Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus and his “shadow”, Michaelia Cash, are both volatile characters. When they met this week to discuss the government’s draft religious discrimination bill, an incendiary issue in the best of circumstances, sparks flew.
After a few minutes, Cash stormed out. The version from her side is that Dreyfus told her to “take a breath”, leaned across the desk and raised his voice. The Dreyfus side says she was the aggressive one doing the shouting.
Whatever the truth of this unedifying “she said, he said” dispute, the more important point is that the religious discrimination legislation looks near-dead, albeit not yet cremated.
