Great news!

Some good news, and quick, urgent action you can take to help protect Australians from discrimination.

What's at stake?
1 - Protecting people from discrimination because of sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex.
2 - Making religious organisations follow the same discrimination rules as everyone else in many areas (so religious schools can't expel gay students or refuse welfare services to pregnant women).
3 - Preventing discrimination because of irrelevant criminal records, which particularly impacts Indigenous communities. 

The Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee has recommended extending Australia's anti-discrimination protection to include these measures and more. Tens of thousands of GetUp members either made submissions to the committee or contacted their MPs about the review. You made an impact! And against all expectations, the committee recommended every measure we fought for. Now it's up to the new Attorney General Mark Dreyfus, and your local MP, to pass what would become the strongest protections from discrimination in Australia's history.

Please take 30 seconds to sign this urgent petition before we deliver it to the Attorney-General on Tuesday -- and if you have another 2 minutes, follow up by contacting your local MP using our quick and easy tool:

http://www.getup.org.au/time-for-action

Watch for it: this weekend the usual suspects will attack these recommendations hard. Janet Albrechtson and Andrew Bolt will write columns about the unprecedented attack on their freedoms (to discriminate - Mr Bolt has some personal experience with anti-discrimination laws). Conservative think tanks will make comparisons to thought-police. They're gearing up not only to block these improvements, but also to push for existing anti-discrimination protections to be dismantled if an Abbott Government is elected.

It's critical that MPs know that the anti-discrimination recommendations have widespread support. The Coalition already indicated (sight unseen) that they won't support the legislation, so we need to steel the resolve of every ALP, independent and Green Member of Parliament.

These laws aren't reviewed very often. If adopted, these recommendations would represent the strongest protection from discrimination in Australia's history. This kind of chance comes around once every few decades.

http://www.getup.org.au/time-for-action

Congratulations for getting this far!
the GetUp team.

PS - Here's another way to help: this will be a hot topic on talkback the next few days. Let's make our voices heard! Simply click here to "like" the GetUp Facebook page, then check the page to keep up with when and where the lines are open. Let us know when you hear anti-discrimination laws being discussed so other GetUp members can join in.