The prime minister has offended all sides by shelving his religious freedom law, yet it may just spare him an unholy political fight.
unless he can secure approval from Peter Dutton to give it a smooth passage through the parliament. Everyone feels they have lost, whether they wanted more rights for religious schools or more protection for gay teachers and transgender students.
In fact, the entire government objective is to avoid a battle. Albanese promised at the last election that he would act on the concerns about religious freedom, but he argues now that Australia does not need a divisive debate on religion when there is so much tension over antisemitism and Islamophobia.The government has two draft bills, one to amend the Sex Discrimination Act and one to set up a new Religious Discrimination Act, but the documents may never see the light of day.
The idea of a consensus was shattered on Tuesday when Dutton turned the issue into a question of the prime minister’s character. “This guy is not believable, his word is worth nothing,” Dutton said. His fury made a bipartisan deal look like a distant dream. Labor is wary of drafting a law to fit a Greens design. Greens leader Adam Bandt wants protections for LGBTQ teachers and students as well as a ban on schools turning away a transgender student. In his approach, religious schools would have little or no leeway to argue that they deserve special rules because of their faith.
“There was virtually no change in religious support for the parties between 2016 and 2019, and overall the effect of religion on the vote is very marginal in recent elections,” McAllister says. “The main dividing lines – so far as they exist – are between the more evangelical groups and the mainstream denominations.”
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