Into The Long Grass - Conservative Treachery

On a major social issue, Australia is now in the grip of the worst joke since the White Australia policy, and it’s just about as funny. Gay people are not equal before the law and are still not allowed to marry our partners in this country, despite many of us having gone to the expense and inconvenience of leaving these shores, travelling overseas and getting married in other more enlightened jurisdictions where marriage equality is a reality. Australia ostentatiously lags behind the rest of the Western world on this issue. And what is the cause of all this? Two words: the conservatives.

Prior to 2004, the wording of our Marriage Act did not specify gender at all. Stand up John Howard. He changed the wording to specify man and woman solely, after seeing marriage equality slowly but surely becoming a reality around various states in the US world and in Europe, and so, rushed the legislation through the Parliament, thereby blocking any possibility that same-gender marriage could evolve in this country. He didn’t take it to a plebiscite, just to the Parliament. Interestingly, unlike his present-day descendants, he had this remarkable thing to say.

“We've decided to insert this into the Marriage Act to make it very plain that that is our view of a marriage and to also make it very plain that the definition of a marriage is something that should rest in the hands ultimately of the parliament of the nation. (It should) not over time be subject to redefinition or change by courts, it is something that ought to be expressed through the elected representatives of the country.'' Oops, it looks like the present crop didn’t get that memo. Interesting, don’t you think?

Fast forward a decade or so and the infamous love-child of Howard and Bronwyn Bishop, Tony Abbott, an even more conservative backward looking monarchist 50s man than Howard, is in office as Prime Minister. Apart from rusted on arch-conservatives, he is near universally disliked and by many, despised. He was only voted in because he wasn’t Gillard or Rudd; hardly a ringing endorsement. There were no palm fronds cast onto the road in front of Abbott’s entourage as he slipped into Canberra.

This is a man who on 7 March 2010 told a 60 Minutes interviewer in response to a question about homosexual people that, despite having a gay sister himself, he "probably [felt] a bit threatened ... as most people do." He defended the assertion on the ABC’s 7.30 two nights later as a “spontaneous answer” and went on to say, "there is no doubt that it [homosexuality] challenges, if you like, orthodox notions of the right order of things." This is the guy who subsequently becomes Prime Minister of Australia; a man who has not the first idea about LGBT people and our lives and who is implacably, rigidly and unwaveringly opposed to marriage equality. If gay marriage were ever to get up during his term of office, it would be over his dead body.

Just before he lost power due to the relentless abysmal polling he received in over thirty consecutive polls, and with the Government looking more and more like a one-term government because of him, the marriage equality issue came once again to the fore due to the submission of a suggested bill put up by one of his own, Warren Entsch. Abbott had already pronounced only a week or so before, that no party would own marriage equality and that if it were to become reality in this country, it would do so as a result of the whole Parliament. Sounds a lot like John Howard’s stated position, doesn’t it? But don’t be fooled. It’s all smoke and mirrors. There are a lot of them in this debate. Instead, because of the Entsch bill, a hastily called party room meeting was announced and all party members had to stop their work to attend the Tony Abbott Marriage Equality workshop for the day. At the end of it, the Parliament was superseded and forgotten and Australia was to have a plebiscite on the issue instead; a non-binding poll. And not at the next election, but sometime after the next election; say six to twelve months after. Abbott’s conservative mates like Abetz, Andrews, Bernardi and Fierravanti-Wells, to name a few, were enough to carry the day. Abbot got his way and fudged the whole the thing, proudly rejoicing in democracy because now, everyone would have a say.

Conservative religious folk, also implacably opposed to marriage equality, thought all their Christmases had come at once. The issue had been kicked down the road, off into the misty future, and reframed by marriage quality public enemy number 1 as a vox populi democratic issue. The Australian Christian Lobby’s President Lyle Shelton wrote on an American blog: “Instead, a people’s vote known as a plebiscite would be held sometime after the 2016 election, kicking the issue into the long grass (putting the issue off) and blunting the momentum of same-sex marriage lobbyists” (my italics).

No doubt embarrassed that these words have found the light of day, they have belled the cat and tolled the truth of this plebiscite. It is nothing but a ruse, a tactic, a way to delay, to obfuscate, to impede and to push the issue off the front pages. Abbott knew it. The ACL knows it. Turnbull knows it. All of Australia knows it, given that over two-thirds of us are supportive of a change to the Marriage Act already and have been for some time. It is a transparent tactic; worthy of Lao-Tzu.

