exposes the breadth of the proposal. Published on 13 October, it warns that the definition can capture a single interaction, disregards consent and requires neither coercion nor harm before conduct qualifies as a conversion practice.

That strikes directly at personal freedom. An adult’s decision to seek spiritual guidance belongs to that adult. A Christian seeking help to practise chastity should be free to approach a pastor without inviting government scrutiny. Citizens have the right to order their lives around convictions that politicians dislike, and to seek support from others who share those convictions.

The bill leaves requested prayer and practical parental guidance exposed to legal uncertainty. According to the analysis, protections for expressions of belief and parental discussion fail to clearly secure the practical application of those beliefs. Churches and families are left facing the threat of complaints and investigations over guidance rooted in their faith.

Christianity involves obedience, repentance and moral discipline. Parents have responsibilities to teach, guide and set boundaries. Legislators who leave those activities exposed to complaints create pressure to abandon them. Freedom loses its substance when exercising it requires families and pastors to calculate the risk of government intervention.

The enforcement provisions make that pressure concrete. Freedom for Faith’s analysis warns that the bill carries its broad definition into child-abuse and reporting frameworks, imposes organisational duties and exposes institutions to overlapping proceedings. The commissioner would possess powers to compel documents and answers, bringing the force of the state into disputes over religious practice.

Consider the effect on a small church or Christian school. An investigation consumes management time, requires legal advice, unsettles staff and diverts resources from serving families. The burden begins before any verdict. That process creates a powerful incentive to retreat from religious guidance simply to avoid the expense and ordeal.

The criminal provisions deepen the threat. The analysis says injury includes temporary mental-health harm, with negligence sufficient concerning that injury, and identifies exposure to the Criminal Code’s general maximum sentence of 21 years. Such severe consequences make clear legal boundaries indispensable. Parliament must answer for every power it grants and every ordinary activity it leaves exposed.

Pastors should preach with conviction, parents should raise children with moral clarity, and Christian schools should fulfil the purpose for which families chose them. Those responsibilities require the freedom to put beliefs into practice. Bureaucratic supervision of religious guidance undermines that freedom at its foundation.

The bill was introduced by Greens MP Rosalie Woodruff. Every MP considering it must defend the right of citizens to practise their faith without being dragged through investigations by sweeping legislation.

Reject the bill. Protect requested prayer, religious counsel and parental decisions with clear law. Churches and families must retain the freedom to live their convictions.

Will the Tasmania Liberals support the new Inquisition? Many of their federal counterparts certainly would. -Ed