5 | Charting a way forward
The workplace is another important context for
education and training. Interfaith leaders should
work with the AHRC, state and territory antidiscrimination commissions (such as VEOHRC in
Victoria) or the Fair Work Commission to develop
religious and cultural intelligence training for
employees and employers. Customised programs
may also be developed for workers who are
particularly likely to need to deal with incidents of
abuse or discrimination, such as security guards.
In addition, faith leaders, government bodies and
media organisations should work together to
develop guidelines on media representation of
religion and religious communities. A roundtable
participant noted that there are very strong and
well-supported guidelines about media reporting
on issues such as suicide, which aim to reduce the
negative effects of such reporting on vulnerable
people. Similar guidelines could be developed to
reduce the risk of serious harms on the basis of
religion.
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Finally, education should be targeted towards
religious communities and people of faith to inform
them of their existing legal rights, and the remedies
available under current law. This is important as
there may not be a clear understanding across
religious communities of their rights and options
for reporting harm. For example, VEOHRC found
during recent consultations there was a low
understanding among religious communities of
their rights to make complaints to VEOHRC about
religious discrimination or vilification including the
differences between lower level harms and more
serious harms that could be brought to the police.