1020 Australian election: Deplorables reject Labor's Culture War (Gender, Trans, Hate laws)

Australian election: Deplorables reject Labor's Culture War (Gender,
Trans, Hate laws)

Newsletter published on May 25, 2019

This newsletter is at http://mailstar.net/Oz-election-Deplorables.doc

(1) Australian election: Deplorables reject Labor's Culture War (Gender,
Trans, Hate laws)
(2) ALP was going to close Coal mines & power stations, as it closed
Forestry in Tasmania
(3) Mark Latham: 'Transition to a clean energy economy' = elites jetset,
but workers sacked
(4) Economist: Working Class are voting Conservative, while inner-city
are voting Progressive
(5) ALP pushed Gender, Trans & Hate Laws; promised to curtail religious
freedoms
(6) Labor promised a National Gender Centre and a Sexual Orientation
Commissioner
(7) Labor spokesman Mark Dreyfus said Christian schools would have to
employ Gay/Trans teachers
(8) Labor leader Bill Shorten promised Gender Fluidity in schools,
including private religious schools
(9) Wealthier areas voted Labor, despite its plan to tax the rich;
showing that Culture War determined outcome
(10) A Populist revolt stuns the Elite
(11) Aussie revolt against 'Social Justice': Voters reject authoritarian
politics of 'Progressives'
(12) The rise of the blue-collar patriots - Brexit, Trump and Australian
revolts
(13) It's not that Queensland changed; rather, it's the ALP which has
changed
(14) Australian Labor Party (ALP) Platform 2018 - The word 'Gender'
occurs 148 times

(1) Australian election: Deplorables reject Labor's Culture War (Gender,
Trans, Hate laws)
- by Peter Myers, May 25, 2019

The Australian Labor Party (ALP) once was a great party which
represented working Australians, but in recent years it has been
captured by Globalists (economic policy) and Trotskyists (social policy).

The Working Class have seen through those who purport to lead it, a
privileged elite pandering to Yuppies and Greens in the inner cities.
The sacking of Israel Folau brought the issues home clearly.

To best understand this election, consult the map below, which shows
that the ALP has been decimated in rural Australia.

In the past, about half the country might have shown up as 'red'; now,
the ALP has lost nearly all rural areas, and is reduced to inner-city
seats in the wealthier parts of the capital cities.

ALP decimated in rural Australia:
http://mailstar.net/ALP-decimated-Rural-2019.png

Blue = Conservative (Liberal & National Coalition)
Green = Conservative (National Party)
Red = Labor

It's not just rural voters who rejected Labor; so did the Working Class
in the cities (or rather, the fringes of the cities; they cannot afford
to live in the privileged areas).

The following map 'Sydney voting map 2019' shows a sharp divide between
the Working-Cass West and the Progressive East:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-24/sydney-voting-map-2019/11145528

Sydney voting map 2019

Eastern Sydney is Yuppie-Green; Western Sydney is working-class. Many
who live in the west were forced to move there after mass immigration
made living in the east too expensive.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal/2019/results/party-totals

Nationwide Party Vote count

Coalition = Liberal & National Parties {meaning 'Conservative'} 41.8%

Labor Party {formerly a working-class party; now 'Progesssive',
pro-Immigration, Gender & Hate laws} 33.6%

Greens {the most 'Progesssive'} 9.9%

United Australia Party {'Conservative', pro-mining}

One Nation {'Conservative', against Mass Immigratrion,. Gender politics,
Political Correctness & Hate laws} 3.0%

Others {independents with a local base} 8.3%

(2) ALP was going to close Coal mines & power stations, as it closed
Forestry in Tasmania
https://www.alp.org.au/policies/securing-a-just-transition-for-energy-workers/

Securing A Just Transition For Energy Workers

Labor is committed to a Just Transition for the workers and communities
who are affected by these closures.

Australia must deal with the inevitable closure of ageing coal fired
power stations ... including the Hunter, Latrobe Valley, central
Queensland and Collie River Valley.

Labor is committed to a Just Transition for the workers and communities
who are affected by these closures. ...

A Shorten Labor Government will implement a comprehensive plan for a
Just Transition and will ensure no affected worker is left behind. Labor
will:

Establish an independent Just Transition Authority (JTA) to plan and
coordinate the structural adjustment response to future station
closures. ...

Legislate a regional framework for pooled redundancies.... concessional
loans for businesses (including from funds such as the Clean Energy
Finance Corporation ...

Labor will consult with experts and stakeholders, including communities,
industry, unions, and local and state governments, on the implementation
of these policies.

(3) Mark Latham: 'Transition to a clean energy economy' = elites jetset,
but workers sacked

https://twitter.com › RealMarkLatham › status

@RealMarkLatham

Australians have worked it out:

"Transition to a clean energy economy" = privileged elites like Alex
Turnbull continuing to enjoy international travel/lifestyle with a
carbon footprint bigger than Liverpool, while mining and manufacturing
workers are chucked on welfare scrapheap

https://twitter.com/alexbhturnbull/status/1130766733982162944

Alex Turnbull

@alexbhturnbull

Whoever doesn't plan for transition will find themselves in real strife
when the pain hits this sector and those who promised a lot deliver
little. This is going to be *bad* for regional QLD but all the worse for
the lack of preparation.

