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Despite a grassroots campaign to mobilise support to stop the takeover, the broader Australian media did not report on the Calvary takeover, considering it an “ACT story”.

This explains why the Albanese Government was able largely to ignore the issue, burying an inquiry instigated by Queensland Senator Matt Canavan.

Commentator Angela Shanahan, writing in The Australian newspaper, put it like this:

“First of all, we have an entrenched socialist-green Government acting on the classic Big Brother government control playbook. They want to build the hospital and run it with the active support of the CFMEU for the building of the hospital.

“The first reaction to the proposed takeover was from the union, which put out a release demanding ‘bring in the bulldozers!’

“Second, and more important, the Government’s ideology is aridly secular and anti-faith. It does not want anybody with any religiously formed conscience to have a place in the public square.

“Time and time again, despite their denials, and the Prime Minister’s denial that it is a precedent, if one looks at the history of this, which goes back to 2010, it is easy to see that this is ideologically motivated by an anti-religion and anti-pluralist outlook masquerading as social progress.”

So, the Calvary Hospital was taken over with scarcely a whimper.

Now the signs of a national campaign to “crack down” on hospitals that do not provide abortions are emerging.

In a submission to the Community Affairs References Committee, the Victorian Women’s Health Services Network envisaged “a taskforce” that would: “enable better planning, monitoring and development of [sexual and reproductive health] services to address population health needs, in alignment with federal and state legislative and policy frameworks.

“This would enable better policy, funding and legislative coordination across the country to address inconsistencies and gaps more efficiently and effectively.”

Women’s Health Victoria is also on the march.

The Greens’ playbook is well-known. Run a test case, tell everyone it is a “one-off” and “exception,” and once that has proved successful, broaden out, using the media to run its agenda. Guardian Australia, for instance, recently reported on how a woman being treated at Melbourne’s Mercy Hospital was “shocked” during pregnancy complications, when she learned that the hospital would not assist with the termination of her pregnancy due to its Catholic affiliation.

“‘I was kind of shocked. It’s a public hospital and we’re a secular country, so it didn’t make sense.’ The midwife agreed it was a silly policy, but her hands were tied.”

Fortunately, Guardian Australia reported, the mother delivered her baby in March without complications.

Expect many more got-up “horror” stories like these as the campaign mounts.

Unfortunately, the ability of even the Catholic Church, which remains Australia’s largest religious denomination, to mount a concerted, united counter-campaign is much diminished.

Support for religious institutions and religious freedom in the Federal and State Labor Governments is also at a low point.

There is clearly an agenda behind all this. Calvary was the test case and a highly successful one at that.

This will give the proponents of universal abortion services much comfort in the long battle ahead.

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Originally published in News Weekly. Photo by Mart Production.