The Prime Minister pivoted his message toward Australia's booming multicultural communities,stressing new arrivals tended to have strong religious beliefs and wanted those beliefs protected from harassment or intimidation.
"If you support a multicultural Australia,you'll be a supporter of religious freedoms. You'll understand that religious faith is synonymous with so many different ethnic cultures in Australia,"Mr Morrison said.
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"The protection of religious freedoms is therefore synonymous with our identity and it's particularly relevant in Australia,because of our incredibly diverse multicultural society."
However,legal changes to remove religious schools'ability to expel gay,lesbian and transgender students - which Mr Morrison had pledged to enact by the end of this year - will instead be referred to an inquiry by the Australian Law Reform Commission. The commission will not report back until the second half of 2019.
The Prime Minister blamed Labor for the delay after the opposition refused to grant a conscience vote on the bill,which ended the right to direct discrimination but introduced a mechanism for"indirect discrimination".
Mr Morrison - who was a prominent advocate for"religious freedom"measures during the same-sex marriage debate last year - said there was"no more fundamental liberty that any human being has"than the right to decide what to believe,and the right to practise that religious belief.