Simon Copland

So, Abbott won. It’s done, it’s dusted, and there’s nothing else we can do about it. After years of fighting, the left has lost this battle.

So, what to do?

We lost the battle, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to lose the war. We need to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves of, and get going. Here is how I think we should do it.

1.) Get over the depression

The psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross once theorised that people going through grief go through 5 stages; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

For the last 2 or so years the left have collectively been going through the first of these stages. Denial that someone as conservative as Abbott could win Government. Anger at the Murdoch press for their actions in the campaign. Bargaining with the ALP over their leadership and the public over Tony Abbott’s gaffes. Now we’ve hit the depression stage. I feel it. I am flat and had to hold back the tears yesterday as I saw the words “Prime Minister Tony Abbott”. And we’ve even got a reference guide for what we can do about it – Ben Pobjie’s 10 ways to survive the Abbott Government. We could blame the stupid voters, or move to New Zealand. There’s plenty of options!

Well this goes against everything I know about how to talk about people who are suffering from depression, but I have four words for all of us; snap out of it.

Tony Abbott will start implementing his agenda straight away. And every day that we are sad about we lose the opportunity to step up and fight back. Being sad wont fix this for us, so we need to dust ourselves of, stop hiding under the covers and start to fight back.

2.) Realise that we’re to blame

One of the easiest things for the left to do over the coming weeks will be to find someone else to blame for Abbott’s victory. The most common I think will be to blame the Murdoch media – the powerful and influential media that duped a populace into voting for their man. This is a mistake. Jeff Sparrow argues this best in his piece in the Overland Journal:

“In the circumstances, the Left can easily fall prey to bitterness, a disdain for the public who voted in such a deeply reactionary figure. That would be a terrible mistake. Denouncing ordinary Australians as fools and halfwits, as slackjawed dupes of Murdoch too dim to grasp the obvious, might make us feel better but hurling abuse at those you want to convince has never been a successful strategy, particularly in a context in which the Left is all too often portrayed as a clique of self-satisfied elitists.

In any case, blaming the populace amounts to a category error. It’s the task of the Left to persuade people. By definition, if we don’t manage it, the problem lies with us – and so rather than analysing the flaws of the voters, we need instead, with some urgency, to commence a discussion of our own failures.”

Here is the thing we all wont want to hear though; we are to blame. And we are all to blame in different ways.

Firstly, whilst this article is from 2010, Piping Shrike is correct in noting that in accepting Abbott’s framing that the issues of climate change, the mining tax and asylum seekers were a problem the ALP immediately made Abbott electable. As I’ve argued in the past, a lack of leadership on the issues that matter have allowed Abbott to frame the debate – leading this election to be fought on conservative terms rather than progressive ones. For some reason many in the left still have this idea that progressive ideals are losing ideals – that the population is inherently conservative. In doing so we cede ground before we even begin – we lose the election before we get started.

But it’s not just that. When we have attacked Abbott the attacks have been weak at best. The left has become focused on symbols over structures in recent years and that has played out in the way we have gone after Abbott. We’ve attacked him for his gaffes and ignored the swathe of right-wing policies that he is about to implement. But it’s not gaffes that were ever, or will ever, defeat Abbott. We need to turn our attention to the structures and the issues – campaigning for a progressive vision over a conservative one. We failed to do that over the past three years.

3.) Outline a left vision

When we acknowledge our blame though, it becomes easier for us to turn towards what we can do next.

I think one of the most disappointing things over the past 6 years has been the loss of a left vision within much of the process of Government. In our desire to keep the ALP in many of us have given up on basic left principles to support the ALP as our preferred Government.

We’ve accepted a new version of the asylum seeker policy that only a few years ago the left would have fought bitterly against (I have seen that fight rise again since the introduction of the PNG solution). We justified cuts to Universities because all they were doing was ‘slowing the growth of spending’. We accepted the Gonski and NDIS as key solutions, without providing the left critique they deserved. Even in the area of climate change we defended to the death a carbon price that had flaws, without outlining what we could do to make it better.

And I think that is why so many of us clung to the National Broadband Network (NBN) as a key policy to fight for. It seemed like the only real bright light on the hill. Whilst many swallowed the attacks in other areas, we were all at least happy with the NBN.

And whilst I like fast Internet, it cannot be the basis, or even the key element in a progressive future for our world. We need more than that – a proper progressive vision for our country.

