OPINION
Brian Greig is a veteran advocate and spokesperson for Just.Equal Australia.
It didn’t take long. Last Friday, just two days after the US election, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said the Albanese Government “was more concerned with pronouns than people”
Here it comes – the start of Trumpian politics in Australia. Well, not the start, but the ratcheting-up of “anti-woke” rhetoric and the dismissal of minority concerns. Trump went full steam ahead with his racism, transphobia, embrace of religious fundamentalism and eager use of conspiratorial commentators.
His stunning victory has been watched by Trump wannabe’s around the world and conservative groups will study closely his language, tactics and optics to emulate them.
This will impact in Australia, particularly on climate action, race, immigration, and LGBTI issues.
Trump’s victory is being hailed as a backlash to “woke”, which itself is never defined by those who use the term, but which seems to mean any support for the rights and protections of people belonging to minority constituencies. It’s a cancel-culture term designed to silence vulnerable voices and belittle their claims.
In Australia this is labelled “identity politics”, and we can expect to hear much more derision about “identity politics” between now and the federal election next year.
Abortion was a hot topic in the US election, but I can’t see that translating into an Australian context because we don’t have the large religious base the US does. As the Queensland election showed recently, the (now) Liberal Premier was forced to pledge that his government would not roll-back existing abortion laws.
LGBTI issues are different, they lend themselves to secular attacks and while the religious right will back them, they will also attract the ire of TERFs, conspiracy theorists and the angry mob of anti-woke warriors, all of whom have been emboldened by the Trump victory.
What does this mean for domestic politics?
I think the three main take-outs from the Trump victory are these.
First, the economy is the main issue and most voters will overlook the prejudice, bigotry and racism of a party if it puts cost-of-living ahead of other things.
Second, political parties can no longer take core constituencies for granted. While the Democrats have long been the party of workers, women, black voters and those of colour, recent research finds many of these constituencies split, splintered and voted Trump. Partly due to economic priorities, partly due to concern about immigration, and partly from anti-LGBTI sentiment, and transphobia in particular.
We have seen similar trends in Australia, with ethnic communities who came here lawfully through a long and difficult process, being among the harshest critics of the “illegals” and asylum seekers. We also saw in the marriage equality campaign, that conservatives targeted the ethnic and religious seats in western Sydney to stir up fears about LGBTI people and its imagined threats to “religious freedom.”
As we head into the 2025 federal election, we are going to hear a lot more of these things, particularly from people like Moira Deeming, Katherine Deves, and Senator Claire Chandler, who will raise the profile of “protecting women in sports and change rooms.” Meanwhile, Senator Jacinta Price will launch an attack on “radical gender ideology”. We know this because she said she would.
The third take-away, is the massive shift in election information sources. Traditional media no longer dominates. Trump’s victory surged due to X (Twitter), Joe Rogan podcasts and targeted advertising in niche voter blocks, outside mainstream media. The Republicans ran 35,000 anti-transgender ads on sports channels most watched by black and Hispanic men.
All of this will make the Albanese Government highly adverse to anything LGBTI, and any federal policies (such as they are) will be dumped and muted before the election. Small-target politics will become microscopic.
This will impact on WA, especially with the state and federal polls clashing. It threatens substantive law reform in 2025. In February this year, Premier Cook abandoned his promise to enact a suite of LGBTI reforms this term, saying he “didn’t want any controversial issues before the election.”
If anyone thinks that LGBTI law reform might be controversial now, just wait until Trump becomes President next January and the state Liberals and federal Coalition launch their 2025 election campaigns on his coat tails. In this “anti-woke” environment, there will be significant pressure on the Cook government to weaken, delay or dump promised LGBTI reforms.
As a community, it will be our task to extract precise commitments from all candidates well before the next state election. There must be unambiguous commitments that pledge them to Equal Opportunity Reform (faith schools, faith services, thorough trans inclusion), hate speech protections, and banning conversion practices without exemptions.
This is a serious test. Anyone who argues that ‘playing down’ LGBTI policy during the state election will improve its chances after the election, has no understanding of history.
