5. Charting a way forward The experiences of serious harm shared by members of religious communities represented at our roundtable brought to life the research and data available, suggesting that serious harms do occur towards Australians on the basis of their religion and that more must be done to understand and address the problem. What can be done about it? Data The AHRC submission to the Religious Freedom Review in 2017, chaired by the Hon. Philip Ruddock, urged that the Australian Government commission an independent body to collect and analyse, in accordance with conventional scientific standards, quantitative information on the nature and prevalence of matters such as: • threats and actual physical violence linked to a person’s religion • verbal abuse, harassment or intimidation because of a person’s religion • discrimination based on religion and the contexts in which this arises • restrictions in the ability of a person to educate their children in a manner consistent with their religious belief.33 In its response to the Ruddock Report, the Australian Government committed to refer an inquiry into freedom of religion to the Australian Human Rights Commission, to be conducted by the new Freedom of Religion Commissioner ... to collect and analyse information on the experience of freedom of religion in Australia at the community level, the experience of freedom of religion impacting on other human rights and the extent to which religious diversity (as distinct from cultural diversity) is accepted and promoted in Australian society.34 At the time of writing, this proposal has not yet been enacted. In its 2020 submission to the Victorian Legal and Social Issues Committee’s Inquiry into Anti-Vilification Protections in Victoria (Victorian Anti-vilification Inquiry), VEOHRC noted that despite efforts to collect data on hate in the Victorian community, there is a lack of an integrated coordinated approach to data collection in Victoria and nationally. This includes a lack of consistent categories and definitions, which makes it difficult to integrate, compare and analyse data. VEORHC recommended that the Victorian Government fund ongoing research on hate conduct and crime in Victoria, which would include serious harms on the basis of religion. 20