And here we have a good basis. Polling shows that our community wants money invested in education and people want more action on climate change. In many areas a progressive vision is what people want, and it is up to us to fight for it.

And this is where we can actually learn from the right. Whilst many of us deride the work of the Institute of Public Affairs, there is one thing they are good at – outlining their beliefs (not matter how crazy many think they are) and pursuing them. The left needs to start doing something similar.

And it is not as if we lack the capacity or ideas to do it. There is plenty of work available for us. Go and read Jeff Sparrow and Antony Loewenstein’s book Left Turn for a start. We even have our own think tank in the Australia Institute, which provides ongoing research and policy analysis with a progressive bent. We have a range of resources around how we can fight for these beliefs – for a start we could all read Lakoff’s The Political Brain for some ideas.

Integral to this strategy is for us to believe that left viewpoints can win. We must give up on the idea that people are inherently conservative and that we must appeal to the middle-ground. I don’t believe that. With effective community organising, strong campaigning and strong communications we can shift that debate onto a progressive footing. That is essential for the next three years.

4.) Fight, fight and fight some more

One of the failings of the past three years has been to underestimate Tony Abbott. I think many of us thought he would eventually just slip up and hand the election back to the ALP. In fact you can see that throughout the campaign – we all jumped on his ‘gaffes’ as if that was what was going to change the electorate. That was a clear underestimation of his campaign and and a failure of ours to focus on the issues that matter.

And I fear that we are going to do the same over the next three years. I expect many will think that Abbott will be a disaster and that the public will just turn off him. I am not so confident. Abbott proved to be an effective Opposition Leader and I think he has the capacity to surprise many of us with his competence (even though I will disagree with most of what he does) as Prime Minister.

And that means one thing.

Today we start to fight and we start to fight hard. And that doesn’t mean waiting for him to make a gaffe and to pounce on it. It means that we begin the process of community organising not just against his policies, but for a new and better progressive vision for Australia. It means getting onto the street, knocking on the doors and hitting the media hard. We can do it and if we do it well we could not only end up defeating Abbott but presenting Australia with a much more progressive vision than we’ve even had for the next six years. That is the opportunity Abbott’s win provides us. That is the opportunity we need to take.

Featured image by Bodo Sperling (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

One of the enduring themes of this election campaign, particularly from the left side of politics, has been the influence of the Murdoch media. The left was outraged from day one when the Daily Telegraph ran its headline stating that “finally you have the chance to kick this mob (the ALP) out” and it continued when the Telly officially endorsed the LNP declaring “Australia needs Tony”. It has now lead GetUp! to run a campaign about the influence of Murdoch, which has caused controversy after the three commercial television stations refused to run their ad.

Whilst discussion about the media is needed and a valuable part of our public debate (and in many ways I think the GetUp! campaign manages to do this well), the way many in the left have approached the discussion has potentially been very destructive. One theme seems to dominate; that Murdoch is unfairly ‘duping’ the general public to vote for the party that he wants. The activist organisation Avaaz encapsulated this best for me in an e-mail last week:

Murdoch’s media is using all its might to influence the Australian election, and unfortunately —  it’s working. His plan is a simple one: create credible newspapers, gain the trust of readers and then bombard them with propaganda that furthers his own agenda. It’s deceptive and it works — but we can make sure it backfires this election.

In other words, Murdoch is using his newspapers to deceive the public to vote for his man.

I’m not here to defend the actions of some of Murdoch’s newspapers. The Daily Telegraph’s headlines are way over the top (although I don’t have as much concern about bias as others do) and the focus on gossip items (was Rudd grumpy at a make-up artist? Is Rudd getting fat? etc.) isn’t the sort of journalism worthy of the some of the most read newspapers in the country.

But the approach many on the left have taken to attack the Murdoch media is problematic and has the potential to have a real impact on how the left reacts to what seems like a looming defeat for the ALP.

The approach is one that we see commonly in the left-wing movements (Note that I think these sorts of trends appear on the right side of politics as well, but I am more connected with the left so can only comment from that perspective). It is one that treats ‘regular people’, or in other words, the working class, as complete morons. For example, left rhetoric often focuses its campaigns about ‘educating the public’ and ‘raising awareness’ – as if we just need to give people the facts and they will suddenly ‘get it’. In politics you will often hear questions such as ‘how could people be so stupid as to vote for Tony Abbott?’, because voting for our opposition makes you a moron. With Murdoch running his agenda therefore it is easy for us to make the next leap – people are being deceived by the media and we need to save them from it. Clearly the only way one could be stupid enough to vote for Tony Abbott is if they were influenced by the Murdoch media to do so.

