Just before 6pm on Tuesday night, a group of Coalition senators insisted on a meeting with the government Senate leader, Mathias Cormann, and the attorney general, Christian Porter, to thrash out the government’s position on religious freedom.
The group of nine conservatives made their views clear. They wanted their amendments to a Labor bill currently in the chamber to be put as government amendments, otherwise they would vote the bill down.
Over the course of that meeting, according to sources present, an alternative bill was suddenly referenced – one that had been drafted by the prime minister, Scott Morrison.
There had been two meetings of the government party room this week – the final sitting week of 2018 – and the Morrison bill was not presented or referenced at either meeting, which would have facilitated a broadranging conversation inside the government.
Given religious freedom is an eggshells issue inside the Coalition, some of the group was taken aback by the sudden appearance of a prime ministerial bill, but formed the impression it was a back-pocket option.
Roll forward to Wednesday morning. The prime minister appeared in his courtyard with an offer. He was prepared to present his bill – the one that some Senate conservatives had only just been alerted to – and allow a conscience vote on it, a development that has left internal critics frustrated about the prime ministerial improvisation.
The internal frustrations are predominantly about process. Conservatives want the position articulated in the Morrison bill to be a formal government position, not an optional position. An optional position would give Liberal moderates an opportunity to vote against it in the event they chose to do so.
There has also been intense frustration that Morrison has not yet provided a formal response to the Ruddock review, that inquiry that triggered the whole discussion. One furious conservative told Guardian Australia on Wednesday Morrison’s “captain’s call” would only make things worse.
The trigger for Morrison’s offer was a decision earlier in the morning by the Senate leadership to park Labor’s bill.
The Senate agreed to delay consideration of the Labor proposal to repeal religious exemptions to discrimination law to protect LGBT students because the debate had reached a stalemate.
Earlier in the morning, the Centre Alliance flagged support for a government amendment that would legalise both indirect and direct discrimination against students based on gender and sexuality through a schools’ “teaching activities” – something Labor declined to support.
Labor’s Senate leader, Penny Wong, told the chamber the legal advice was clear. “This amendment would destroy the intent of the bill, to remove discrimination against LGBT students,” she said.
“Worse still, the advice is it would worsen discrimination against LGBT students, allowing positive discrimination by staff. Even allowing teachers to refuse to teach LGBT students.”
Very shortly after the Senate leadership acknowledged the impasse and agreed to shelve the debate, Morrison elected for crash-or-crash through.
He said he would return to negotiations with Labor to try and settle the issue. In the event common ground could not be reached, Morrison said the issue could be determined by a conscience vote.
Morrison quite clearly saw opportunity to stir the pot on the Labor side. He told reporters some Labor MPs may want to support the government’s amendment, which states the Sex Discrimination Act does not render unlawful teaching activity done “in good faith in accordance with the doctrines” of the school’s religion.
Senior figures in the Catholic church were also active over the course of Wednesday morning, contacting Labor parliamentarians urging them to support the government amendment.
Bill Shorten responded to Morrison’s throwing down the gauntlet by saying thanks but no thanks.
Labor didn’t need a conscience vote on the issue, Shorten told reporters, because “no one with a conscience supports discrimination”.
Shorten accused Morrison of “weaponising” the dispute. He advised the prime minister to look for the outcome rather than “look for the angle”.
“I am not prepared to give up on removing discrimination against kids and respecting religion in our society, but what we don’t have today is a solution,” the Labor leader said.
“So the question is – when you don’t have a solution, do you just engage in a train wreck? Or do you draw breath?”
Shorten said the options before the parliament were clear – a “big fight to divide the country”, or parliament could “do what we’re paid to do – which is we sit down and we keep working through the issue”.