The Liberal party, Moira Deeming and political Christianity

Jan 24, 2025
Concept of where Religion and Politics intersect.

In Australian politics at federal and state level, it is desirable and appropriate that politicians with a religious commitment are elected to office, while also at times keeping separate their professional roles from private convictions for the sake of constituents and members of the community who do not belong to that faith.

It is altogether a different matter when a religious faction demands followers infiltrate a range of parties’ branches and structures to bend them to their will.

When Peter Killin was preselected for the Liberal Party for the Victorian seat of Wills in 2019, he had minoritarian goals. On a “conservative” blog, he had written: “My suggestion is to change a party from within: 1. Infiltrate 2. Influence 3. Impel. Pray and Do”.

In another post, Killin labelled the moderate Liberal faction that has held office repeatedly in more progressive Victoria as “termites” that need to be removed, bringing “good Godly” candidates in. Killin was particularly exercised about homosexuals in the party whom he did not want being preselected; he was dropped by the Liberals after it was revealed he had referred to Tim Wilson as a “notorious homosexual.”

Killin’s more detailed plan for infiltration was later leaked to the public.

As governments make it harder for minor parties to function, the radical Right or ultra-conservative members cut adrift have targeted the traditionally conservative parties to colonise and change.

Victorians have been warned about the plans leaked to the press in which extremist “micro church” leaders are instructing followers to join political branches and to infiltrate party structures. These churches function as high control cults. The system struggles to protect branches from attack when the congregants pay for their own membership.

We have seen the same crisis at work in South Australia.

Anecdotally, such preachers have expressed the plan for their members to work to infiltrate all parties and options for power. Community independents and Greens should take note. Anti-trans attitudes might be a strong warning of an infiltration at work.

As is apparent in Killin’s story, anti-LGBTQIA+ goals are critical to the project. Trans people present a most vulnerable and visible target for the start of such a winding back of Queer equality. White supremacist activists, the Catholic Church and a strand of feminism have all interconnected to make trans people seem a legitimate target in dangerous displays of opportunism and disinformation. This campaign erases the omnipresence of gender variety throughout human societies and the much greater biological complexity of gender than is taught in high school biology.

The Presbyterian Church in Australia has been a driving force fighting any effort to limit its commitment to gay conversion “therapy” which has been labelled a form of torture. It founded the “Church and Nation” committee which was involved with establishing the multi-faith bodyFreedom for Faith.” One of their primary goals has been protecting the churches’ ability to “save” people from “unwanted homosexuality and gender confusion.” The Church boasts in the record of the 2021 General Assembly that testimonies by grateful Christian “ex-gay” people are “living proof that faith in Christ and loving biblical counselling can transform hearts and lives.” The fact that such people might well reject this sexuality because they are taught by churches to hate it in themselves is not mentioned.

Also at stake with ultra-conservative Christians intentionally concealing goals that strip rights from their fellow citizens are access to abortion, euthanasia and inclusive education that accepts people for themselves.

One person who has emerged from the Presbyterian Church in the Victorian political scene is Moira Deeming. We do not know whether she entered politics as part of a concerted mission by the ultra-conservative Christian groups coalescing against the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill in 2012 or whether her political goals are independent of those decisions in the General Assembly.

In 2019, Deeming was the secretary of Bernie Finn’s abortion abolitionist March for Babies organisation. In the speech at that year’s rally, she repeats the American movement mantra that abortion must be made “unthinkable.”

In 2019 and 2020, Deeming is also listed as a member and described as a “researcher” for the Presbyterian Church’s “Church and Nation” committee.

As part of that role, she is an interviewer on a pro-conversion “therapy” video on the “Free to Change” website where she expresses fears that human rights laws will criminalise “ordinary Christian practice” and make “raising our children according to the Bible illegal.” Deeming and her interviewee, an “ex-gay” woman, bemoan schools “making” children “confused about their sexuality and gender” as well as conveying misinformation about the nature of medical treatment. The video enjoins Christians to go to the “Church and Nation” website to find MPs’ details and to write to them in support of conversion practices.

Deeming was elected as a Councillor to the City of Melton from 2020-2022. There she was active over the divisive issue of transgender people’s ability to use a bathroom when they leave their home. She also fought vaccine mandates and public health decisions. She described the Safe Schools anti-bullying program as created by “pedophilia apologists.” She posited the nonsense argument that schools are “actively trying to change children’s gender and sexual identity, while encouraging gay and transgender students to be ‘really narcissistic’.”

Deeming then resigned and took over mentor and abortion abolitionist Bernie Finn’s state seat after his ultra-reactionary comments led to him being expelled. She declared that she was preselected as a result of “a team effort by Christians” who “joined up and voted according to their consciences.” She describes herself as pondering where the line lies between pushing to “have Biblical morality enshrined in law” and the risk of becoming “hypocritical crushing dictators.”

At that point, Deeming is recorded by the “Church and Nation” committee as resigning her researcher post. It is notable that those same minutes record the committee as discussing “the increasing persecution of Christians in Australia.”

This persecution seems to consist of not being allowed to dictate ways of life for the rest of the state.

In 2020 and 2021, Deeming crafted extremist anti-abortion sermons for “Australia’s largest Christian news site” the Daily Declaration. In 2020, she borrowed the US anti-abortion trope that this fight is equivalent to the abolition of chattel slavery. In 2021, she characterised “each” abortion as a “terrible evil.” The extremity of her rhetoric deserves attention.

Deeming is also noted as standing in opposition to voluntary assisted dying.

Deeming did not know Nazis were coming to the trans rally that created so much grief. (She had apparently ceased the hiring of white supremacists as security detail that is alleged to have occurred the year previous to when she organised the March for Babies rally.) The presence of Neo Nazis, however, was not enough to make Deeming leave the event.

Deeming’s positions are particularly important because Peta Credlin, a strategist for the radicalising Right insurgency within the Liberal Party sees Deeming as leading the party one day.

It has taken 50 years for the fringe anti-abortion issue to become a deadly crisis in America. The importation of Trumpist politics underway in Australia suggests it will not take so long for minoritarian positions to be imposed here.

Christians have been the majority faith in Australia. It can be hard for some to accept moving from dominant status to just one of many belief systems in a pluralist society. Christians tempted to see themselves as persecuted because they are no longer able to dictate our way of life need to understand the injunction from the rest of us: believe on as long as you do no harm.

It is a form of harm that we will not accept if you aim to force us to live by your religion’s strictures.

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