Religious failure a win for cautious, small target Labor

In the end, it was a predictable defeat for the government. Scott Morrison’s third attempt at introducing a religious discrimination bill was effectively blown up by five Liberal MPs crossing the floor on Wednesday night (this hasn’t happened to a Liberal government in 40 years). For a government seeking re-election, it’s yet another parliamentary loss, another show of disunity, another week of clinging on between damaging leaks and embarrassing headlines. 

For Labor, it’s something of a victory, or at least some vindication of the opposition’s “small target” strategy. Labor knows it has trouble with the devoutly religious, and is sometimes paralysed by caution over potential wedges. Morrison has spent weeks dogwhistling to culturally diverse religious voters in the Sydney suburbs.

The opposition approach during this entire debate was essentially to bat time. For months, they kept their position tightly under wraps until the very final text was delivered. Essentially, Labor tried to walk a tightrope between affirming, in principle, its support for protecting against religious discrimination, while demanding more protection for the LGBTQIA+ community.

It’s entirely in keeping with the party’s cautious approach to opposition, focusing on the Morrison government’s inevitable failures while avoiding anything too contentious that could be used against them. Nothing says contentious like religious discrimination. 

Labor’s decision to support the bill in the lower house even if its amendments failed, and push the fight to the Senate drew division within caucus, and outrage from many progressives, who saw the party as selling out queer kids in an act of attempted political 5D chess.

Somehow, it all kind of worked for Labor. It stays standing on the tightrope while the government looks bruised. The bill is dead, and Labor avoids The Wedge. Albanese can now go to an election promising a goldilocks religious discrimination model, which protects both the faithful, and queer students.

But the party also had an element of luck on its side here. The “having it both ways” strategy was always risky. For example, it’s still unclear whether the five Liberal moderates who supported an amendment from Centre Alliance’s Rebekha Sharkie to protect LGBTQIA+ students would’ve backed Labor’s identical amendment. Without Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg promising to keep that amendment in the Senate, against the wishes of his own party, the government may never have dropped the bill.

The small target strategy notches up another win for Labor, thanks in no small part to the government’s incompetence. And with the polling, the momentum, and the leaks all going against a tired, divided government, it still looks to be working. 

With estimates next week likely to bring another series of embarrassing revelations, the government’s real hope at a reset lies next month — during Budget Week, and more crucially, out on the campaign trail. The 2021 Budget was probably the government’s last “good” week. And even if normie voters don’t actually pay it much attention, it will finally give them some narrative control.

Beyond that, it’s the campaign trail that keeps both sides up at night. The final days of the 45th Parliament were a hot mess. The government lost votes, looked divided, exhausted, and incompetent. But the Morrison who emerged out of that mess and onto the campaign trail, energised and full of winning confidence, was helped back to The Lodge by a botched, hubristic Labor campaign.

No matter how many parliamentary wins Labor scores, that’s the Morrison they still fear. It’s why nobody trusts the good polls and the bad vibes emanating from the government. It’s why Albanese has been so cautious as opposition leader — 2019 Morrison knew how to take the kernels of a scare campaign and make it stick.

And it’s why there’s a sense of weary resignation around Canberra as we slouch toward an election. It’s a sense that policy achievements (of which the Morrison government has very few) and parliamentary business matter rather little. Winning in May is all that counts. And in 2019, Morrison proved that can be done on little more than vibes and character attacks. Labor sometimes seems determined to prove it from opposition. 

Just like the religious discrimination debate, it might just work out for them. But then what?