Dutton enjoyed the vocal support of the Prime Minister. The meeting had no trouble accepting a related proposal, the idea that a dual citizen could be readily stripped of Australian citizenship. But someone with no other citizenship? Illustration: Rocco Fazzari Turnbull objected: "A person's citizenship is of enormous importance, intrinsic to themselves. Take me. The only people who've lived in Australia longer than my family are Aboriginal. I have no other identity. Are we seriously saying some minister could take my citizenship?" Only if you're a terrorist, was the rejoinder. "Only if you are someone the minister thinks is a terrorist," Turnbull corrected. This was Barnaby Joyce's central objection too – the lack of hard proof, the lack of a trial, the absence of a jury, the lack of real rigour in a decision to take away a basic human right. "Isn't that what we have courts for?" Joyce posed. The deputy leader of the National Party went to the heart of the matter: "If you don't have enough evidence to charge them in a court, how can you have enough evidence to take away their citizenship?"

According to participants, Dutton replied: "That's the point, Barnaby. You don't need too much evidence. It's an administrative decision." This was too much for George Brandis: "I am the Attorney-General. It is my job to stand for the rule of law." Christopher Pyne was forceful on this point too: "This is a matter for the judiciary to decide, not the minister." The Education Minister was insistent on another point, too: "A sole Australian citizen, terrorist or not, is our responsibility. We can't wash our hands of the fact. We can't pretend they're not Australian when they are. "The best thing to do is get them home, arrest them, and put them in jail." And if there's not enough evidence for a court? "Then get it."

If a person has no citizenship, he or she is stateless, with no right to live anywhere. Statelessness is "the stark reality of poverty, vulnerability and a life confined to the margins of society," in the words of Francis Teoh of the UN High Commission for Refugees. Nationality is defined by the UN as a basic human right. That's why Australia is a signatory to a UN convention to prevent statelessness. Dutton and Abbott had a way around that. If a person were eligible to apply for citizenship of another country, that would be protection enough, they argued in the cabinet meeting, even if the suspect didn't actually possess that other citizenship. The idea was attractive to Dutton, to Abbott and to the Social Services Minister, Scott Morrison. If a terrorism suspect could be rendered stateless, it would mean two things. First, if that person were overseas, he or she could be denied the right to return to Australia. Second, if they were in Australia, they could be detained indefinitely.

Brandis made the point that any Australian with British parents or grandparents could be eligible to apply for British citizenship, and that could include millions. Meaning? We are not just talking about making a dual national subject to this power but millions of other people who regard themselves as fully Australian, he argued. Julie Bishop pointed out a central reason that the idea was unworkable. If Australia were to strip one of its people of citizenship on suspicion of terrorism, would Britain, for example, really go ahead and give them British citizenship? By the time the forceful objections of these five ministers had been reinforced by another – Defence Minister Kevin Andrews warned that if the idea was controversial in the cabinet it would be much more so in the community – it was apparent that the idea was moribund. The Prime Minister had been rolled by his cabinet.

It was not only the substance of the proposal, however, but the method that exasperated ministers. Or, rather, the lack of method. The matter was not listed on the cabinet agenda. There was no cabinet submission. There was no written proposal of any kind in front of the ministers. Abbott brought up the subject only at the end of a cabinet meeting on other business, then asked Dutton to speak on it. It emerged during debate that there was a discussion paper on the subject, and Brandis volunteered that he had seen a copy and had been debating the idea with Abbott in the inner sanctum of cabinet's National Security Committee. It was at this point in a tense and difficult debate that Bishop stunned the meeting with a further revelation: "I haven't seen a discussion paper." The ministers around the table instantly understood. The Prime Minister had tried to ambush his cabinet.

Bishop is the deputy leader of the Liberal Party, the Foreign Affairs Minister, the minister with oversight of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, a member of the National Security Committee of cabinet and a central figure in Australia's effort to defeat the terrorists of the so-called Islamic State. The depth of mistrust between the Liberal leader and his deputy was starkly exposed. Abbott told the meeting that, if ministers wanted to see it, he could have his office send around copies of the discussion paper. "We had been attempted to be duped," said a cabinet member speaking after the meeting. Turnbull was incensed: "Here we go again," he told his Prime Minister in the meeting. "Talking about something as momentous as this and there is nothing in front of us. There's a discussion paper that only a few of us have seen. This is a shambles." Turnbull asked Abbott directly if the Daily Telegraph had been briefed on the proposal for the next morning's paper, which would have meant the cabinet meeting had been pre-empted by the Prime Minister's press office. The Telegraph is a favoured Abbott outlet for signalling his moves in advance.

It had not, replied Abbott. Yet the next morning the Telegraph carried a report saying that the proposal would be "included in the bill" that had been approved by the cabinet the night before. Oops. The day after the meeting, Abbott told the media that the proposal was in a discussion paper, and not in the bill that he would be asking Parliament to pass. He hastened to add that any such proposal, if it ever came to that, would be subject to a review by an administrative appeals tribunal, whose decisions can be appealed to the Federal Court. This was an afterthought, not put to the cabinet meeting. The Labor opposition has struck a position of bipartisan accord with Abbott on national security. For this reason, the Parliament is no longer a functioning check on the government in this realm.

The only real check on Abbott on national security-related issues is his own cabinet and his own party. In this instance, it worked to defeat a rash and ill-considered idea. Or, as one minister said, "they're lucky to have half a dozen ministers who still care about the rule of law". Rights are hard won and should not be lightly discarded. And, overall, the Abbott government is an active agent in the furthering of rights in Australia in at least three areas. The rights of the disabled. The Abbott government is working to bring to fruition the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The rights of women and children in the home. Abbott has pledged to work to reduce domestic violence, even if he is criticised for doing too little. The rights of Indigenous Australians. He has called a meeting with Aboriginal leaders for July to try to set a process and timetable for achieving recognition of Indigenous Australians in the constitution. Indeed, this is history's grand trajectory for the past four centuries, an unstoppable series of waves that the Harvard psychology professor Stephen Pinker has called "the rights revolutions".

Amid the tragedy and misery of history, there is a grand historical sweep, a pattern clearly discernible, that continues to advance, apparently at an accelerating rate, across a broad front. Slavery, wife beating and child labour were once mainstream practices in Western countries. Today, they are unacceptable violations of rights. Only a generation ago in Australia it was normal for children to be hit by their teachers, but it's now beyond the pale. Animal rights advance apace. A generation ago a movie did not carry the routine disclaimer assuring that no animals had been injured in its making. Even Barcelona has banned bull fighting. "The long trends have logic on their side. Human sacrifices, public hangings, slavery, when abolished, didn't return and these trends inexorably spread worldwide," Pinker says. "The broad social trends are dismantling arbitrary injustice," he told me. "I put gay rights, violence against women, female infanticide in countries like China and India, and unnecessary cruelty to animals as developments I'm willing to bet will be significantly improved in the next 50 years."

Gay rights, and particularly the right of homosexual people to marry in the law, is on the cusp of recognition in Australia. Abbott has yielded to the inevitability of it. The only risk now is that it falls prey to petty political vanity. Australia, the first country in human history to vote itself into existence, has a proud record as a rights pioneer, for women, for workers, for ordinary people. Rather than a mean game of using rights to divide, whether the rights of citizenship or the rights to equal treatment of gay people before the law, Australia's leadership has a chance to use rights to unite. An Australia united in advancing fairness and human rights is not only the right thing to do. It's also a profound repudiation of the barbarians who call themselves Islamic State. That truly would be an extraordinary proposition. Peter Hartcher is the political editor.