Given that God doesn't exist and all religion is a major fraud, I can't wait for someone to propose a law that will allow parents to be sued for sending their innocent children to an institution that, daily, will fill their minds with superstitious rubbish and fill them with fear.

Children don't have the intellectual capacity to work out for themselves when they are being lied to and indoctrinated. They rely on their parents and teachers to tell them the truth. When they reach sixteen or so, they begin to think for themselves but for many the damage has been done.

Religion is not about truth, but cleric gaining control over the minds of the gullible and the intellectually weak. Just because the parents swallowed the religious con doesn't give them the right to have their children indoctrinated surely.

Stand up for kids. Stop the religious con now!

"Yes, these schools are supported by taxpayer funds but then why shouldn't they be taxpayerfunded? These parents are taxpayers themselves."

But that's not the point, is it? Taxpaying citizens who don't have children of school age are still obliged to pay for public education, even though they derive no benefit from it: why shouldn't you? If I choose to hire a bodyguard, should I be entitled to cry off paying that proportion of my taxes which fund our military forces? If I pay Telstra for broadband, can I deduct my tax contribution to the National Broadband Network? Just try it some time.

The point of taxes is to redistribute personal wealth for the general good: if those taxes get handed straight back to the wealthy in subsidies for private schools, they are not performing their proper function.

Let those people who want private education pay for it out of private funds, just like anyone else who wants something special for themselves.

David Palmer comments coming from some in the clergy towards same sex marriage ie:
"it encourages paedophilia" "Beastiality" "Polygamy" "abuse of children" etc etc
Now if that is not bigotry, what is it, especially coming from those persons who are suppose to be persons of "charity and christian love", yet make their living, by abusing people minds and imposing a false fear.

David G, you are so right, when are people going to wake up that religion is all crap, I am sure all those young men going to the better place to be united with the virgins, may be horribly disappointed when they are all 90 year old virgins, may wish they were better off where they were before they obliterated themselves.
Then we have the white attired man and his purple men all trying to ape the transsexuals, who are not living in this century at all, but he makes sure he keeps all the poor people not using condoms, so they will be forever poor, that will mean he will be kept in the luxury he is used to as they will know nothing different, treating him as some superior being
Then we have the not to use anyone else's blood brigade and so on.
How on earth can anyone believe all this rubbish that is a pack of lies created some 2000 odd years ago

In principle I agree with the potential 'dangers' in some of the anti-discrimination law but until I read the actual wording I feel unable to provide an informed contribution. Like most laws much is left to it's application ie. the discretion and commonsense of the judicial system, the Judge etc, but this is not always a fullproof guarantee of fairness or commonsense. How an ordinary person may interpret the law may not always play out as one might think in an investigation and court proceeding.

A can of worms or a storm in a tea cup - I am not sure yet (excuse the cliches) but I can see the potential for abuse if regulators go too far or make the provisions so ambiguous and broad that it might mean anybody is capable of being accused and possibly charged with offending someone. Always better to err on the side of freedoms than restricting them or making law impossibly complex, intrusive and ambiguous. With ambiguity comes scope for abuse and overuse.

One aspect that does concern me is the burden of proof as Pericles raised in the first post. How can anyone prove that the complainant was not offended. Even if one can argue rationally that one ought not to be offended in a particular scenario does not mean the complainant wasn't offended from their point of view. It does read as absurd in that context.

David Marr is said to represent 'the majority' but from everything I have read and heard from Mr Marr he is speaking from his position as a homosexual; a social group that is still very much a minority.
From close observation of David over many years my conclusion is that David 'has a problem' with christianity because his feelings of guilt surrounding anal sex were instilled as part of his education and the only way he can express the tension between his personal behaviour and his conditioned state is to repeatedly declare how 'bigoted' the church is.