Now, a human rights issue was going to be voted on. In any domain of Western jurisprudence, that is a no no. It is an absolute. You don't vote on human rights. They are not for the vote. Human rights are never to be given. They are only to be recognised. They belong to us all; as human beings. They do not lay in the purview of any man to give. And they do not lay in the voting intentions of an entire nation. Human rights are of a different order than say, education policy or health policy. They are over and above such quotidian issues, important though they may be. In a Western representative democracy like Australia’s, it is Justice 101 that all are equal under the law. Human rights are to be respected. And where we are found wanting occasionally or could do better, we adjust and change our ways to conform to the higher good, that of human rights.

Professor Gillian Triggs, President of the Australian Human Rights Commission wrote in an opinion piece in The Age. “Under article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights all people ‘are equal before the law and entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law’. The Australian Human Rights Commission considers that this principle of equality means that civil marriage should be available, without discrimination, to all couples, regardless of sex, sexual orientation or gender identity. - - - Of immediate relevance to Australia's proposed plebiscite, is the [US] Supreme Court's view that fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote. Rather, ‘they depend on the outcome of no elections’. In principle, why should the right to equality in marriage depend upon a plebiscite”? Indeed, it shouldn’t.

As a result of this farce, my relationship and tens of thousands like it around the country, will be judged and voted on by bigots and homophobes and the ignorant who despise us. Our status in the nation will be evaluated by other Australians; something I dare say, not one of them would be comfortable with. Conservative politicians and religious folk who confirm our relationships as being of second-class worth see this exercise as something good and noble.

I have already written a piece about the plebiscite and you can read my argument against it here.

Since Malcolm Turnbull unseated Tony Abbott and took the prime ministership, he has been lumbered with almost all of Abbott’s far-right policies, including the plebiscite; the $160 million waste of money that even now, conservative politicians are saying they will not abide by regardless and will still vote against marriage equality though their electorates be supportive. It’s the usual suspects. Abbott should be counted among them. Then there will be Abetz, Andrews, Fierravanti-Wells, as well now as Bridget McKenzie who told the media this week that she will vote against marriage equality no matter what the plebiscite turns up. And oh, it was like getting blood out of a stone for her to admit this publicly. Seems she didn’t want to own her own intentions on the record.

These conservatives and others not so public are said to be voting with their consciences. 

Apparently, their consciences are perfectly okay with inequality before the law (one law for straight people and a different law for gay people), consciences just fine with the hurt and pain caused by relationships deemed second-rate, consciences just peachy with young gay people getting the message from Government that ‘we don’t care what you want’, consciences that sleep well at night knowing that over two-thirds of Australians disagree with them but they don’t give a stuff anyway, consciences that are jim dandy with depriving gay couples the affirmation of acceptance and celebration by society even when society has said it is perfectly happy to offer that affirmation. You gotta love the conservative conscience. These people alone stand in the way of Australian marriage equality.

So what of Turnbull? He is increasingly looking weak. Abbott does not hesitate to prosecute his own case. He’s out and about everywhere. This week, he’s in America telling a right-wing homophobic lobby group that marriage equality will “erode” the family and “damage” marriage. Rubbish I say Mr Abbott. Show us how that is to happen. The burden of proof is on you. Show us the evidence of erosion and damage.

But in all this, where’s our great enlightened moderate Liberal hope Malcolm Turnbull? Silent as the grave. Just mouthing the party line. Inanities about plebiscites and democracy. Repeating the words and policies of his political nemesis. It’s pathetic and he is looking more and more pathetic every day. Turnbull looks and sounds weak; a pusillanimous puppet of the Right. If he truly believes in marriage equality, then let him advocate for it and stop vacating the field to the likes of Bernardi and Abetz and Abbott. Let him use his considerable influence as Prime Minister to do some good for the country on this issue. Let him not be like Gillard who squandered her chance to do something when she had the power to do so. Turnbull really needs to grow a spine. He might be moderate, but if he presides over a far-right government and allows that discourse to fill the conversation, then his moderate credentials amount to zero. He is moderate in name only and will ultimately become a laughing stock. When a leader loses the respect of the nation, he or she is in deep trouble.

What a farce this has turned into. We have a weak pathetic Prime Minister who is scared of his own party and who won’t even advocate the issues he believes in. We’ve got an inordinately expensive unnecessary plebiscite which will be ignored by some conservative politicians anyway. We ‘ve got the unedifying spectacle of Australians being asked to vote on human rights. We’ve given bigots and homophobes equal standing in their views about gay peoples’ lives as us ourselves. We will still have to have a vote in the Parliament. And the whole thing is off in the never never somewhere.

What an utter disgrace! This is how we do social policy in Australia. This is how we treat people in Turnbull’s Australia.

If Turnbull fudges this, it will never be forgotten.