Andrew Laming ordered into empathy training by Scott Morrison after downplaying apology

The Liberal backbencher Andrew Laming has been ordered into empathy training by the Australian prime minister after downplaying his apology for allegedly bullying two Brisbane constituents.

Scott Morrison told Laming to do a private course to help him understand and be aware of his actions on Saturday morning.

“I want to see behaviour change and we’ve all got a job to do with that, and he certainly has a job to do on this,” Morrison told reporters in Sydney. “We’ve discussed this very directly this morning and he’s agreed to participate in that and submit himself to that as he should.

“I would hope that that would see a very significant change in his behaviour.”

Laming apologised on Thursday after allegedly harassing two prominent women from his federal electorate in eastern Brisbane over several years.

His statement in parliament came after the prime minister reprimanded the backbencher’s “disgraceful” behaviour.

However, the MP later downplayed his offering in a post on Facebook on Thursday night.

“In this climate – I willingly apologise – I didn’t even know what for at 4pm when I did it,” Laming wrote, following it up with three tongue sticking-out emojis and a heart eyes emoji.

The Morrison government holds a slender one-seat majority in the House of Representatives.

Laming’s page had disappeared from Facebook on Saturday morning.

Queensland Labor MP Don Brown suggested Laming should be dumped.

“If you aren’t fit for Facebook, you are definitely not fit for Parliament,” he tweeted.

A state Labor MP came forward with more allegations of online harassment from Laming on Friday.

Kim Richards, whose state seat of Redlands overlaps with Laming’s federal seat of Bowman in Queensland, told the Guardian that Laming had published a photo of her accompanied with a slur that she had “no reason to be in a kids’ park”, as part of an ongoing campaign against her.

Richards said that Laming had sent her a handwritten note, promising to target her government, rather than her “personally” after her election in 2017.

But she said that he had not relented since and had engaged in a “long-running” campaign of “bullying and harassing” behaviour.

Since his apology in parliament, the Guardian has seen Facebook messages from Laming in which he says he was “actually surprised by the response” to the Channel Nine story.

Channel Nine news first revealed that Laming had been accused of online harassment on Thursday, detailing how he accused a woman of misappropriating charity funds, leading to her contemplating taking her own life.

The report also detailed another woman’s allegations, with Sheena Hewlett, and her husband Lance, a local councillor, saying Laming had targeted her for six years with online abuse that she said had left her fearful and distressed.

Morrison said on Saturday it was ultimately up to voters to judge whether Laming was still fit to be a member of parliament.

He added that they had been making that judgment in the Bowman MP’s case “for many, many years”.

The prime minister also said he had no control over Laming’s preselection as he was not a member of the Queensland Liberal National party.

“Every single member of parliament, me included, has to renominate for the endorsement of our party,” Morrison said. “And that’s a process which is underway currently with the LNP and I’m sure selectors will be thinking about all of those things.”

Morrison said everyone needed to change their behaviour toward women but not all bad behaviour was on purpose.

“There are conscious malevolent acts that are undertaken to discriminate against women and make women feel unsafe,” he said. “There are also many unconscious acts, born out of a lack of understanding and appreciation and awareness. We have to address both of these things.”

The federal opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, said on Friday: “In my view, Andrew Laming isn’t fit to continue as a member of parliament.

“And if the Liberal party want to continue to associate themselves with him, then I look forward to campaigning with the Labor candidate in that seat.”

The episode is the latest in a crisis which has engulfed the Morrison government and started a wider debate about sexual discrimination, harassment and abuse.

The prime minister is seeking a circuit-breaker after being criticised for his tone-deaf response to a wider debate about sexual discrimination, harassment and abuse, sparked by former staffer Brittany Higgins coming forward last month to allege she was raped by a colleague in 2019.