It is a very destructive approach to politics. I’ve written about this in the past when it came to media regulation, and it is worth revisiting some of the arguments. Firstly, the assumption that right-wing views are ‘stupid’ is well, just stupid. Often this is based on the idea that the left has the evidence on our side, but this is inherenty subjective. As I said in my previous post:

Ideas of what are true and correct are subjective, and so our understandings of what is right, wrong, and who is smart and who is stupid are too. We all understand these ideas differently, and just because we read evidence differently to others doesn’t make us inherently smarter than them.

Fundamentally, political decision making isn’t about facts or evidence.  It is about values and ideologies. Again, as I argued:

Whether we like it or not, people, including those on the left, engage in politics through their emotional brains. We engage in politics through values. We may not like other people’s values, we may campaign against them, but they are not based on intelligence levels. This is really important for understanding how destructive this rhetoric can be. The left is often so focused on talking about facts and evidence that it forgets that people actually connect through values, meaning that our campaigns are often useless.

It is with this in mind that we can see how elitist and classist this approach is. I think that is relatively obvious – treating people like morons because they have a different value-system to you is pretty elitist. It is classist because it is often targeted at the ‘bogans’, those who we say should understand that they are actually better off under progressive policies, but don’t realise that because they are being unfairly influenced by the media.

This is not to deny the influence of the media in our election (although I agree with Barrie Cassidy that his influence is overstated) – there is a reason so many resources are focused on getting good media attention from parties across the spectrum. But we cannot assume that people who read and absorb right-wing press are simply morons who don’t know any better.

And this is important not only because of its elitist overtones, but also because of what it will mean for the left if and when the ALP falls on Saturday. Instead of opening up a discussion of how the ALP and the left have faltered and allowed Abbott to win Government it will create a discourse that we were robbed by the evil Murdoch empire. It will create a discourse that doesn’t challenge our own techniques and question the ALP’s/left’s approach to policy and governance.

Question the Murdoch press and their actions over the election campaign. But don’t assume that just because people agree with Murdoch that they are idiots. We need to get off these elitist high-horse and tackle ideas and ideologies – not the intelligence of people who have different views to us.

Looking at the ALP’s campaign over the last four weeks you could easily get the impression that the Coalition is coming into this election without any laid out agenda. Just last week the ALP went on attack about an apparent $10billion hole in the Coalition’s costings, and it seems like this week all focus will once again be on costings after the Coalition announced it would have it will have them all out by Thursday. The attacks are painting a picture of a party that has a policy and economic void, and will shock voters with slashes to services and programs after the election.

To be fair, there is merit in this argument – even Joe Hockey admitted that there would be a range of cuts announced after the election. But at the same time, it is a curious way to campaign. Whilst the ALP have been focused on potential cuts in the future – in turn building a confusing debate around budget costings that most people don’t really understand – they are avoiding the already laid out, far right-wing agenda of the Coalition.

Let’s start with ALP’s favourite topic – budget cuts. As Lenore Taylor points out, whilst the ALP is focusing on potential future cuts, they’ve ignored the swathe of cuts the Coalition have already announced:

“Nonetheless Labor persisted (in campaigning on future cuts), and in doing so virtually ignored the real cuts the Coalition had laid out – the abolition of the schoolkids bonus ($4.6bn worth of payments to families), the $1.6bn hit on shareholders and self-funded retirees from the Coalition’s decision to not count its 1.5% levy as a tax for tax credit purposes, the $3.7bn that won’t be paid to low-income earners’ superannuation accounts, the $1bn which over the next four years was to be paid in twice-annual supplements to those on unemployment benefits, and the money to be saved by cutting 12,000 public servants.”

That last point is one worth reflecting on. Abbott has proposed the slashing of 12,000 jobs in the public service, meaning the loss of 660 jobs per month after he is election for the first year. A report out last week showed the massive impact that will have on the ACT economy, not to mention the impact it will have on Government service delivery (as we can see through similar sorts of cuts in places like Queensland). One can only imagine what sort of reaction that would get if the cuts were to occur in any other industry, but it seems to have been untouched.

