As sins go, the call to scrap the Lord’s Prayer at the start of each parliamentary day is no biggie. Or is it?

It probably doesn’t cut the mustard for the two categories of sin defined by the Catholic Church – mortal sin and venial sin. Mortal sin, like murder, can land you in Hell, after its landed you in jail, while venial sin is to be avoided because it prevents us from attaining holiness and perfection.

The list of venial sins – your average everyday kind of sin – is long, and growing longer by the day, so there’s no need to catalogue them here. Use your imagination. Or examine your conscience.

Upper House Greens MP Robert Simms, an atheist, wants to end the traditional saying of the Lord’s Prayer by the House of Assembly Speaker and Legislative Council President before the start of hostilities each sitting day.

He says this isn’t about banning any religious practice, arguing that “quite the opposite is true”.

“It’s about recognising that the parliament should reflect the diversity of the community we represent,” he told The Advertiser. “That means respecting all religions, not just one and indeed respecting the views of those who are not religious.”

Actually, Robert, binning the central prayer of the Christian faith is about banning a religious practice. It’s hard to see it in any other light.

But having sat through countless, mind-numbing hours of covering state and federal parliament, with all its endless bastardry, I came to the conclusion years ago that such a brilliant prayer was wasted on the lot of ‘em.

In fact, in the Bible, Matthew 6: 5-14, when Jesus is asked by his followers how to pray, he instructs them that their Father “knows what you need before you ask him” and when they pray they should do so in the privacy of their own rooms.

He then gives them the Lord’s Prayer, a beautiful, brief prayer that covers all the bases, from honouring God, his kingdom and his will on earth and in heaven, giving us our daily bread, forgiving our debts and our debtors, leading us not into temptation, and delivering us from the evil one. Love, sustenance and forgiveness, in short.

But the call from the Greens MP isn’t really about giving a particular Christian prayer the boot. Robert Simms is a smart cookie and he’d know that his bright idea hasn’t a hope in Hell of being adopted in either house of parliament.

This is fertile territory for conservative Liberals like Antic, but one that poses problems for a party trying to peg out a patch of turf in the middle of the political oval.

As a society, we’d expect our parliament to be giving its full attention to the things that really matter to the community, like the cost of power, gas and housing, or the protection of the hundreds of children at risk of harm or death.

The topic of parliamentary prayers is what the Americans call an “inside the Beltway” issue – a reference to the Capital Beltway, the highway that encircles Washington DC. It’s of no consequence beyond the granite walls of the North Terrace citadel.

But this sort of thing goes down well with the Godless, rusted-on, tie-dyed Greens faithful. They love slapping the happy clappers. And it dog whistles to the increasing number of voters who have switched from the major parties to the Greens, in the mistaken belief they’re a harmless, moderate and happy little political party.

Some might call it virtue signalling, defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one’s good character or the moral correctness of one’s position on a particular issue”.

It’s easy to virtue signal from the Left of the political spectrum, harder for conservatives on the Right.

On Tuesday, during a Senate estimates hearing, South Australian Liberal Senator Alex Antic accused the ABC of “grooming” little children over a Play School segment in which drag performer Courtney Act reads a story about dressing up.

“Why is the ABC grooming children with this sort of adult content?” Antic asked the ABC’s boss, David Anderson, during Tuesday’s Senate hearing.

While deploying the word grooming is inflammable, Antic is also no mug. He is talking to his conservative base, particularly the hundreds of new recruits from pentecostal Christian churches that he and his supporters have signed up in local Liberal branches in Adelaide.

But he is also sending a signal to ABC viewers in middle Australia who may have found the segment unsettling, upsetting or simply inappropriate, but dare not say so publicly for fear of being shouted down.

This is fertile territory for conservative Liberals like Antic, but one that poses problems for a party trying to peg out a patch of turf in the middle of the political oval.

The Guardian reports the ABC chief denied the Antic accusation, saying “we are not grooming Australian children”.

“What we are doing, that is about dressing up,” Anderson said. Well, there’s dress ups and there’s dress ups, isn’t there?

South Australian Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young was outraged, slamming Antic’s language as “deeply, deeply offensive”. Maybe so, but it was legitimate to quiz the ABC boss about a cherished program for pre-schoolers.

“Grooming is a really serious matter. It is not for being played with by conservative senators to make headlines,” Hanson-Young said. A bit like playing with the Lord’s Prayer to make headlines, perhaps.

In the middle of this unholy mess sit the major parties, trying to have a bob each way, not wanting to endorse extreme views but not wanting to burn voter preferences from the Left or Right.

When Premier Peter Malinauskas was asked on Seven News about the Greens’ push to drop the Lord’s Prayer, the best he could come up with on the hop was: “The Greens are entitled to advocate their position, it’s not really the focus…”

Hardly onward Christian soldiers from the Catholic-raised-and-educated leader, head of his party’s Catholic Right faction.

Labor’s Mike Rann, when Premier, would have simply said it was a dopey idea.

Jesus had some other pithy advice in Matthew’s Gospel, instructing Christians that when they pray “do not keep babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words”.

Amen to that.

Matthew Abraham’s weekly analysis of local politics is published on Fridays.

Matthew can be found on Twitter as @kevcorduroy. It’s a long story.