Liberal Party architects of SSM bill back Christian Porter’s religious protections bill

The Liberal pair who pushed Australia’s gay marriage laws broadly back the religious discrimination bill.

Attorney-General Christian Porter at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Kym Smith

Liberal architects of Australia’s same-sex marriage legislation have given their broad backing to Scott Morrison’s religious discrimination bill as conservatives warn he must not disappoint the party’s religious base.

Labor also faces its own internal divisions between progressives and MPs who faced swings against them at the last election in heavily religious communities, with oppos­ition legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus yesterday refusing to commit to supporting the government­’s draft bill.

Coalition MPs gave tentative approval yesterday to the Relig­ious Discrimination Act and were reluctant to comment on it. ­ However­, north Queensland MP Warren Entsch and West Aust­ralia­n senator Dean Smith said Attorney-General Christian Porter’s decision to mould his laws in the image of other anti-discrimination legislation was the right move.

Mr Entsch led the push for legislation of marriage equality from within the Liberal Party when it returned to power in 2013, while Senator Smith wrote the bill that passed after 7.8 million voted in favour of same-sex unions.

Dean Smith and Warren Entsch. Picture: Kym Smith

“Pursuit of a religious discrimin­ation bill was initially proposed by the Senate select committee which examined same-sex marriage and has been compre­hensively examined and endorsed by the Ruddock review,” Senator Smith told The Australian.

“Substantively, the draft bill is a faithful expression of the government’s response to the Ruddock review released in December last year. The case for a positive rights approach has been poorly made and the Attorney-General is correc­t to have rejected the idea as inconsistent with Australia’s legal approach and fraught with inheren­t legal risk.”

Mr Entsch was pleased the Attor­ney-General had avoided a freedom of religion bill, but said he was still to read the full bill and wanted to consult LGBTI groups.

“This bill is always what was ­intended. That’s what the Ruddock review recommended and it couldn’t be anything else, otherwise we’d need a whole other review­,” he said.

“I have to say Mr Porter has been good and he’s always kept me up to scratch. There is no reason to think the Attorney-General has done anything other than his absolut­e best on this.”

NSW Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells has advocated for enshrining religious freedom, and reminded the Prime Minister yesterday that religious Aust­ralians were crucial to the ­Coalition’s election win.

“Expectations were raised by us as a government, and in particular by Scott Morrison, that religious freedoms would be protected,” she told Sky News.

“And those quiet Australians of family and faith voted for us thinking that … a prime minister who had overtly demonstrated his religiou­s faith during the election campaign would be in a better positio­n to protect those religious freedoms.”

Mr Dreyfus said Labor had not been consulted about the religious discrimination legislation.

“It is apparent, from some of the public reaction already, that very many other Australians have not been consulted,” he said.

If Labor does not back the bill, the government could have difficulty convincing key Senate crossbenchers.

Centre Alliance senator Stirling Griff was sceptical yesterday about the overhaul.

“Do we really need these changes?’’ he asked. “There aren’t mass problems. There are really just one or two issues … my view is that it is an overreaction.’’