It’s cuts to the budget where the Coalition have swung far to the right on the environment as well. The Coalition’s direct action plan has been under fire throughout the campaign, particularly after the Climate Institute report that showed that it would cost between $4 – $15 billion to achieve the emissions cuts needed under Abbott’s scheme. But it is in abolishing the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and more recently announcing cuts to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency – a loss of billions of dollars in clean energy investment – that the Coalition’s plan becomes more extreme. Whilst doing this Abbott has not made any announcement to remove the billions of dollars in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry (as far as I am aware). His direct action plan could therefore be described as one that directly takes money out of the technologies that are the solutions to the problem, whilst keeping money into the causes of the problem. These sorts of cuts will have a huge impact on the renewable energy industry, yet the ALP has hardly touched them.

Moving on, earlier this year, Joe Hockey announced that the Coalition would take aim at welfare programs. These plans have already started to trickle out, with Abbott announcing the cutting of a supplementary allowance paid to people on Newstart, worth between $210 – $350 per year for some of our poorest people. This has been coupled with the announcement to give welfare claimants up to $15,000 after they have found a job – money at the time when it seems like they would no longer need it. This seems to be in line with Abbott’s self described ‘tough-love’ approach to welfare.

On the issue of education, Abbott’s claims that the Coalition is on a ‘unity ticket’ with the ALP is what Maralyn Parker calls a ‘Conski’. As it currently stands, Abbott has only committed $2.8 billion to the Gonski reforms, compared to the $10 billion promised by the ALP and the Greens.

I’m pretty sure the Coalitions’ plans on industrial relations would worry people as well. The Coalition has already announced or indicated a whole range of positions and policies to attack penalty rates, stand behind bosses who refuse to negotiate with employees and to reintroduce the draconian Australian Building and Construction Commission. During the election campaign Eric Abetz has also announced the Coalition’s policy to police wage claims, even if unions/employees and employers agree on wage increases. The only impact this could have would be to reduce real wage growth.

These are just some of the areas in which the Coalition has displayed its far right-wing agenda. This does not mention its attack on the National Broadband Network, its cruel and unusual policies towards asylum seekers, his refusal to pass same-sex marriage and what feels like a complete void in health policy.

The Coalition doesn’t lack an agenda. And it doesn’t lack costings in a range of policy areas. Their policies are laid out, are extremely right-wing, and involve massive cuts across a number of important areas. In the last week, instead of focusing on some future cuts that no one knows about therefore, the ALP would be wise to turn its attention to what is already there. That is where the real danger for the Coalition lies.

Tony Abbott drew fire yesterday for making his education policy launch at the Penrith Christian School in Western Sydney. To understand the concern, all you have to do is read the school’s ‘statement of faith’; it’s guiding principles if you wish. In them, the school states:

“We believe that homosexuality and specific acts of homosexuality are an  abomination unto God, a perversion of the natural order and not to be entered into  by His people.”

“We believe the practice of attempting to or changing ones gender through  surgical and/or hormonal or artificial genetic means is contrary to the natural  order ordained by God.’’

I’m not going to get into a rant about Abbott visiting the school and how this shows his deep seeded homophobia. Abbott has said he “respectfully disagreed” with the school’s statements, and I can bet that many politicians of very different stripes have visited the school many times. But Abbott’s visit should open up a discussion about homophobia and transphobia in our schools – and our Government’s support for it.

Governments, at both the state and federal level, have for quite a while sanctioned this sort of treatment of LGBT kids. For example, earlier this year, Julia Gillard made assurances to the Australian Christian Lobby that under the proposed Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill, faith-based organisations would continue to be able to discriminate against LGBT people. It’s this discrimination that allows religious schools to fire LGBT teachers, and to ban LGBT students from enrolling in schools. After the Human Rights Act fell through, this discrimination stayed enshrined in the amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act passed in the middle of the year.

But it’s not just that religious schools can discriminate against LGBT kids – they also get Government funding to do so. For example, the very school that Abbott visited received two-thirds of its funding in 2011 from state and federal Governments.

In other words our Government is funding homophobic and transphobic schools and then giving them exemptions to discrimination laws, enshrining their bigotry. It’s disgraceful – no institution as hateful as this should be receiving public funds and no institution should be provided any exemptions to be allowed to continue this sort of discrimination.

But I think it goes beyond this, because even if these schools are not receiving public funds, I don’t think they should be allowed to exist at all. I know many people are going to say that these are issues of religious freedom. But when it comes to education I just don’t think it is those arguments that hold up.

