Anthony Albanese has managed a remarkable feat with his decision this week to shelve a religious freedom law unless he can secure approval from Peter Dutton to give it a smooth passage through the parliament. Everyone feels they have lost, whether they wanted more rights for religious schools or more protection for gay teachers and transgender students.

In one remark, relayed second-hand to journalists from the Labor caucus meeting on Tuesday, the prime minister offended the Greens, equality campaigners, Christian schools and church leaders, who all had different views on how the law should work.

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And Dutton was incensed. The opposition leader worked himself into a tirade at a press conference on Tuesday, as if it was an outrage for one side of politics to seek a bipartisan agreement with another. He seemed truly angry that Albanese only wanted to pass a law the Coalition could accept.

The anger seems overdone. Perhaps the real frustration in the opposition is that Albanese will not give it the fight it wants. That’s because there will be no chance for the Liberals to start a culture war about Labor and the Greens joining forces to limit the liberty of religious schools.

In fact, the entire government objective is to avoid a battle. Albanese promised at the last election that he would act on the concerns about religious freedom, but he argues now that Australia does not need a divisive debate on religion when there is so much tension over antisemitism and Islamophobia.

The government has two draft bills, one to amend the Sex Discrimination Act and one to set up a new Religious Discrimination Act, but the documents may never see the light of day. While the Australian Law Reform Commission had worthy recommendations in........

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