Freedom of Religion and Belief in the 21st Century: Meta-Analysis of Submissions

The Australian Human Rights Commission received 2033 submissions to the Freedom of Religion and Belief in the 21st Century Inquiry. Professor Kevin Dunn and Jacqueline Nelson from the University of Western Sydney were tasked with analysing the submissions and, where possible, comparing the views and attitudes expressed in the submissions to those of the general Australian population. To this end a coding framework was developed, in conjunction with staff of the AHRC and the project team (see Appendix 1: Coding frame for submissions). Every submission was coded using this qualitative coding scheme by AHRC staff, all submissions were therefore part of the sample frame for this report. It is important to note that, in many cases, direct comparisons between the submissions and available data are not straight forward as this project was not anticipated when the public submissions were sought. As will be seen below, many of the submissions simply did not express an overt opinion or attitude on some of the given areas of interest. Thus it was not possible to gauge the attitudes of many contributors. Nonetheless, this report summarises key discourses in the submissions, and how these relate to nationally representative data that are available (see Appendix 2: National data sets). Analysis of the substantive recommendations contained within the submissions was not an intention of this report. However, a Data Appendix with key frequencies for each variable can be made available upon request.