For most people, it is around school time that you start to realise that you are gay, lesbian, bi or trans. It is the time that a student would attend a place like Penrith Christian School – and not because of their own choice, but normally because parents would send them there. And it is therefore in this time in particular that we must be super careful about creating open and welcoming places for kids of all genders and sexualities.

And when we think about it this way, I find it impossible to find any reason to let these schools continue to exist and operate on this sort of basis of discrimination. Whilst I agree with the right of people to exercise religious freedom, in this instance this freedom directly impinges on that of LGBT kids to attend a school free of discrimination, bigotry and hatred. The two freedoms are contradictory. And with the ongoing high mental health issues, suicide rates and bullying targeted at GLBT kids, I believe the right to grow up free of discrimination, bigotry and hatred is far more important than any right for parents to send their kids to schools that preach discrimination, bigotry and hatred.

And it wouldn’t be hard – in fact it is well within the mandate of our Government. Private school standards are defined in federal legislature through theEducation Act (Section 77) and private schools have to register with state Governments (see the WA version here) to be allowed to operate. It seems like a no brainer to me that these sorts of standards would include an anti-discrimination clause within them.

Both of our major political parties seem to agree that we want to end homophobia and transphobia in our society – at least at a superficial level. But at the time it is for many most important – in school – both of our major parties are actively sanctioning homophobia and transphobia in our schools.

The equation is simple; homophobia and transphobia does not belong in our schools – whether they are religious or not. It’s time we stepped up and ended it.

* Feature image by Niepr (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

“As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real  me. I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the  way that I feel, and have felt  since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible. I hope that  you will support me in this transition. I also request that, starting today, you refer to  me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun (except in official mail to the  confinement facility).”

“Those following the case were completely aware of the trans issue from the  beginning.  Not adding to the stress was humane and sensible.

Indeed, it was entirely public domain and there clearly to see if one  followed the  case in detail. #Manning“

Originally published in Sydney Star Observer, August 27 2013

When thinking about Tony Abbott’s views on social issues it’s easy just to think about his gaffes. A couple of weeks ago was a great example. In Western Sydney the best compliment he could come up with for one of his candidates was that she was “young,” “feisty,” and had “a bit of sex appeal”. People have rightfully pointed out that it showed that he cares more about sex appeal than substance when it comes to women candidates. The next day, talking to John Laws, Abbott said that same-sex marriage was the “fashion of the moment” – as if homosexuality was just a fashion statement.

It is fair to get upset at Abbott’s statements. They are out of date and offensive. But let’s not lose sight of the real fight here – the things he would do. Because when you look at the issue of LGBTI rights in particular, I am genuinely terrified of what Abbott will do.We all know that Abbott doesn’t support same-sex marriage, meaning his election will effectively halt reform at a federal level for three years. But’s it not just that. In more recent times, under his leadership, the Coalition voted against amendments which strengthened the Sex Discrimination Act. The Coalition voted against the bill as they wanted to exempt religious elderly care organisations from the bill – allowing these organisation to deny care to elderly LGBT people.

But it is also what Abbott hasn’t told us that makes me worried. The best place to look here is the Campbell Newman Government in Queensland. The language of Newman and Abbott is eerily similar – that there will be an audit of finances, that there is a budget crisis, but that workers will have nothing to fear. If we look at Queensland though, people have had a lot of fear. Campbell Newman has attacked unions, cut public service jobs and services (something Abbott has promised to do) and slashed funding to essential organisations such as the Queensland Association for Healthy Communities (QAHC) – the only LGBT specific health advocacy and support organisation in the state, the Biala Sexual Health Clinic, and Sisters Inside – which provides support and advocacy for women in prisons. The results have been shocking.

We can judge Tony Abbott on what he says. We should judge him on what he says. But let us not forget that it is what he does that matters – and it is what he does that will impact everyone. For me it is what he has done, and will do, that is the most scary thing. It is why we must fight against him.

Originally published in the Overland Journal 19 August 2013

It seems like the progressive love affair with WikiLeaks may be coming to an end. On Sunday it was revealed that WikiLeaks had preferenced the fascist Australia First and the Shooters and Fishers parties ahead of the Greens in the NSW Senate, as well as the National Party ahead of Greens Senator Scott Ludlam in WA. WikiLeaks has claimed the NSW preferences were an admin error, but many are finding that hard to believe. The deals could see the Shooters get elected in three weeks time, and may cost Ludlam – one of WikiLeaks’ most vocal supporters – his seat. (This just a day after their WA Senate candidate Gerry Georgatos took to the Twittersphere to rant and rave about the evils of preference deals!)

