OPINION
Almost two weeks after the Albanese Government announced it would be dumping the long-promised questions about sexuality and gender identity from the census debate on the issue rages on, and cabinet leaks suggest the move was all down to the Prime Minister.
The Nine newspapers reported cabinet members have leaked that the issue was brought up by the Prime Minister himself, and nobody else in cabinet challenged the move.
This led to a wide range of reasons being given for the decision, with front benchers defending the move as being motivated out of altruism to project LGBTIQA+ Australians from “nastiness” and “divisive debates”.
As the days go by, the reasoning is being questioned, as the cabinet leaks suggest Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was only concerned that the questions might be confusing to some people. After a week of criticism, the PM appeared on Melbourne radio to declare a question on sexuality might be permitted, but questions about gender identity were ruled out.
It just sparked off another wave of criticism with the PM being accused of trying to drive a wedge between the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual and the Transgender and Intersex parts of the LGBTIQA+ communities.
The whole debacle has led to accusations that in the wake of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum loss, the Albanese Government has started jumping at the shadows of any potential culture war.
The decision has opened the door for a wide range of accusations to be made about LGBTIQA+ communities by conservative commentators, the exact kind of divisive debate Labor have said they were saving us from.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton initially said including questions about sexuality and gender was part of a “woke agenda”, but within a few days he conceded that he didn’t actually have any opposition to them being included if the data was needed.
Archconservative Matt Canavan also went on the record saying he had no problem with the questions being included, a view that was echoed by moderate Liberal members including Andrew Bragg and Bridget Archer.
“It’s been my view for a long time that sexual orientation and gender identity are reasonable questions to ask in a modern society.” Bragg told the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday morning.
Bragg said it was astounding that the Prime Minister had “tied himself in knots” over something that the Labor party had promised to deliver. “It shows a great weakness in his own leadership.”
“I think it’s very disappointing for the LGBT community to have put faith in this government and they have been let down, and I think treated appallingly.”
Queensland’s Andrew Wallace said he believe the Prime Minister handling of the issue showed his leadership was under threat.
During an appearance on Sky News Prime Time Wallace said the Labor leadership was fractured.
“I think what we’re seeing is a fracturing of the Labor leadership. I can’t remember the last time when en-masse Labor backbenchers and frontbenchers criticised publicly the government position on this.
“Anthony Albanese cannot hold a policy position from one day to the next.” Wallace said, describing the PM as caving under pressure from his own colleagues.
“I think what we are starting to see is Anthony Albanese is getting very worried. He’s watching his back. He’s watching his backbench, but more importantly he’s watching his front bench.”
Sky News staff wonder if they’re “the nastiness” politicians were referring to?
On Sky News the commentors had a field day with issue. Senior reporter Caroline Marcus said the LGBTIQA+ communities should be happy with the one question about sexuality granted by the Prime Minister.
“It’s yet another example of what happens when you try to appease and pander to these activists, it’s never enough.” Marcus declared on The Sunday Showdown.
She went on to suggest that questions about sexuality and gender would make the census unworkable potentially pushing it out to an additional 80 pages.
“We have so many different sexualities, pansexual, asexual, I can’t even keep up. This census will be another at least 80 pages longer than it usually is – unless they just have an ‘other’ box.” Marcus declared.
Despite Marcus concerns, the proposed questions have already been developed and publicly available for several years and do actually just have just a few choices and the option of filling out a specific term in the ‘other box’.
When host Caleb Bond asked who Jim Chalmers was referring to when he referred to “nastiness”, Marcus responded, “I think he’s talking about us.”
Liberal senator Hollie Hughes said she was happy to start the culture wars on the issue.
“I just had a look before we came on air, so it might have just changed in the last fifteen minutes, but in that time, they were 72 genders.” Hughes claimed.
Senator Hughes said if the census form included the phrases cis-male or cis-female in a question eighty percent of Australians wouldn’t be familiar with the phrases.
Despite the senators concerns the Australian Bureau of Statistics sample questions have not used these phrases.
“The other things that gets me is that transgenderism is not a sexuality, it’s a gender issue not a sexuality issue, so this continual conflating of the issues I think misses the point.” Senator Hughes said.
“There’s your culture war started because you’re now about to have the T of the rest of the alphabet losing their minds – but it’s not a sexuality.” Senator Hughes said suggesting that both sexuality and gender would now be combined into one question.
This has not actually been proposed by the ABS or the government, something which fellow panelist Joe Hilderbrand attempted to explain to the senator.
Host Caleb Bond said he thought it was legitimate to collect data on sexuality in gender. He’d shared his reasoning a few days earlier on The Late Debate saying it may lead to questions about what makes people be gay or transgender.
“Where would the nastiness come from?” Bond asked, “Are they worried that we’ll see that there’s been a marked rise in LGBTIQA+ people in the last five years, and then we might start wondering why is that? And that’s questions the government doesn’t want to answer.” Bond said while stroking his beard.
On Sunday Marcus said she hoped the census might show that there are very few transgender people in Australian society, and that they are currently given too much airtime. She also voiced her view that many young people who claimed to be lesbians were not truly gay, which led to Hildebrand accusing of her promoting well-worn tropes.
Contributor Kel Richards said he believed people stopped being same-sex attracted as they get older.
“People get older and they decide ‘I’d actually like to have a family. I’d like to get married’. People who either experiment or play around, or do whatever they like when they’re younger – it doesn’t mean a lot because you get back to real life and you start having kids.” Richards said.
Someone’s going to have to let him know same sex couples already get married, and many have families. Of course, if we put the questions in the census Richards would be able to see the data.
NSW One Nation leader Tania Mihailuk popped on another Sky News program to share her view that including questions about sexuality and gender would backfire on LGBTIQA+ communities.
“The vast majority are going to come back as being male, female and heterosexual – that’s what’s going to come back, and then people can start questioning ‘Well hang on, are the majority of government funding and policies and decisions actually going towards support the majority?” Mihailuk said.
As we approach a fortnight of debate on the questions in the census the Prime Minister has managed to put himself politically to the right of both Peter Dutton and Matt Canavan. Shown that his own front bench are all on different pages on this issue. Inspired over 100 community organisations to publicly voice opposition to his approach, and pundits have gone to town with their accusations about the LGBTIQA+ communities.
And unless he takes action and changes his position, LGBTIQA+ Australians won’t be fully counted in 2026, pushing the issue on to the 2031 census.
While it seems the PM was focused on avoiding culture wars as he heads towards an election, what does he think LGBTIQA+ people are going to think about as they choose which boxes to tick on their ballot?
