Maryka Groenewald MLC is asking Western Australia’s Christian school communities to tell their MPs what a Christian education has meant to them, while the law protecting those schools is under review.

Groenewald, the only Australian Christians MP in WA’s parliament, launched My Christian School Story in response to proposed amendments to the WA Equal Opportunity Act 1984, flagged by Premier Roger Cook in February. She said Christian schools face “real pressure” to give up “the freedom to employ staff who genuinely share, live and pass on the faith”.

HRLA works with Christian schools in all Australian states and territories to help protect their Christian ethos. Schools need to navigate state and federal legislation, structuring their employment practices to ensure they can hire staff who support the faith and vision of the school while remaining compliant with the law.

The freedoms schools currently have to give preference to staff who share their faith are protected in most discrimination laws, including in Western Australia. But with each amendment these protections are narrowed and schools have less freedom.

Campaigns like Groenewald’s put the experience of school communities before MPs while those protections still stand.

The protection at issue in WA is Section 73 of the Act, which allows a school established for religious purposes to employ staff who share its faith. The amendments are expected to draw on a 2022 Law Reform Commission review, which recommended changes that would permit a faith preference only where faith is an “inherent requirement” of the particular job and the preference is “reasonable and proportionate”. A school would have to justify that requirement role by role, from maths teacher to office manager to groundskeeper.

The Cook Government has not yet introduced a bill or released a draft. Groenewald told The Daily Declaration her office has been part of deliberations since the changes were first proposed, and that amendments could now be put to Parliament at any time.

She has pressed the issue since 2025, when she became the first Australian Christians MP elected to any Australian parliament. On June 9, she asked the Legislative Council whether the Government would commit to protecting Christians’ right to express their faith freely. The Parliamentary Secretary answering for the Attorney General made no commitment, pledging “balance” instead.

The campaign website turns accounts from parents, staff and former students into emails to key MPs. Groenewald has warned that if the protections are narrowed “Christian schools risk becoming Christian in name only”.

“We could live in a state where MPs can make staffing decisions based on values and worldview, but schools can’t,” she said.

HRLA advises Christian schools on structuring their employment practices to protect their Christian ethos within the law as it stands. Each narrowing of that law makes the task harder, and every faith-based hiring decision arguably becomes a position a school must be prepared to defend in a secular court.

A Christian school should not have to justify its faith one job at a time.

Groenewald has told supporters that the more MPs hear from Christian school communities, “the harder those experiences will be to overlook”.

HRLA will continue to advise Christian schools in Western Australia on protecting their ethos as the amendments take shape.