The preference exchanges are certainly a betrayal of progressive voters and one that could potentially have long-term impacts. Although many are surprised by WikiLeak’s betrayal, it highlights for me the extremely problematic nature of the ideology that underpins the party, and much of the growing movement around notions of ‘open government’.

Look, for instance, at where else WikiLeaks appeared in the news over the weekend. On Saturday WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange came out in support of US libertarians Ron and Rand Paul. Assange said:

[I] am a big admirer of Ron Paul and Rand Paul for their very principled positions in the US Congress on a number of issues. […] They have been the strongest supporters of the fight against the US attack on WikiLeaks and on me in the US Congress. Similarly, they have been the strongest opponents of drone warfare and extrajudicial executions.

Assange concluded by saying:

The only hope, as far as electoral politics presently, is the Libertarian section of the Republican Party.

Therein lies the fundamental problem with WikiLeaks, a problem that brings into the question the ideological basis behind the Party.

The Party’s website slogan is ‘Transparency, Accountability, Justice’. And whilst they’ve spoken out around issues such as asylum seekers, it is this tenet that makes up their core – they are a Senate Party designed to increase ‘transparency and accountability’ in our government. For example, WikiLeaks Victoria Senate candidate Leslie Cannold explained her nomination this way:

I have chosen to stand for the WikiLeaks party because I want to bring the WikiLeaks disinfectant of transparency and accountability to the Australian Senate.

It is increasing transparency of government actions that have been the basis of the ‘movement’, as they like to call themselves, ever since WikiLeaks (the website) was established. You can see this play out in Assange’s writing, in which he argues that the US is essentially authoritarian conspiracy, and that the best way to break down said conspiracy is to hinder its ability to conspire. It is unsurprising, then, that he would admire people like Ron and Rand Paul. In fact, many parts of the Left have similar illusions about pro-market libertarians – a growing love for the Pauls as an answer to the authoritarian state.

When expressed in this way, however, the ideology is in no way progressive.

Open government is an idea I strongly believe in. But, despite its progressive overtones, that concept cannot form an ideology, one that is essential for the basis of a political party. The US progressive website Daily Kos made this argument best in their response to Assange’s claims about the Pauls:

Yup. An anti-government, anti-Social Security, anti-Medicare and Medicaid, anti-civil rights, anti-choice, anti-LGBT, pro-business, anti-minimum wage, anti-40 hour work week, anti-union, basically anti-every piece of Democratic and progressive legislation that has ever been passed in this country Political Party and its nihilistic leaders are the only hope for America.

It’s a fundamental problem: transparency doesn’t make a government progressive or good, and it also doesn’t make it anti-authoritarian. Governments that are open and accountable – the sorts of government that Ron and Rand Paul would like to see – can still be extremely conservative. People can still be anti-women, anti-queer, anti-union etc etc, even as they’re open and transparent about it.

More importantly, accountability and transparency do not automatically equal anti-authoritarianism – no matter how many times somebody claims they (or their organisation) were the catalyst for the Arab Spring. I’m pretty sure a Ron/Rand Paul government would have rather authoritarian approaches to social issues – those that stop people from having control over their own bodies, for example – even if they are open about it.

Looking at the last couple of months in Australia, we could easily argue that the major parties have gone out of their way to be public about their cruelty to refugees, yet this hasn’t created a national uproar. In fact their ‘transparency’, according to most political analysts, has been ‘political genius’. Being open about an authoritarian refugee system hasn’t created the social change many would like to see.

Whilst information is necessary to social change, it certainly isn’t sufficient. Information does not lead to political engagement. But strong campaigning based on clear values and ideology does.

If WikiLeaks did do a deal with Australia First, the Nationals and the Shooters and Fishers, it would be interesting to know why. Maybe they offered to be open and accountable fascists? Hell, Hitler was extremely diligent in keeping records of his atrocities so we could all see them in the light of day after the war.

That is the dilemma facing WikiLeaks. As long as their whole ideology revolves around accountability and transparency, they can end up in situations like this – supporting extreme social conservatives in the US and preferencing fascists in Australia. Accountability and transparency should be an essential part of any political party’s ideology, but it certainly cannot be the central, guiding tenet.

