Cue more laws to bolster religious privilege

Yesterday’s piece on the push for new laws against religious discrimination drew plenty of interest from Crikey readers, some of whom are railing against the idea. Elsewhere, we received ideas to get the economy moving again. 

On religious discrimination laws

Jock Webb writes: Religions are allowed to discriminate far too much. They are exempt from most taxes and compete unfairly with private enterprise, they claim the right to discriminate against others while refusing to be discriminated against, they decry the secular law while holding out their hands for school funding which is used to further discriminate on the grounds of religion and should be spent on secular schools. They also expect the taxpayer to pay for their scumbaggery towards the victims of paedophile priests and ministers, despite paying little or no tax. PIss off I say and fund your own bigotry.

Mary Wood writes: What all this fuss is about is not freedom of religion, but a continuation of religious privilege, such as being able to discriminate about teaching staff in their schools. They receive large amounts of public money for school funding, do not pay tax, think they have the right to impose their values on the rest of us (witness campaigns against abortion, euthanasia for example). Religious people have total freedom to worship when they please, and how they please. Giving more privilege will never end – like blackmailers it will never be enough.

On depressingly low interest rates and boosting the economy

Andrew Reilly writes: Oh what would we do if we had a pipeline of planned and costed infrastructure projects, primed and ready! We could smooth out the government investment rate and everything would gradually get better! You know, like the one that the existing “Infrastructure Australia” commission is chartered to curate. Yes, that one with the .gov.au domain name . The one that not a single pork-barrel policy from either side, at the last election, referenced. You can refer to the Privacy Commission and the RBA until the cows come home, but until we start to actually use the policy infrastructure that we already have, we’ll be in the same quagmire, I suspect.