Rodney Croome . gay advocate

A vote for reform

The question is how much?

No Australian newspaper has captured what Saturday’s election result means better than the London Guardian.

"The politics of progress beat the politics of retreat….(But) change, when it comes, will be gradual - a cleansing of values rather than a revolution in policy….Now (Rudd) has won he will be tested in office to…escape caution and govern - as he claims to want to do - for a bigger purpose."

If the Guardian is right and Saturday’s vote for a national Labor Government was indeed a vote for reform, a vote for a bigger purpose than just our own immediate needs, and a vote against politicised prejudice, where does this vote leave LGBT Australians?

The possibility of removing some legal discrimination against LGBT people has greatly increased.

After drawing the line at marriage, Labor committed itself to removing discrimination against same-sex de facto couples in all those national laws which discriminate against them, and to establishing state-based relationship registries.

But the last few months have seen the beginning of a crusade by the religious right to extend its influence over Kevin Rudd and limit Labor’s already limited reform agenda.

Labor’s commitment to a national sexuality and gender identity discrimination law was the first casualty of this crusade. It’s been put off to Labor’s second term.

If the religious right gets it ways, the next will be recognition of de facto same-sex partners in laws to do with parenting, leaving us with something closer to the caveated relationship reforms that exist in the larger states like NSW, Qld and Victoria, rather than the more thorough-going reforms that prevail in the ACT, WA or Tasmania.

What will determine how far this whittling goes?

1. The influence of the new generation of Labor MPs, including equality advocates like openly-lesbian former WA MLC and Senator-elect, Louise Pratt.

2. What influence the Greens have in the Senate and how strategically they deploy this influence. We will know "what influence" in a week or so. How well they deploy it will take longer to learn, and will depend on how quickly the newbies learn the parliamentary ropes.

3. The course the Liberal Party takes in Opposition. Before the election I hoped a Liberal defeat might rinse that Party of the stain of homophobia. Perhaps it will, or perhaps it won’t. This will depend, in part, on whether the progressives can hammer home the point that hate did much more to hurt the Party than help it.

4. The commitment of the LGBT community to reform. This is the most important factor, and, at the moment, the most reliable. This community is better informed and mobilised than I have ever seen it. The danger here is government spin. The Howard Government’s line that it opposed gay discrimination was aimed at everyone but gay people. Most LGBT Australians saw straight through it. Labor, with the help of not a few gay loyalists, has already begun its spin – portraying its policies as eliminating discrimination when they do not, pretending its backdowns are less important than they are, and underlining all this with the bankrupt "we're-still-better-than-the-other-lot" line. Expect this spin to escalate dramatically now Labor is in power. For LGBT journalists, bloggers and community leaders the luxury of criticism has been replaced by the obligation of truth telling.

Of course, all this is for the future.

Just as Kevin Rudd intends to get to work straight away, so do my colleagues and I.

There’s entitlements for same-sex partnered Mersey Hospital employees to clear up, hate speech to prosecute, a raft of former-government policies to “cleanse” of discrimination (as the Guardian might say), and links with the new government to build, including the establishment of formal liaison in areas like health and education.

In short, there’s a lot of hard work ahead.

*

In other post-election news,

Along with others I was wrong to predict a close election. My excuse? I think I under-estimated how poorly the conservatives would campaign, and how disciplined Labor would remain.

Kevin Rudd sticks to form and conspicuously fails to mention LGBT issues in that part of his election victory speech devoted to tackling injustice.

Despite this, the Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby is optimistic, the NSW GLRL happy, and ACE hopeful.

Potential Senate balance-holder Nick Xenophon is not as reticent as Rudd about where he stands.

And

If you think I should be giving Labor more space to succeed, I’m giving it more than some.

***

In other news,

PFLAG National spokesperson, Shelley Argent, is a living book.

A conservative commentator, who hates living books, reminds us how he and his colleagues intend to howl down any progressive initiatives under a Rudd Government.

A social researcher explains (in superficial terms not to my liking) why she believes history is on Shelley's side.

And

Anti-gay Christians show that what’s important to them is not what the Bible says, but what they want it to say.