I couldn’t help but think it was some form of sick joke. This whole week has felt like a sick joke actually. Despite everything though, this felt like the worst. The most sick. At almost exactly the same time (and I mean literally the same time) Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was announcing the ALP’s new asylum seeker policy, Foreign Minister Bob Carr tweeted this:
@bobjcarr: Meeting with members of #LGBTI community on making LGBTI rights a core foreign policy priority of Rudd Government pic.twitter.com/aQUv8Y2FrO
@bobjcarr: I promise to stand up against homophobia, transphobia & biphobia. Always. pic.twitter.com/1rRHaRZbis
It’s a nice sentiment Minister, but here’s the deal. In Papua New Guinea – the place where you’re sending thousands of asylum seekers for resettlement – homosexuality is illegal. Consensual anal sex between two men can result in imprisonment for up to 14 years a man who ‘commits an act of gross indecency with another male person’ in public is subject to three years imprisonment. GLTBI people face significant discrimination, with activists reporting that queer people often find it difficult to find employment and a decent wage.
What this means is that LGBTI people fleeing persecution via boat will now be sent to a country where they could find themselves facing a very similar situation. The UN says that even the existence of laws like those in PNG, even if they aren’t strictly enforced, provide enough reason to claim asylum. We are now potentially sending queer asylum seekers to a place where they will need to seek asylum from.
This is not how you make ‘LGBTI rights a core foreign policy priority of (the) Rudd Government’. In fact, it is how you trash LGBTI as part of your foreign policies.
I have to ask what really happened on that day. Maybe Carr didn’t get the “don’t talk about LGBTI rights today, you’ll look like a fool” memo. But what I actually this is a sign of, is that whilst this Government could easily be called the most queer-friendly in the country, despite Carr’s tweets, we are far away from LGBTI rights being at the ‘core of Government’. We are far away from a ‘queer Government’.
In many ways you could consider this ALP Government as the most queer-friendly Government we’ve ever seen. In his first term Rudd moved through the same-sex omnibus bill – changes that are probably much more influential than same-sex marriage will ever be. As Foreign Minister he announced that sex and gender diverse Australians would no longer have to have a gender affirmation surgery to change their gender on their passports. And now, Rudd becomes the first PM to support marriage equality.
Despite this however, in the short month or so since Rudd has come back to power, this isn’t the first time he’s come under fire for the impact of his decisions on the queer community. In his first week, Rudd appointed Jacinta Collins as the Minister for Mental Health. Bernard Keane explains:
“Collins is from the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association and holds the social views one expects of a Shoppie: she is stridently anti-abortion and a diehard opponent of same-sex marriage; “stable, biological parenting” should be fostered “as a social norm” she said in reference to the same-sex marriage bill last year.”
What this shows, is that whilst the ALP is almost as queer-friendly as you can get when it comes to legislation directly targeted at queer groups – marriage equality (even though that hasn’t passed yet), anti-discrimination legislation and moves to remove discrimination against trans* people, when it comes to policy that isn’t directly related to queer groups, it is showing to be lacking.
And this shows how far we have to go. Because whilst most queer-advocacy has focused on legislation to end discrimination, the queer agenda has to be about a lot more than that. Queer rights do not just sit in some part of the Attorney Generals Office as we ensure all discrimination is removed from legislation. It sits in every Government Department and in every part of our society.
In the Foreign Affairs Department it means making sure all decisions take into account LGBTI rights and that we actively promote these rights globally. In the Health and Education Departments in means not just removing discrimination, but also making sure these services take into account the needs of diverse spectrum of our community. That means having services that don’t make assumptions about sexuality or gender, and are ready and prepared to work with the full diversity of our society. In the Department of Employment this means facing up to the discrimination queer people face in the workplace and tackling it head on.
But it is more than that. Because a queering of Government isn’t just about queer people – it is about all of us. A queering of Government also means working towards a queering of society – breaking away from norms about sexuality and gender across all spectrums of our society, creating an inclusive and free place for all to express themselves. That means not using terms like ‘mincing poodle’ when attacking the opposition and certainly not promoting MPs and Senators who have a history of homophobia to important ministries.
So despite nice words being said by our Foreign Minister the last few weeks have shown that we are far away from a proper queering of Government. The ALP may say the right things, but their actions show we have a long way to go.