The price of free speech skyrockets in Queensland, Australia

When Dave Pellowe invited questions at the end of his talk about Christians and politics, he didn’t expect his answers to land him in front of the Queensland Human Rights Commission.

Pellowe founded Church and State in Queensland, Australia, to educate Christians about politics. In May, he and Rob Norman, the Queensland director of the Australian Christian Lobby, were on a teaching tour through what many consider Australia’s most conservative state in anticipation of the Oct. 26 state elections. Pellowe opened the session by reciting “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,” (Ps. 24:1), recognizing God as the original owner of the land, instead of the traditional “Welcome to Country” that says Aboriginal Australians first occupied Australia and still own the land. The first person at the microphone after his talk asked if he was worried indigenous Australians would be offended by his opening.

“I gave a full and strong teaching on the incompatibilities between Aboriginal pagan beliefs and Christianity,” Pellowe said, adding that he did not mention people or groups of people as he contrasted the religious teachings. An Aboriginal Christian attendee wrote Pellowe afterwards, saying he would make a complaint to the Queensland Human Rights Commission under the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1991. He said Pellowe had racially and religiously vilified and humiliated him in his answer, and he demanded a public apology and that Pellowe undergo re-education on Aboriginal victimhood. In early September, Pellowe and the complainant could not reach an agreement in a mandatory mediation conference.

Days later, in its last week of the session, the solitary chamber of Queensland’s parliament passed an even more restrictive speech law called the Respect at Work and Other Matters Amendment Bill 2024. The Queensland government calls it “a stronger and more modern Anti-Discrimination Act” by lowering the bar of what constitutes hateful speech. But Australia’s two primary retail lobby groups say it doesn’t go far enough to ensure “safer and more inclusive work situations.”

“We want to see harsher penalties for people committing violence in retail-specific work settings,” the National Retail Association and Australian Retailers Association said in a joint statement.

The type of violence they refer to is vaguely worded in the new law as either direct or indirect discrimination that has, “or is likely to have, the effect of disadvantaging another person” because the other person has one or more of the protected attributes, including gender identity and sex characteristics. The language of the law says the speech is considered hateful if someone else with that characteristic considers it hateful, irrespective of the speaker’s motive. The law does not provide recourse for people accused of violating the measure. If the state’s human rights commission deems it a legitimate claim, the respondent has to go through what are known as conciliation meetings. Due to the lack of clear definitions, the members of the commission decide what is and is not hateful.

When the law goes into effect July 1, 2025, not only will unintentional offense become prosecutable, but the law adds a “positive duty” for employers. It requires them to eliminate from the workforce, “as far as possible,” discrimination, harassment, “and certain other objectionable conduct,” another undefined term.

Instead of responding to a complaint as they did under the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1991, store owners and managers will have to make sure it never happens in the first place. The Queensland Human Rights Commission can investigate any workplace if it thinks the employer hasn’t eliminated the possibility of discrimination from their business. But the law doesn’t define “hateful” and other significant verbiage. The legal obligations are unclear.

“Businesses would absolutely be over-complying for fear of being investigated by the QHRC, and it would just have a very chilling effect on speech in Queensland,” says Margaret Chambers, a research fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs, a nonprofit think tank in Australia.

Chambers has studied the issue since June, when Queensland’s parliament attempted to pass an earlier, even wider-ranging bill called the Anti-Discrimination Act of 2024. According to Chambers, religious schools loudly objected to the likely loss of protections to employ people who share their religious convictions. Parliament tabled the Anti-Discrimination Act of 2024. But some of the most aggressive language is back in the current Respect at Work law, or what Chambers calls the “Frankenbill.”

“They’ve sort of used it as a Trojan horse to slip in all of these other vilification provisions, which have cracked down on the ability for Queenslanders to express themselves,” she said. “It hands a sword to activists seeking to undermine free speech in the state.”

Ultimately, Chambers’ hope is not in the government to change what it has already done. She looks to Queenslanders to vote later this month to preserve their liberties.

Summary statements from the government maintain that religious bodies will still retain the same level of exemption as under the 1991 law, which doesn’t help Pellowe. He will next face the Civil and Administrative Tribunal and, after that, Queensland’s Supreme Court. The Human Rights Law Alliance is defending him. Pellowe said he is willing to go to jail as an act of submission, but he refuses to obey what goes against his conscience. “If the penalty for preaching the gospel was $2.50, I wouldn’t pay it,” he said. “I’m not going to apologize for preaching the gospel.”

He says that freedom matters, not as an end in itself, but so that people can pursue truth as the objective. “Truth is the highest good,” he says. “Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. The reason freedom matters is so that people can search for Jesus.”