Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has sought to navigate this difficult terrain by commissioning NSW Supreme Court Judge Stephen Rothman to spearhead an inquiry with the Australian Law Reform Commission into how best to balance the rights of faith schools and LGBTQ students and teachers. But religious groups swiftly made clear their unhappiness with the direction in which the law reform commission was heading. More than 30 church leaders signed a letter to Dreyfus in January complaining that the consultation process posed new limits on staff recruitment processes.

After a year-long inquiry,Rothman and the law reform commission are due to hand their final report to Dreyfus by December 31,putting this issue on the radar when parliament returns in February. Peak LGBTQ group Equality Australia is optimistic,based on Labor’s pledges,that laws can be achieved that they will be satisfied with.

However,there remains some unease within faith groups that Labor,if left to rely on the Greens and a bloc of progressive crossbenchers in the Senate to pass the laws,can secure an outcome that will sufficiently protect their rights for schools to employ staff in line with their religious ethos.

The looming debate will also be a key test for Opposition Leader Peter Dutton,who presides over a much more conservative Coalition party room than two years ago. Most Liberal moderates who staked their principles on standing up for trans rights in the last parliament lost their seats (although one,Dave Sharma,has since returned as a senator),only to be replaced by teals who largely share their beliefs.

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price,a compelling debater who cut her teeth in the culture war machine of Sky News before spearheading the Coalition’s No campaign against the Voice,has since signalled a pivot to taking on trans activists,albeit in the domain of women’s sport.

Any political wedge that reduces the debate to a vicious zero-sum proposition that pits Australians of faith against LGBTQ members of society will capture vulnerable people in its crosshairs.

Two years ago,the complexities in this space were reduced to dramatic claims that providing protections for trans students would sound the death knell for single-sex schools,or create a dilemma around bathroom usage or school uniforms too confounding for school leaders to confront.

These arguments drowned out the genuine efforts by those within LGBTQ and faith communities to broker a way through after years of intransigence. It also ignored the reality that many faith schools have been managing these delicate issues for years,and are abundantly aware that forcing a gay or trans child to leave school and their circle of friends is the worst outcome for a vulnerable minor and an ostracism most Australians would find antithetical to basic concepts of pastoral care.

The tenor of the Voice debate fuelled division and racism,and caused harm to many Indigenous Australians. We know this because they told us it did,and because national helplines for First Nations communities wereflooded with record numbers of calls for crisis counsellors.

There is an obvious risk of a similar harm eventuating for LGBTQ Australians,especially children,when the parliament confronts the religious discrimination challenge next year. Let’s hope the lessons of the Voice campaign have been learned.

Lisa Visentin is a federal political correspondent.

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