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The Australian Christian Freedom Index documented 74 Acts of Parliament that have restricted Christian freedom over the past 25 years. Which parties and worldviews restrict Christian freedoms in Australia — and why?

I’ve spent a lot of time teaching people about worldviews. Because worldviews shape our actions — and Acts of Parliament.

Worldviews are our mental maps of reality — you want them to be accurate. They’re our underlying assumptions about what is true, what matters, and how the world works. Most people don’t consciously think about their worldviews, even though worldviews automate many of their actions.

For example, at footy training with many balls in the air, we often hear a warning, “Heads!” And everyone in the vicinity reels. Now the fact is, the ball can only hit one of us, yet all six of us react — because in that moment, our actions are shaped less by the fact itself than by what we believe the fact to be. Our beliefs about truth shape our worldviews, which shape our values, which shape our choices and actions.

Worldviews in Politics

Worldviews also shape actions in politics.

Some claim this only applies to religious conservatives. They complain that Christians vote according to their worldview, while progressives somehow operate from a neutral, objective place. They pressure conservatives to keep quiet about their foundational truths lest they shape their values and choices.

And yet progressives also possess foundational truth-claims, and assumptions about morality, identity, and human flourishing – and act accordingly. Yet they see no need for “separation of their beliefs and state,” because their beliefs are the state. So, their assumptions continue to shape their worldviews, their particular values, choices and actions… And sometimes those actions are Acts of Parliament.

2025 Australian Christian Freedom Index and 74 Acts of Parliament

This was in my mind as I read the Australian Christian Freedom Index 2025.

One of its more startling findings is that since 2000, Australian federal and state governments have enacted 74 Acts of Parliament that have reduced Christian freedom, with more than half of those passed in the last five years.

As someone who studies worldviews, my immediate questions were: Who passed these laws? What were their worldviews? Who do we need to avoid?

I already suspected that the decline of Christian freedom was not just the result of fewer Australians holding a Christian worldview. It was also the result of governments increasingly operating from worldviews that replaced biblical foundations with their own secular truth claims.

History repeatedly shows that belief systems moving away from biblical truths eventually regard Christianity as an irritant to be contained, marginalised or removed. For decades, we’ve seen this happen in various forms, from within Islam, ancestral animism and secular socialism.

I went looking for the worldviews behind the 74 Acts.

Which Governments Passed Acts Restricting Christian Freedom?

On pages 77 to 80 of the Australian Christian Freedom Index 2025, all 74 Acts are listed with the year they were enacted. So, I cross-checked which governments were in office at the time of each.

Who passed each, and what were their worldviews?

61 of the 74 Acts were passed by Labor governments.

8 were passed by Coalition governments generally regarded as socially moderate or progressive: Turnbull, Berejiklian, Marshall and Gutwein.

5 were passed by Coalition governments that could be described as more conservative: the Hodgman government’s Mandatory Reporting 2018, and the Marriage and Gender amendments 2018; the Morrison government’s Online Safety 2021, and the Respect at Work legislation in 2021; and the Perrottet government’s Voluntary Assisted Dying legislation in 2022. Some of these were passed under new federal constraints, and/or under pressure from progressive elements within their parties.

Labor Party Worldview

Labor openly declares itself to be a democratic socialist party, as a core objective in its Constitution (page 4).

Progressives tend in the same direction, toward moral frameworks defined by secular assumptions rather than biblical ones. Doug Wilson pointed to 1 Samuel 8:11–17 and Deuteronomy 17:15–17 as biblical warnings about governments accumulating power and overreaching their proper boundaries. The state increasingly becomes the primary authority for defining rights and social morals. Socialist Karl Marx was explicit in his criticism of the Church, the nuclear family and private property as oppressive structures.

Worldviews automate actions.

That’s why voting citizens need to learn to discern which worldviews animate which political parties.

Yet many Labor voters have no idea that Labor is socialist, let alone what that means. Some voters read the Labor party platforms, but through Christian lenses when they should read them through socialist lenses to recognise what they really mean, even as they coopt the language of human rights.

And what also tells us what they really mean are their actions. The bills they introduce, the debts they accrue and why, the harms they allow, the restrictions they introduce… the Acts of Parliament.

If we fail to name those parties and worldviews that restrict our freedoms of conscience, aren’t we giving them tacit approval, free passage toward increasing their totalitarianism?

Surely, we have already allowed too much from parties and factions animated by socialist and progressive worldviews.

Read which governments passed which of the 74 Acts restricting Christian freedom and when here.

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