Why Albanese refuses to take this leap of faith without Dutton

Anthony Albanese has managed a remarkable feat with his decision this week to shelve a religious freedom law 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 one remark, relayed second-hand to journalists from the Labor caucus meeting on Tuesday, the prime minister offended the Greens, equality campaigners, Christian schools and church leaders, who all had different views on how the law should work.

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And Dutton was incensed. The opposition leader worked himself into a tirade at a press conference on Tuesday, as if it was an outrage for one side of politics to seek a bipartisan agreement with another. He seemed truly angry that Albanese only wanted to pass a law the Coalition could accept.

The anger seems overdone. Perhaps the real frustration in the opposition is that Albanese will not give it the fight it wants. That’s because there will be no chance for the Liberals to start a culture war about Labor and the Greens joining forces to limit the liberty of religious schools.

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. While the Australian Law Reform Commission had worthy recommendations in a report issued on Thursday, there is not enough political goodwill to turn these ideas into law.

That is because the competing views on religious freedom are, in the end, impossible to reconcile. Many private schools want to be able to teach their faith and hire teachers who agree with their beliefs. Some want to keep the right to turn away a transgender student. That leaves no room for compromise with advocates for equality, who believe a religious school cannot sack a teacher because of his or her sexuality, and must not expel a transgender student.

Two meetings shaped this outcome. The first came several weeks ago when Albanese and Dutton met to discuss the possibility of a bipartisan agreement that would try to bridge at least some of the differences in the community. The second came on Monday this week, when they spoke on the government’s Boeing 737 as it flew from Canberra to the funeral of Jack Fitzgibbon in the NSW Hunter Valley.

What happened between those two meetings was crucial. The Coalition shadow attorney-general, Michaelia Cash, launched a broadside on Sunday over the potential changes. She warned on Sky News and in The West Australian that religious schools would be caught up in litigation and might have to increase their fees. She did this after her staff had been briefed on the changes. In other words, she cleared the ground for a massive scare campaign.

No wonder Albanese wanted an assurance from Dutton on Monday that there was still room for a bipartisan deal.

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.

The animosity continued on Wednesday. The two leaders have been chipping each other across the dispatch box during question time. Dutton is heavily invested in portraying Albanese as weak – the key word in every Coalition attack line – and will use the debate on religion to redouble that message.

For the Labor side, however, the sheer ferocity of the Dutton attack confirmed the wisdom of waiting for bipartisan support before throwing the country into a debilitating and divisive argument.

Albanese could sort this out with the Greens and pass the laws without the Liberals. And he might, in theory, even wedge Dutton by getting some of the Liberals to cross the floor. But there are base political calculations within the government to rule out this approach.

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.

Giving the Greens this victory would expose Labor to a backlash from people who want their schools to teach their faith. Agree with it or not, this is a powerful force in civic life, and it operates in electorates with Islamic schools just as much as those with Catholic ones.

Albanese would have to prepare for a conservative campaign to mobilise people of faith against Labor at the next election, conjuring up horror memories of the 2019 election. That was when Scott Morrison promised to pass a religious freedom bill and Bill Shorten had to walk a tightrope on whether he backed faith-based schools or transgender kids.

Did Labor turn away people of faith at that “unloseable” election? Australian National University professor Ian McAllister, who has led the Australian Election Study for years, says the data shows this was not a big factor.

“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.”

Even so, Labor does not want to alienate church leaders and religious schools. Why take the risk, when so many predict a hung parliament at the next election? Albanese, raised a Catholic, is not going to start a culture war with the churches.

There is another problem with the idea of splitting the Liberals. The Coalition party room is different these days. Thanks to the success of the “teal” independents, there are fewer moderate Liberals to cross the floor if they are tested on questions of sexuality and gender.

Labor insists it is open to a bipartisan deal, but the draft bills will not be introduced until that deal emerges. The Liberals will tell conservative voters that Albanese is too weak to stand up for religious freedom, while the Greens will tell voters that Albanese will not defend transgender children.

Church groups quickly and furiously rejected the Australian Law Reform Commission proposals on Thursday, while equality campaigners backed the proposals. So the split in parliament reflects the gulf in society. There seems no way to resolve the tension between Australia’s longstanding belief in freedom of religion and the need to protect individuals from discrimination.

If Albanese is to jump that gulf, he wants Dutton to take the leap, too.

David Crowe is chief political correspondent.