I’m a couple of days late with this, but I must say something.

On Wednesday, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott announced that the Coalition would be preferencing the Greens last in every seat in the country in this years election. Even as a Greens supporter, the announcement didn’t bother me. We (the Greens) should expect, and in fact should embrace this. This is the sort of fight we signed up for – and it is one worth winning.

But what did bother me was the reason Abbott gave for his decision. In making his announcement, Abbott said that his action was designed to ensure that whoever wins Government does so with a ‘clear majority’ because minority Government has been a ‘failed experiment’. As he said:

“This is about putting the disappointments, the betrayals and the failures of the last three years firmly in the past.”

“This election is about … having strong economic policies that protect your job security, that improve your cost of living,” he said.

“But it’s the last thing we’ll get from a Parliament which is over-influenced by people like the Greens.”

Abbott made a vow earlier in the campaign that he would not form a minority Government after the September election (somewhat ironic given that he is the leader of a Coalition of parties) and after his announcement on Wednesday, Kevin Rudd made the same promise (it will be interesting to see what happens if we end up with another minority Government).

I am annoyed at Rudd making that announcement, but my real ire is with Abbott on this one. His attacks on minority Government have been running for years now – labelling the latest Government as ‘illegitimate’ and the last three years as completely dysfunctional. It has been a great political ploy – one that I think has worked strongly it Abbott’s favour. But in doing so I think he fundamentally attacked our democracy.

Let’s ignore the fact that the last three years have actually been very stable. No matter how many times Abbott or the media have screamed that the Government was about to collapse it easily survived. And even though many don’t agree with the legislation that has been passed, the fact is that our Parliament has been extremely functional – passing significant reforms in many areas.

But here is the bigger issue for me. In attacking minority Government, Abbott isn’t just having a go at the ALP, but is fundamentally attacking our democratic ideals.

In the 2010 election, our two major parties (including the Coalition as one party) received less than 80% of the primary vote. That percentage is still extremely high, but it is in no way definitive. Over 20% of our population voted for a party that wasn’t the ALP or the Coalition, and neither the ALP or Coalition came close to receiving 50% of the vote (i.e. a clear majority). And this vote looks like it is potentially going to grow in 2013 – particularly as a range of new parties enter the field (ranging from Katter and Palmer to the ‘Coke in the Bubblers Party’).

Whilst our democracy has been one dominated by two large parties, over the past few years it has become clear the domination of the two is no longer guaranteed. People are getting tired of the two parties, and slowly but surely votes are moving to new parties from across the political spectrum – whether it is the Greens, Katter or the Palmer Party.

And our democracy is designed for this. We do not have a Presidential style system, but one based on local (through the House of Representatives) and state (through the Senate) representation. Theoretically our system could easily exist with the election of numerous parties – just as happens (completely functionally) in many democracies around the world.

Yet Abbott seems determined to attack this. As the number of parties seems to grow – an expression of the will of the Australian people to get more variety in their politics – he is determined to block it. To try and limit us to a two party system even though that may not be the will of the Australian people.

If Australia elects a minority Government again, just as it did in 2010, that will be the will of the people. And it is the responsibility of all parties to deal with that, not to say ‘no, we’ll try again until we get full control’.

Democracy is not about majoritarian rule, but rather about ensuring we all have a voice. And people are expressing that voice clearly – with over 20% of our population are moving away from the major parties. If that number grows, minority Parliaments may become the rule rather than the exception, and I personally think that is good for our Democracy. Abbott’s recent moves however are designed to block that and in turn to take away the voice of millions of people. That could be extremely dangerous.

Tony Abbott is once again in hot water on same-sex marriage. In an interview with John Laws, in which the two discussed the issue yesterday, Abbott said:

“We have to be conscious of the fact that we are all the products of the society, of the culture, of the circumstances that have shaped us,” he said.

“I’m not saying that our culture, our traditions are perfect, but we have to respect them and my idea is to build on the strength of our society and I support, by and large, evolutionary change.

“I’m not someone who wants to see radical change based on the fashion of the moment.”

Making the comments in the middle of the election campaign, and one in which same-sex marriage has become a hot topic, Abbott’s remarks have (rightfully) drawn the ire of politicians and marriage advocates across the country. And he deserves the attacks he’s gotten.  But as we attack, I think it is important that we look at the broader picture here. Because in many ways all Abbott was doing was expressing a sentiment that is still dominant in our community – even in the progressive areas.

