After more than 10 hours of debate, the Religious Discrimination Bill has passed the House of Representatives.
The PM’s very discrete last-ditch attempt to win over conservative christians has passed the lower house after a 65-59 vote in favour of the legislation.
Fighting to protect trans students, five Liberal MPs, Bridget Archer, Trent Zimmerman, Fiona Martin, Katie Allen, and Dave Sharma spent a good portion of the debate trying to amend the bill in order to ban discrimination against gay and transgender students at religious schools.
Liberal MP Trent Zimmerman spoke emotionally before the vote, telling members of the parliament, “It’s an opportunity I cannot let go pass. I couldn’t live with myself if I did not seek to address those issues.”
Opposition leader Anthony Albanese has also called for amendments to the bill to protect trans students from being discriminated against and pleaded with coalition members to support the changes to the bill.
“No child should be discriminated against. Overwhelmingly, Australians of faith would agree with this too,” Albanese said. “Australian families are going to wake up in a few hours and look on with sadness and anger if this does not occur.”
The legislation is so flawed that even Dominic “Stuck in the Middle Ages” Perrottet thinks it’s unnecessary. “I’ve made it very clear that I don’t believe legislation in this space is necessary and I think it can end up creating more problems than it’s attempting to solve,” the NSW Premier said during a press conference.
The bill is now set to go forth to the Senate, who will then decide on whether or not to fight the amendments made to the bill.
Last night, ABC program Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell aired a satirical debate, questioning whether the Religious Discrimination Bill is, “nothing more than a consolation prize to those who lost the same-sex marriage debate in 2018 but still wanted to be mean to gay people.”
Our thoughts exactly, Shaun.
Enjoy the scarily accurate satire below.
