Shorten playing gotcha with gays and hell

In one of the lowest tactics of the election campaign, Bill Shorten is trying to paint Prime Minister Scott Morrison as a homophobe all because of his Christian faith, writes Miranda Devine.

Bill Shorten was unhealthily keen to embroil the Prime Minister in a debate on the Christian view of homosexuality on Tuesday, in a despicable bid to shake up an election that’s too close to call.

He was asked about Paul Keating’s description of Peter Dutton as “mean”.

Apropos of absolutely nothing, he responded with a dog whistle attack on Scott Morrison’s religious faith.

RELATED: Shorten blasts PM’s response on gay people

“I actually think the meannest commentary I’ve seen in the election is actually the propositions being advanced that gay people are going to go to Hell … I cannot believe in this election that there is a discussion even under way that gay people will go to Hell.

On Tuesday, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten called out Scott Morrison for not stating that gay people will not go to Hell. Picture: AAP/Lukas Coch

“I cannot believe that the Prime Minister has not immediately said that gay people will not go to hell. This country needs to really lift itself and the political debate … in the next four days …. The nation has got to stop eating itself in this sort of madness of division and toxicity”.

RELATED: I’m not running for Pope — Morrison on faith and gay rights

What a hypocrite. No one in the election has advanced any proposition about gay people going to hell.

The only person to mention the topic was rugby player Israel Folau, and he lost his job over it.

It’s Shorten who has dragged the topic into the campaign to use as a gotcha.

The PM quickly declared that, of course, he does not believe gay people will go to hell, describing Shorten’s introduction of the issue into the campaign as “a desperate, cheap shot”.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison called Shorten’s attack a “desperate, cheap shot.” Picture: Mick Tsikas-Pool/Getty

Shorten had the gall to lecture Morrison: “I think if you want to be prime minister of Australia, you have to be prime minister for all people”.

And yet throughout the campaign he has belittled people who don’t share his views on climate change as “knuckle-draggers” and “cave dwellers”. During the same sex-marriage debate he pilloried those who didn’t want to change the definition of marriage as, “haters [who] come out from underneath the rock”.

This is not a man who respects dissent.

MORE FROM MIRANDA DEVINE: Even blue-collar Australia is snubbing Shorten

Only on Monday Shorten was claiming to be a champion of free speech: “People are allowed to express their opinions and they should be able to do so without fear or favour, full stop.”

Tell that to Folau. Or the Gladstone worker who lost his job after asking Shorten an inconvenient question.

@mirandadevine

Originally published as Shorten playing gotcha with gays and hell