Page 779 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 19 March 2019
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we need to stop and think twice before we pass legislation that requires Catholic priests to break the seal of the confessional. My views have not changed and I appreciate the latitude given to me by my party room to express these views in this debate.
In doing that, I say that I support all reasonable measures to ensure the safety of our children from any form of abuse. At the time I challenged the government to engage fully with Catholics and others who maintain the seal of the confessional and to ensure a proper understanding of the implications of this proposed law. It is clear that the government has not done that. It is clear that the government is pushing ahead regardless.
I acknowledge that the government is trying a different mechanism this time from that proposed last June, but the outcome will be the same: the scheme will not work. But it is also a scheme that contravenes the rights of religious communities. It does this in a number of ways. It is directly discriminatory. This legislation is an attack on religious adherents and no-one else. This law does not abolish the privilege enjoyed by other professionals like the legal professional privilege. A paedophile could in certain circumstances tell his lawyer that he had committed the crime of child abuse and his lawyer would not be bound to pass on this information.
The scrutiny report makes this abundantly clear. Only a priest has had this privilege withdrawn. It is clearly discriminately and an attack on people of faith. If it were not discriminatory and an attack on people of faith, we would see the government removing all privileges in all these circumstances. The government shows that it has not thought about the implications of this law. It does not appreciate that a priest will never reveal what has been spoken about in the sacrament of confession.
The proposed legislation is impractical and thus would have no effect. As I said previously, it is important that we all do what we can to reduce the incidence of child sexual abuse and other abuse. But the provisions of this bill do not do that. It may, in fact, make things worse, as Father Frank Brennan SJ has argued.
I will set out as briefly as I can the reasons why it will not work. Paedophiles generally do not go to confession because, as we have learned, they do not feel remorse. For Catholics, confession is centred on remorse, on repentance. It only works if we acknowledge our sins and express genuine repentance, a commitment not to repeat the offence, which, in practice, means making that undertaking not to do it again. People can fake it but your sins will not be forgiven. Going to confession is not as some people think, some sort of get out of jail card.
Madam Speaker, if paedophiles did confess, they would confess anonymously. Most people who make confession do so anonymously. It is a time-honoured tradition. Any paedophile who might admit to child abuse in confession would not do so after this act passed knowing that the information might be passed on to the police. So the small chance a paedophile might take to talk to someone he can trust and perhaps be persuaded to seek help and turn himself in will be lost because of this provision.
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