The Case for an End to Religious Privilege

By Moira Clarke
On Line Opinion
November 26, 2012

www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14398

It would be difficult, at this stage, for anyone to deny that the perpetuation and cover-ups of the sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults is entrenched and systemic in certain religious institutions within Australia. It would be equally difficult to deny that the Catholic Church, ostensibly one of Australia's leading 'charities', is disproportionately involved. Evidence for this has existed for years, but only now have our political leaders agreed to a Royal Commission, and only under the pressure of overwhelming public outrage.

Almost as recently, the Australian Parliament has passed a piece of legislation that has received much less fanfare. The Australian Charities and Not for Profit Commission (ACNC) was established on 1st November of this year. Its purpose is to simplify and regulate the charities and not-for-profit sector at the national level. Since religious institutions fall under this umbrella they, too, are affected by this legislation.

At this point in time, a charity is defined at common law and largely based on the preamble to the Statute of Elizabeth, passed by the English Parliament in 1601. One of the first tasks of the ACNC will be to introduce a statutory definition of charity; however, the Australian Tax Office, being a de facto regulator of charities, has already delivered its definition in October of last year, and there is little likelihood that the ACNC will take a different approach or that this will change in subsequent reviews.

The involvement of the ATO will come as a surprise to some Australians. They might be interested to learn that one of the ATO's definitions of 'charity' is the 'advancement of religion', contrary to submissions that argue otherwise. As a result, it will remain the case that any trust fund or institution whose purpose is to promote religion, irrespective of any tangible social benefit, can still expect to receive a range of tax exemptions. These include fringe benefits tax, GST, stamp duty, land tax, company and capital gains tax, car registration fees and municipal rates.

Wherever somebody avoids tax, somebody else has to make up the difference. That somebody is the Australian public. As a case in point, this has led to rates for ordinary property owners being 10% higher in one council, due to church-owned land being exempt. Then there is the question of those commercial enterprises that a religious organisation owns or operates. Sanitarium, for example, is owned by the Seventh Day Adventists, themega-church Hillsong owns a music publishing and recording business, and Gloria Jean's is owned by Hillsong members who have in the past donated profits, free of tax, to the controversial Mercy Ministries and theAustralian Christian Lobby. Businesses owned by religious institutions have traditionally operated free of company tax, and have been eligible for exemption from FBT and GST concessions. In addition to lost revenue, such businesses enjoy an unfair commercial advantage over their competitors.

As part of the ACNC overhaul, the new UBIT (Unrelated Business Income Tax) will target commercial activities owned by NFPs for those enterprises commencing from May 2011. While this is a welcome improvement, in practice the transition for existing businesses could take years. Furthermore, the legislation is likely to be complex and it is unclear at this stage how businesses whose earnings are directed towards the organisation's 'altruistic' purposes will be affected. The problem, here, is that the 'advancement of religion'-- whether Scientology, the Exclusive Brethren, Hillsong, the Adelaide street preachers or the Catholic Church -- is still considered to be an altruistic endeavour.

The cost of all this? An estimated $31B per annum, revenue withheld from a nation that is struggling to fund a public education system in crisis as evidenced by the Gonski report, the sorely needed National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), and whose infrastructure, public health facilities and other social services are desperately in need of funding. It is significant that the government, while struggling to bring the budget back into surplus, still feels the need to tread ever so softly around this issue.

As an Australian taxpayer, I protest.

I protest the protection of churches that, even while professing horror at the degree of institutionalised child abuse, deception and cover-ups allegedly at the core of their institutions, and even while promising reform, have allegedly been complicit in the intimidation and silencing of victims, and via the Ellis Defence have gone to considerable lengths to avoid culpability, even to the point of continuing to fund the legal defences of previously and repeatedly convicted paedophiles.

I protest the level of power enjoyed by a religious organisation whose doctrine has recently led to the death of an innocent woman in Ireland, one among thousands.

I protest that our government still respects an institution that wilfully exacerbates poverty and hardship in the third world, as evidenced by its response to the push for birth control in the Philippines and elsewhere.

I protest that Australians must still support a church that has attempted to boycott the renowned human rights organisation, Amnesty International. Incredibly, this behaviour is in response to Amnesty's shift in policy towards the support for decriminalisation of abortion for rape victims, particularly with reference to war zones, including Darfur and the DRC. Just for the record, AI is unfortunately not a pro-choice movement and this was never about abortion on demand.

I protest the exemptions from law granted to a church whose head insists that condoms should not be used in the fight against the spread of HIV and AIDS in Africa, the church that continues to preach that any form of birth control other than abstinence is a 'sin'.

I protest against religious institutions that proclaim themselves the moral arbiters of our society, while fighting against the efforts of the United Nations Human Rights Council to end violence and discrimination against gays, lesbians and transgender individuals. At what point is it appropriate for an organisation of the size, wealth and power of the Church to claim victimhood for itself, when the true victims are being imprisoned, tortured, raped and murdered?

I protest that, even as the furore over the Royal Commission has barely died down, our government has proposed changes to anti-discrimination laws at the national level, yet has failed to remove clauses exempting religious institutions. This means that those essential services that have over the years been handed by preference to religious operators, including employment agencies, can continue to discriminate against persons on the grounds of sexual identity and marital status; we can only hope that the proposed amendments for aged-care facilities will succeed! Even now, even after everything that has come to light concerning the nature of these mediaeval institutions, not only will my taxes, your taxes, everyone else's taxes continue to make up the deficit engendered by the churches, but these same churches will continue to be considered above the law that's good enough for everyone else, and will continue to be free to impose their dogma on any Australian that doesn't measure up to some stone-age concept of morality.

It is high time Australians woke up to these injustices. We, as Australians, need to keep this issue in the spotlight. We must demand further reforms. We must insist that organisations whose sole and actual purpose is to perpetuate themselves are not of benefit to society, do not deserve privileges, and that truly charitable groups must be free to operate effectively without interference from their parent religious institutions that do little, if anything, to provide financial assistance.

Let us hope that the Royal Commission does its job effectively, and does not submit to the inevitable pressure to protect those institutions that have successfully evaded the law for so long. This hope is no doubt shared by most secular Australians. I now challenge religious Australians, of all faiths, to not only demand that these organisations clean up their acts when 'caring' for children and other vulnerable individuals, but to also insist that religious belief is a private matter, is not grounds for receipt of public funding and tax breaks, and should not be imposed on others as a matter of government policy.