The Greens will seek to split the Coalition on the politically fraught issue of abortion by asking the Senate to vote to jettison an anti-abortion bill championed by two Coalition senators.
The Greens senator Larissa Waters advised the Senate on Tuesday evening that she would move a motion on 26 November seeking to have the Human Rights (Children Born Alive Protection) Bill discharged.
The move came after the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, told Coalition MPs in a party room address two weeks ago that they should avoid public debate about abortion, controversy over which had likely cost the Liberal National party seats at the Queensland state election in October.
The private senators’ bill is co-sponsored by the Queensland National Matt Canavan and South Australian Liberal Alex Antic, and has been on the Senate notice paper for two years.
It aims to force medical practitioners to save the life of a child born alive after a pregnancy termination. During the Queensland election campaign, the Katter’s Australian party state MP Robbie Katter caused controversy by announcing he would press the LNP to support similar legislation if it won the election.
By seeking to have the Senate formally discharge the Canavan-Antic bill – citing Dutton’s wish that debate not be reopened ahead of a federal election – the Greens were pushing the pair and colleagues who supported them to either back their leader and abandon the bill, or defy him.
The government had avoided reopening public debate on the ever-sensitive issue as it too has differing views in its ranks on what is generally regarded in politics as a matter of conscience.
To avoid exposing division on its own side, the government had opted to leave the bill where it lay. But with this move, the Greens stood to provoke both major parties.
“Despite the two big parties wanting not to talk about a woman’s right to choose, a bill to control and reduce women’s choices remains on the Senate notice paper,” Waters told Guardian Australia on Tuesday.
“If the two big parties genuinely believe that abortion is not a federal issue then they should vote to discharge this bill from the notice paper, and the Greens will move for that early next week.”
Without government agreement, a non-government bill cannot proceed to a vote.
But a procedural motion about a bill is different.
Acting on that distinction, the United Australia party senator Ralph Babet, who is staunchly opposed to abortion, used a motion in the Senate in August to draw attention to the dormant bill and force a debate on the issues it raised.
His motion stated “the need for the Senate to recognise” that Australia’s health system was enabling inhumane deaths through abortion and that “babies born alive as a result of a failed abortion deserve care”.
His motion went to a vote, with 15 Liberal and Nationals senators – including Canavan – plus the two from One Nation supporting it. With 32 against, it was defeated.
The Country Liberal National frontbench senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price then dragged the issue into the federal arena a second time in October, when she gave comments on the issue to Nine newspapers, including calling full-term abortion “infanticide”.
In his party-room address, Dutton gave an edict that no further comments were to be made because abortion was a state issue and “discipline” was required ahead of the election.
Waters told Guardian Australia the Canavan-Antic bill was “a thinly veiled attack on women’s rights to choose to terminate a pregnancy”.
“It’s another attempt to exert control over women, championed by a cabal of conservative dudes,” she said. “We should be talking about how to make abortions affordable and accessible.”
