Peter Frederick Carnley AC (born 17 October 1937) is a retired Australian Anglican bishop and author.

His sermon on the occasion took as its reference an autobiographical piece by Charlotte Perkins Gilman entitled The Yellow Wallpaper.

The yellow wallpaper of the title is what the imprisoned protagonist in Gilman's story peels off the walls as she goes mad.

Carnley used it as a metaphor for the situation of the women who had been waiting to be allowed to become priests, saying: "Today, we are peeling away the sickly yellow, faded, silverfish-ridden wallpaper with which the church has surrounded itself and imprisoned women for centuries past in its benign and perhaps well-meaning determination to confine them by role.

When Carnley became the Australian primate, his views caused controversy with some, especially in the conservative Diocese of Sydney where Archbishop Harry Goodhew accused Carnley of breaching church doctrine and betraying the church's belief in the significance of the resurrection and of Jesus Christ himself.

[9] Others, including Phillip Jensen, Rector of St Matthias, Centennial Park in Sydney, objected to comments about how the Christian belief in the uniqueness of Christ had been misused to persecute people of other faiths.