Members of the public will have the chance to be consulted for their views on whether Australia has adequate religious freedom laws in meetings with a government panel over the summer months.
A special panel set up by prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has begun the process of reviewing the country’s religious freedom laws.
It's due to report back to the Coalition government with recommendations by the end of March.
Mr Turnbull chose Hornsby mayor and retired Liberal minister Philip Ruddock to lead the review.
Speaking in Sydney on Wednesday afternoon, Mr Ruddock said the group intended to run sessions of in-person "public consultation” , along with the online form for written submissions.
“We will be organising meetings during February and March to enable that to occur,” he said.
Malcolm Turnbull announced the Religious Freedom Review in the final month of the national same-sex marriage debate last year, amid pressure from some Coalition conservatives who wanted to see religious exemptions built into the bill to amend the Marriage Act.
Written submissions will be published online, with consent
Mr Ruddock said the panel had decided to take an "open" approach to written submissions, which are already pouring in.
From now on, everyone uploading a document through the online form will have to tick a box to indicate whether they want their arguments published.
The prime minister's department will reach out to everyone who made a submission before January 10 to ask their permission, Mr Ruddock said, estimating his group had already received "more than 100" forms.
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The deadline for was set at the end of January, but was yesterday postponed by two weeks to February 14.
“We’ve had suggestions from numbers of organisations that a closing date at the end of January was a little too soon,” Mr Ruddock said.
The Liberal elder and Howard-era Attorney-General said his panel - which he shares with four legal experts in human rights and Constiutional law, including the well-known Jesuit priest Frank Brennan - had already been hit with "more than a hundred" written submissions, and that he had yet to read them all.
The panel has not released any further information about the nature of the planned public consultations.
