Businesses should be allowed to discriminate against patrons “for any or no reason”, including the right to refuse to serve gay weddings, the Liberal senator Cory Bernardi has said. Bernardi wrote a blog post on Wednesday about a Victorian printing house that reportedly refused to print an anti-same-sex marriage book by a conservative GP. Labor has warned that the “freedom to refuse” – as Bernardi described it – suggests he wants federal discrimination law to be amended to allow businesses to refuse service on grounds including race, sex, and sexuality, which is prohibited. Bernardi said van Gend had responded by saying the company was “within their right as a private company to discriminate against people like me on ideological grounds”. “We know that the hard right wing of the Liberal party is dictating the terms of the marriage equality plebiscite.

Source: The Guardian September 28, 2016 06:00 UTC