What’s New
in the Law? Rachel Hay
Australia’s Religious Discrimination Bill
ACCC Proceedings Against Google
On 10 December 2019, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Attorney-General Christian Porter unveiled the revised second draft of the religious discrimination bill. If passed, the bill will have various wide-ranging effects upon the provision of public services, particularly within healthcare, education, aged care facilities, accommodation providers and also within employment. To name a few of the proposed provisions, health practitioners could ‘conscientiously object to provide a health service’ such as abortion or the morning-after pill on religious grounds, in spite of any professional conduct rules. Religious camps and conferences may take faith into account when selecting prospective customers. A school may require that their staff and students observe particular religious practices. Religious bodies, such as hospitals, aged care providers or accommodation providers, may ‘legitimately discriminate’ against staff during hiring processes and enforce a staff code of conduct to preserve their ‘religious ethos’. Statements of religious belief made in good faith which may offend people will not constitute discrimination under any state, territory or federal antidiscrimination law provided that they do not harass, threaten, seriously intimidate or vilify a person or group. The draft bill has not been met without significant controversy. While some religious bodies have expressed support for the proposed legislation, Law Council of Australia President, Arthur Moses noted that the bill was a ‘deeply flawed piece of legislation’ and would unjustifiably allow freedom of religious expression to encroach on other equally important human rights, such as protection against discrimination based on gender, disability, race and sexual orientation. Further, Moses noted that the bill narrowed existing state and federal discrimination protections, such as section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act which prohibits speech that ‘offends, insults or humiliates people’ based on race.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (‘ACCC’) has commenced proceedings in the Federal Court against Google LLC and Google Australia Pty Ltd in October 2019 concerning their data collection and use practices. The ACCC alleges that Google made false and misleading representations to consumers concerning the way in which personal location data was collected. There are two Google account settings: ‘Location History’ and ‘Web and App Activity’ which collect location data when enabled. From January 2017 until late 2018, the ACCC alleges that Google breached Australian Consumer Law through on-screen representations which suggested that ‘Location History’ was the only relevant setting which might affect location data collection and use. Google failed to properly disclose that ‘Web and App Activity’ had to be disabled. ACCC Chairman Rod Sims, stated that ‘Google misled consumers by staying silent about the fact that another setting also had to be switched off’. Further, the ACCC alleges that Google failed to disclose how location data was used. On-screen representations provided that location data would be used for the consumer’s use of Google services. Google failed to disclose that it may use the data for its own purposes including to personalise advertisements, infer demographic information, measure the performance of advertisements, promote advertising services to third parties or to produce anonymised statistics which were to be shared with advertisers. The ACCC is seeking orders requiring the publication of a corrective notice and the introduction of a compliance program by Google.
6 | The Brief
Ed.1 2020
