Anthony Albanese’s somersault to now include an issue of sexuality in the upcoming census, when it was the right decision, has let the Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister down.
Just a few days ago, they were there to give interviews to the media, defending the government’s decision to remove questions about sexuality from the 2026 census.
The reward for the cabinet’s collective cooperation and defense was announced on the radio this morning by the Albanian, who announced that he was reversing the decision.
This is the same Prime Minister who claims to be a modern-day Bob Hawke and leads a ‘cabinet government’.
It was so much that he didn’t even go back to the cabinet to discuss the reversal.
It was always an odd Cabinet decision to begin with. The argument used by Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Chancellor of the Exchequer Jim Chalmers to defend it was that leaving sexuality off the questionnaire would avoid “divisive debate”.
As the Commissioner on Sex Discrimination (appointed by Labour) noted, that is quite condescending.
“It’s really a bit patronizing and paternalistic to say we’re not going to include these communities at all because it could be harmful to them,” said Dr. Anna Cody.
Wise words.
Anthony Albanese (pictured left) has reversed a cabinet decision that his Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles (pictured right) recently publicly defended
The Sex Discrimination Commissioner has criticised Finance Minister Jim Chalmers (pictured) for his condescending arguments on LGBTQIA issues
She also pointed out that excluding the LGBTQIA+ community from the census was itself damaging to that community. Not that Marles and Chalmers seemed to have that in mind as they ploughed on with their defence. A couple of black knights waving at each other, Monty Python-style.
As usual, political fear was needed to bring Albanian to his senses and overturn his ‘cabinet-style’ decision.
But the somersault was only partial, a point that seems increasingly lost sight of as this debate progresses.
The Prime Minister has only committed to listening to recommendations on one question about sexuality from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, rather than the multiple questions the ABS wanted in the census to gain detailed information about the LGBTIQ community to inform policymaking going forward.
Of course, good policy is not the highest priority of the Albanian government, politics is. So Albo only partially backflipped in an attempt to deliver a political outcome rather than a good policy outcome.
Here we go again: Albo tries to walk on both sides of the street at the same time.
The Prime Minister feared he would lose votes in the mainstream media by supporting additional questions on the sexual orientation of the LGBTIQ community.
The Greens campaigned hard against the first cabinet decision: a procession of inner-city MPs from the Labour Party, whose seats are at stake, suddenly made themselves heard on the issue.
John Burns was the first to voice his concerns, followed by Ged Kearney and Peter Khalil, all of whom have seats under siege by the Greens.
They all hope that Albo’s partial somersault will take this issue off the agenda.
No wonder the Greens are gaining support among left-leaning voters. The Labour Party seems to take their policies and ideological concerns seriously only when electoral consequences are at stake.
More often than not, the Labour Party in government chooses to lean the other way in an attempt to appeal to the centre, but this time that initial response has been replaced by an intervention from Albo, who made the choice of leader.
Which begs the question: Where was Senate Majority Leader Penny Wong on this issue when the Cabinet debated it?
Wong often gets bizarrely misplaced credit for Australia finally legalizing same-sex marriage (SSM). In fact, she has for years put her support for her LGBTIQ community aside to support Labor in the government that opposes SSM, which in turn supported her promotion within the government.
It was the conservatives in power who put gay marriage to a referendum, which showed overwhelming popular support, leading to it being passed into law.
Who was in favor of following that ultimately successful path to equal rights when it comes to marriage? Peter Dutton, who advocated such an approach within Malcolm Turnbull’s cabinet in an attempt to resolve the issue once and for all.