When I first ‘came out’ – the funny ritual that all non-heterosexual identifying people have to do at some point of time – one of the most common responses was ‘maybe it’s a phase’.  I can’t remember how many times that was suggested to me. It was one of my favourites – along with “when did you find out you were gay” (as if it happened overnight) and “are you sure?”.

I couldn’t tell whether the people were asking me it were hoping that maybe I would snap out of it at some point, find a nice wife, have kids and happily ever after, or if they just genuinely thought that as a 16 year old I must have been going through some sort of crisis and this is how I was dealing with it. Don’t get me wrong, my friends and family we supportive of me no matter my sexuality. But the question had to be asked – was it just a phase I was going through and one that I would come out better at the end of?

Ask any queer and I am certain they would have heard this question. And whilst it may sound innocent it is part of a long history of homophobia.

One of the most enduring ideas around homosexuality is that it is just some form of abberation. Homosexuality is not a real thing, but rather a failure in someone. It could be a failure cause by a crisis, by bad parenting, or more recently though different genetic. For decades we have been searching for the answer, “what causes homosexuality”. We have all the different theories – that there is a gay gene, that it comes from parents bringing you up around queer stuff, that you are ‘born that way’.

And what this has done has bought into a mainstream heteronormative narrative. Heterosexuality is the normal, and homosexuality is the abnormal. It is the thing we must find a reason for, and then (for some) find a cure for. Up until recently homosexuality was considered a medical disorder – something we could treat.

And so it makes sense that it if we think about homosexuality as being abnormal, it is possible that it is just ‘a phase’. The phase thing is only ever brought when people are going through a crisis or are developing their sexuality (i.e. puberty) – a time of change – and therefore one in which doing something abnormal is what is needed. We also assume bisexuality is a phase – but of course to be a bisexual must mean you are in constant crisis – as you can’t ‘decide’ what your sexuality is.

Take this all to a broader level then and it makes sense. Later in the day, Abbott said:

“We’d really moved beyond the subject of same-sex marriage in that discussion.”.

“We were talking about tradition more generally.

“The point I was making really was that conservatives tend to hasten slowly – regardless of the issue.”

Think about it and it makes sense. If we have created a world in which the homosexual is the abnormal – and one created through a mistake somewhere – then culturally what we are seeing is just an abnormal phase. If the homosexual is going through a crisis, then at the moment our culture is just going through a crisis – and one we need to fix. Get our culture back on track and the crisis of homosexuality will disappear too.

Whilst this may not be a view that is expressed widely anymore (unless you live in a place like Russia), as long as we consider homosexuality as the abnormal, it is one that will stick around. And it is this idea that Abbott unexpectedly expressed yesterday – an idea with decades of history, and one that still lingers in our society. An idea that is embedded even in the progressive and accepting circles I have lived my entire life around.

This shows how much more we have to do with sexuality. My argument is not that sexuality is defined and set – once we decide we’re gay we’re set and that’s it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sexuality is fluid.

But the reality is that we still assume, and for many hope, that it is only homosexual sexuality that is fluid and never heterosexual sexuality. Bisexuals are always just playing around with members of their own sex – they will eventually play for the hetero team. Teenagers are just going through a bit of a crisis and they’re expressing it through homosexual feelings, they will get over it. It is just a phase.

And in doing so we regularly take away the agency of queer people. We tell queer people that we are just in a crisis, but it is okay, you will be fixed soon. You have just been corrupted. And we do this and then wonder why queer people have higher rates of mental health problems and suicide.

That is the really terrifying thing about Abbott’s statements. It’s not that his views are out of whack in relation to marriage – in fact through my experience I think a lot of his sentiment is pretty in line with what a lot of people say about homosexuality – even those who are nice enough to want to give us marriage. What’s terrifying is that it accurately reflects this sentiment – one that sees homosexuality as a phase, an issue that young people can fix, one maybe that we will get out of. It is a sentiment that is disappearing, but one that Abbott is clearly still stuck in – a sentiment that hurts queer people everywhere.

Today I don’t here about the phase thing any more. Being in a stable relationship for 7 years does that. But the impact is still there – an impact of being told that you have no agency around you sexuality.

Next time you go to ask a young queer kid if their sexuality is ‘just a phase’, think of Tony Abbott, and then please stop.