Labor is preparing to shelve a controversial change to religious discrimination law unless it gains a guarantee of bipartisan support from Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to ensure the parliament can approve the reform without a bitter dispute about the way religious schools hire teachers or rules on the treatment of transgender students.
The reform looked further unlikely to proceed on Tuesday after the Coalition party room sent a sign it would block the government’s plans, with a Liberal MP praising shadow attorney-general Michaelia Cash for her warnings about the implications of the Labor plans.
A key reason, Albanese said, was that this was not the time for a divisive cultural debate when tensions were already running high with fears of antisemitism and Islamophobia in the community. Albanese told the caucus he had spoken to Dutton about the issue when the two leaders were on an RAAF aircraft returning to Canberra from the NSW Hunter Valley on Monday, where they had both attended the funeral of Lance Corporal Jack Fitzgibbon, son of former Labor cabinet minister Joel Fitzgibbon.
The brief exchange in the Coalition’s regular party room meeting backed Cash in warning that religious schools could be sued under the Labor plans even when the schools are acting in good faith. But the meeting did not discuss the issue in depth because Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and others did not know of the Labor moves on the issue while they were speaking with Coalition MPs.
The government is preparing for the release of a new report on the issue from the Australian Law Reform Commission this week, and has prepared two draft bills on the matter, but the details have not been released.
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