This is fucked reporting right? The quote they use as evidence is her saying something is “in God’s hands”. Elsewhere articles are run using quotes of her praying to god.
This is like, extremely normal lexicon for even casually religious people right? I’m an atheist with a pretty negative view of religion and to me this looks like pearl clutching.
Lots of extremely normal people say “I am praying for guidance” when they’re reflecting on something. That in isolation doesn’t mean they expect a hedge to catch fire and tell them what to do…
If our standard is pollies never mention religion then we might want to do some stuff about the Lord’s prayer, the oaths, and the magical mace of the Royal cult.
It’s a higher standard than tabloid rags but I feel like they’re doing this a massive disservice by repeating it at all, especially without adding context such as the number of times various senators have mentioned religion, the mandatory religion in Parliament, and consequently that this is obviously an islamophobic smear campaign.
Their own stats say that very few people read more than the first paragraph (I can’t find them but they had this whole campaign on it using their metrics). It’s obviously inflammatory and most readers won’t remember the nuance, they’ll remember vague concerns of scary Muslim god stuff and not supporting Israel.