Labor grills Turnbull over weakening of race hate laws on Harmony Day – as it happened

Here is Homebush West public school in Liberal MP Craig Laundy’s seat of Reid, via the state member Labor member Jodi McKay.

If the Coalition has little chance of getting the 18C amendments through the Senate, this is all academic and the government will have to live with changes to Human Rights Commission process as the Liberal moderates have been saying all along.

In the meantime, as Joyce said, a fair proportion of voters will be mightily cranky about the debate.

An incredible strategy, if you think about it.

Let’s revise the Senate numbers again in the frame of the 18C debate.

The Senate normally has 76 seats

There are currently 75 due to the vacancy of Family First Bob Day.

The majority required for legislation under those circumstances is 38.

These are the numbers:

• Coalition 29
  
• ALP 26
  
• Greens 9
  
• Pauline Hanson 4 (even though Cullen’s replacement Peter Georgiou is yet to sit, he is paired)
  
• Nick Xenophon 3
  
• Jacqui Lambie
  
• Derryn Hinch
  
• David Leyonhjelm
  
• Cory Bernardi
  

If Labor and the Greens oppose any legislation, the government needs both Hanson and Xenophon and two of the four single senators.

Xenophon has said many times that he might consider procedural changes to the Human Rights Commission so give that a try first. He told the ABC today:

Let’s improve the processes. Let’s get rid of those frivolous and some would say vexatious claims by improving the process and then we can then look down the track, if there are still problems in respect of the wording.

But there is strong feedback from communities, from a whole range of ethnic communities, from the Jewish communities, Islamic communities around the country are saying “keep it as it is”. But reforming the process seems to be the priority.

So the National party are pulling up the Liberal party on race issues. This is no mean feat for Barnaby Joyce, given the threat the National party faces from One Nation in rural and regional areas. As Liberal conservatives have been pointing their spears in recent weeks, Joyce has been reminding all and sundry that this is not the stuff they are talking about in farm sheds in north Queensland.

Meanwhile deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce has told the joint party room the move to amend 18C is really dumb and it will lose the Coalition votes.

Remembering that Tony Abbott had dropped the changes, Abbott could not bring himself to give a fulsome congrats to Turnbull. He suggested circumstances had changed to essentially make it easier for Malcolm.

The Coalition party room meeting continues but I have confirmed Tony Abbott has congratulated Malcolm Turnbull for moving on amending 18C.

The Matt Hatter picks up on the broken promise point regarding 18C (no plans to change) and marriage plebiscite.

Guardian Essential’s latest survey has also found that 75% of Australians polled like a gas reservation policy. Katharine Murphy reports:

An overwhelming majority of voters would support the Turnbull government if it implemented a reservation policy where a percentage of Australian gas is held back from being exported and quarantined for domestic use.

The latest Guardian Essential poll shows 75% of the survey supports a reservation policy, with the strongest support registered among Coalition voters.

The federal resources and energy ministers have, until very recently, expressed public opposition to a reservation policy, but that opposition has softened in recent weeks as concerns have escalated about looming energy shortages because of insufficient supplies of gas.

(You could have knocked me down with a feather.)