Pearls and Irritations

We all know the 2026 Census story, but to step out the key points: there’s a government form in development; it includes questions dealing with sexuality and/or gender identity; there are concerns about subsequent public sensitivities; government says “no” to the questions being asked because there might be bad feelings.

This has been a template for serially letting down the LGBTQI+ community.

So I’m talking about preparation of the 2021 Census, right? Yes, but not yet. Let’s go back to 2022, Medicare, the current government and Bill Shorten, the relevant minister du jour.

The previous government (let that sink in for a moment: the previous Government) had been testing at three sites use of gender-inclusive language in a Medicare form. The form tested using “birthing parent” instead of “birth mother”.

This offended recent birthing, ah, parent, Sall Grover. If this name rings a bell it may be because she was recently on the losing side of Tickle v Giggle for Girls Pty Ltd (No 2) [2024] FCA 960. This came out of a complaint by Roxanne Tickle, a trans woman, that she had been discriminated against by Grover and her business. But I digress. Anyway, the Medicare forms were taken up by the Daily Telegraph which with its usual imagination and rhetorical flair fulminated against the wokeness of it all.

Shorten recognised this immediately for what it was: a beat-up by the Telegraph to give belly-rubs to people who will never, ever vote Labor, and in any case a routine attack for bucks and clicks by the Murdochracy on anyone who is not white and cis-straight. Therefore he adjusted his big-boy pants, put his hands on his hips, and backed the pilot to the hilt.

I am joking. Of course, that didn’t happen. He collapsed like a wet tissue and ordered the pilots stopped because something, something avoid culture wars.

This may sound familiar in relation to recent events.

Now for the 2021 Census. The then Morrison Government chose not to include questions on gender identity and sexuality. Care to guess why? If you guessed something along the lines of “because people wouldn’t like it”, congratulations, you get a gold star. Well, not a gold star. Let’s say, congratulations, you have sufficient intelligence safely to negotiate a doorway without a stackhat. And so, not only has Labor let down the LGBTQI+ community down twice on inclusivity following this template, both times they followed the Coalition playbook.

But, maybe, just maybe, this is just an unfortunate coincidence and the government was, in its most recent attempt to erase the LGBTQI+ community, genuinely trying to act in good faith albeit in the most boneheaded fashion?

Spoiler: they’re not. I was joking again.

The reasons given for initially excluding questions from the 2026 Census are absurd.

One would not normally expect much from such statements. They are, on the one hand, the sorts of things politicians have drafted for them either to give rusted-on supporters an excuse to switch their brains back to “off”, or at least to give politicians something, anything, to say instead of remaining in goggle-eyed silence. Substance is secondary. I have drafted many such words. On the other hand, they might be said off-the-cuff by politicians who are in the headlights or who find themselves in the position of being, say, a prime minister increasingly given to episodes of sulky petulance. But the current crop is especially egregious.

“It would be divisive.” If asking the questions would be divisive — and I am not sure it would, such that that reasonable people would care — then there is no non-divisive stance. So why then plump for weakness and taking the brave Sir Robin route of running away instead of, and hear me out here, doing something to promote respect and diversity?

“It might hurt the LGBTQI+ community.” Really? The community asked for it in 2021, were supposedly consulted and asked for it in preparation for the 2026 Census, and are very loudly demanding it still.

“The questions are too complex.” Sure. In their current form they may well be. If the questions are too complex, then change them, test them, and, if needs be, change again. This is how statistical collection instruments are developed. To drop the questions before testing is patently to say excessive complexity is not the issue.

How stupid does the government think we are?

We might also consider Labor’s stance of sorts on marriage equality in its 2009 party platform, and then failure to do even the little the platform provided, leaving it to the Coalition to get it done accidentally and painfully; and Labor’s unwillingness to just kill the Morrison Government’s anti-LGBTQI+ Religious Discrimination Bill 2021, instead hoping to patch it up.

The government’s prophylactic decision to exclude questions about gender identity and sexuality — which Labor had criticised the Coalition for doing in 2021, and promised to remedy — is consistent with the government’s present tendency to a collectively liquifying spine. “Timid” is increasingly in use, but is insufficient. Labor is doing a good job, over time, of looking like they affect concern for the LGBTQI+ community when convenient, but when the crunch comes, drawing from Mr Bandt’s remarks from the religious discrimination legislation debate, it allows them to be political collateral damage when not.

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