As questions about Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s character continue, and rumblings of disunity grow within Coalition ranks, federal Parliament will return tomorrow for the first sitting weeks of 2022. It’s a fortnight which will give the government little room to hide, with leaked texts still high in the news cycle.
Beyond the internal fighting is some crucial policy, with a deeply contentious religious discrimination bill at the top of the legislative agenda. But the bill brings more confusion and disunity — Liberal moderates are still concerned about protections for LGBTIQ students.
Nobody likes Morrison
Last week the Coalition registered the worst Newspoll performance in years, and Morrison got a ripping at the National Press Club.
And the question of whether the prime minister’s colleagues actually like him just won’t go away.
On Friday we found out Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce had called him a “hypocrite and a liar” in a text sent to Brittany Higgins. Joyce has apologised and offered a non-accepted resignation. There will be tense words at the Nationals’ partyroom this afternoon, but no leadership change this close to an election.
Then, last night, former NSW premier and Gillard-era foreign affairs minister Bob Carr claimed Defence Minister Peter Dutton leaked the “psycho” texts reported by Ten’s Peter van Onselen last week. Dutton swiftly denied it and said Carr’s tweet was “baseless” and “untrue”.
Carr has since doubled down, insisting his source is solid, and Dutton has the numbers for a leadership challenge.
Dutton has been pretty active in the media over the past week, and he and Morrison publicly disagreed over using troops to bolster the aged care sector.
While winking about a leadership challenge is probably a bit of Canberra bubble nonsense at this point, the simmering disharmony within Coalition ranks is still very real.
Religious discrimination fight
The disharmony is more evident on the policy front — the religious discrimination bill divides the Liberal broad church. After its hasty introduction late last year, the government hopes to get it passed this week, and it’s up for debate tomorrow after two parliamentary reports into it were released on Friday afternoon.
Labor MPs and senators on both the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights offered broad conditional support for the bill. But Labor is reserving its position until it sees the latest draft, which is likely to be presented to the joint partyroom tomorrow morning (Labor’s caucus and cabinet meet this afternoon).
It’s within that joint partyroom where the government faces its biggest challenge over a bill it hoped could wedge Labor, and further damage the opposition’s standing among religious voters.
This morning Tasmanian Liberal MP Bridget Archer said she would vote against the bill. She and other Liberal moderates are concerned about a clause which would exempt “statements of belief” by religious people from all other anti-discrimination laws.
That clause was also a concern for Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg, who issued separate comments in the Senate report, calling for it to be removed.
Another sticking point for Liberal moderates is ensuring protections for LGBTIQ students and teachers. This would require changes to the existing Sex Discrimination Act. But while Morrison last week suggested that protection would come alongside the current bills, Assistant Attorney-General Amanda Stoker caused confusion when she told the ABC the religious discrimination legislation would need to be passed first.
Any move to stop faith schools expelling gay students could win support from wavering moderates like Archer, Warren Entsch and Trent Zimmerman. But it will also infuriate conservative Christian groups who are the bill’s strongest backers.
Time is quickly running out for the government to reach an agreement. The Senate sits for just three days this month (next week is estimates), before returning for another three during budget week in March.
Given all that division, and with the opposition benches likely to push further amendments, the government might just decide a fight over religious discrimination is all a bit too hard.
Why does the Australian parliament sit so infrequently? Since 1901 sitting days are an average of 67 per year. It will be much less in 2022. In contrast the UK parliament sits for 150 days per year. Why are we paying our politicians so much money when they do very little work?
Careful what you wish for – imagine the havoc that could be wrought by sitting more frequently.
It would mean even more malignant legislation.
Maybe. Or perhaps sitting more often would mean more scrutiny, more debate and better made legislation.
The far more significant cause of malignant legislation is the appalling invention of enabling legislation. Before governments discovered that trick Parliament was a very effective bottleneck on legislation. Only so many bills could possibly pass in a year through the full process. Therefore the government was careful and selective to make sure the few bills it could get through were worth the effort.
With enabling legislation a bill is passed that lets the minister make relevant regulations as much as they please whenever they like. This removes the brakes from the process. The consequence in the UK in the 20th C was exponential growth in legislation. Measured by the volume of the paper which the legislation occupies, the quantity of legislation doubled every ten years in the UK, except during the two world wars when it calmed down quite nicely. I don’t know exactly how Australia compares but it would be no surprise to see much the same.
No, I would not be at all bothered by Parliament sitting more often. It is the government, not Parliament, that is the source of the problem. Parliament is merely useless most of the time at holding the government to account, and the government stops it sitting so far as possible so it does not get any better at it.
You need to separate the government from the parliament. The government is doing whatever it does whether or not parliament sits. It is happy for parliament not to sit because the government regards parliament as a damned nuisance which it tolerates to the minimum constitutionally possible. The government has altogether too much control of parliament’s timetable, as well as too much influence through its use of the pay-roll vote and so on.
Agreed.
Cowardice. NO sit no scrutiny. Certainly the case in NSW last year.
Our geography has some bearing on this. It is much easier to attend parliament in the UK. Shorter distances to travel, good transport infrastructure.
The religious discrimination bill as its stands is divisive and offensive which is of course the reason religious conservatives get behind it. Religion is getting way too much say in Australian politics thanks to the Liberal party. Mega churches such as Hillsong have become the ground upon which the Liberal party trawls for candidates. They are steering the Liberal party further and further to the right ala The Republicans in the US.
If we continue to allow this, one day we will wake up, look in the mirror and see America.
I just read in another paper that our prime minister had Pompeo, also a happy clapper, on speed dial for years. Is that the start of an invasion of US prosperity religion hypocrisy ?
Ooh! I haven’t read that. I’m going to search it out right now. Cheers.
The last thing we need is to give power to religious psychos to make minorities even more miserable than normal society already makes them. Organised religions throughout history have been agents of violence and terror to minorities. Basically they are in an unholy alliance with the status quo which gives them tax free income and a free pass on their various crimes, including sex with underage chilfred, in exchange for a docile , exploitable electorate. Organised religion should not have any power not avaible to any other business and should be subject to the same laws as any other business, including taxation.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is visiting soon. I imagine part of his brief is finding a suitable replacement for Morrison.
Winken, Blinken and Nod one night set off in a wooden shoe.Ah, the imagery.Just substitutes your own choice of names for Winken and Nod.
I have no issue with religions being exclusive as long as they get their hand out of the public pocket. The school in Qld, OK fine. No subsidies at all. What I do object to is that the happy clappy squad with wealthy pastors and lying marketers with compassion free statements, (like Morrison’s latest porkies about how we help people who make mistakes-yeah if they are your wealthy mates on a scam)and their Jesus club claptrap calling themselves Christians. They are the money changers in the temple and based on the tenets of the parables and guides of the Gospels an affront to the very name Christian.
Totally agree, OGE. If they want to be exempt from the laws that govern the rest of the public, why must the public fund them?
They can be as exclusive as they like then and rely entirely on the merit of their theology to win their funding from their co-religionists. I’m tired of my taxes propping up religion, even its charities: there is not one thing religious charities deliver that isn’t delivered by secular charities as well. Secular charities just manage to do it without discrimination.