@RealMarkLatham: You can sneer about the regions but in the end, the
regions have one great power and it's the ballot box. People vote for
jobs, income and policy that backs them in.

(4) Economist: Working Class are voting Conservative, while inner-city
are voting Progressive

https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/05/18/a-conservative-government-is-returned-to-power-in-australia

Elections down under

A conservative government is returned to power in Australia The
unexpected result highlights profound ideological divisions

May 18th 2019 | SYDNEY

A CHANGE OF government had seemed almost guaranteed. The right-leaning
Liberal Party, and their smaller coalition partners, the Nationals, had
been in power for six tumultuous years. Ever since the previous
election, three years ago, they had trailed the Labor Party in the
opinion polls. The opposition’s private tallies had left it almost
certain of victory. But the results of the election on May 18th have
surprised everyone: the conservatives have been returned for a third
term in office. [...]

The government has veered hard to the right under Mr Morrison. He
promised little beyond more jobs, lower income taxes and a continuation
of Australia’s 28 years of economic growth. Perhaps more importantly, he
whipped up fear about the economic consequences of Labor’s plans to cut
greenhouse-gas emissions and to close tax loopholes for the rich.

This seems to have won the coalition favour in Queensland, a state with
a population scarcely bigger than that of Sydney or Melbourne, but with
disproportionate influence on politics as Australia’s main swing state.
It is home to most of Australia’s coal mines, which leaves many locals
wary of environmental regulation. Labor had hoped to win some marginal
seats in the state. Instead, voters turned out in even greater force for
the Liberals than they had at the previous federal election.

The Liberals won several marginal seats in Queensland from Labor, helped
by votes funnelled from smaller nativist parties under Australia’s
system of preferential voting. The hardline immigration minister, Peter
Dutton, who initiated the coup against Mr Turnbull last year, had feared
being ejected from parliament. In the end he retained his seat with a
bigger margin.

It may have helped that the conservatives supported a controversial
plans for a big new coal mine owned by an Indian conglomerate, Adani.
Labor had hummed and hawed about its future, and pledged to generate
more of Australia’s electricity from renewable sources. The party had
hoped such green stances would help it win seats in Victoria, a far more
progressive state. It had won a state election there last year in a
landslide. But in this election, Victorians only swung two percentage
points in Labor’s direction. In the end, no seats in that state seem to
have changed hands. [...]

The Liberals suffered only one major upset: in Sydney’s wealthy northern
beaches, Tony Abbott, a former Liberal prime minister and the leader of
the party’s right wing, was ejected from parliament after 25 years. He
once called climate change "crap" and pushed for Australia to quit the
Paris Agreement, which aims to reduce global emissions. That left him
out of step with his more environmentally minded constituents, who voted
in an independent candidate, Zali Steggall, with a monumental swing of
more than 12%.

A change is taking place in Australian politics, Mr Abbott surmised,
that will seem familiar to Americans. The Liberals increasingly
represent the working classes, while wealthier, city-dwelling
conservatives are turning to more progressive politicians.

(5) ALP pushed Gender, Trans & Hate Laws; promised to curtail religious
freedoms

https://www.spectator.com.au/2019/05/ten-reasons-labor-lost-the-unlosable-election/

Ten reasons Labor lost the unlosable election Mark Powell

Mark Powell

19 May 2019 9:09 PM

Well, he did it. Bill Shorten snatched defeat right out of the jaws of
victory. [...]

- To gain power Labor had to win big in Queensland. Jobs are key in
Queensland and Adani’s Carmichael Coal mine will guarantee work. Labor
knew it, but couldn’t negotiate its environmental agenda, while backing
the multi-million-dollar resource project.However, the swing against
them was massive due largely to the climate change alarmism promulgated
by The Greens against the Adani mine. Even the ABC was forced to concede:

When Bob Brown’s anti-Adani convoy rolled through the Sunshine State
demanding voters shun coal, he hammered a nail in Bill Shorten’s
electoral coffin.

- Israel Folau and ‘freedom of speech’. The elephant in the room
throughout the entire election campaign was the saga involving Israel
Folau and Rugby Australia. All of a sudden the issues of freedom of
speech and freedom of religion were brought to the fore. Up until
recently Labor had been riding the high moral ground of championing
everything LGBTIQ. But with Folau’s trial and termination came the
public realisation that ‘tolerance’ had morphed into denouncing any
other opinion.

- Religious Freedom. Following on from the previous point, many private
schools took the extraordinary step of urging parents not to vote Labor
as it would strip them of their right to employ staff who shared their
ethos. This was because Labor’s legal affairs spokesman, Mark Dreyfus,
said that:

A Shorten government would remove key legal protections for religious
freedoms, fuelling concerns schools will find it more difficult to
insist teachers agree to uphold their core values.

The Gender Commission. Dr David van Gend outlined the implications for
parents in regards to Labor’s transgender policy brilliantly here in The
Spectator Australia. But he was obviously not alone. Kerri-Anne
Kennerley also unleashed an extraordinary attack on Labor’s plan to fund
a National Gender Centre. As Kennerley said:

These kids out there who are gender confused, and there’s a percentage
of people out there gender confused, they will put up this Commission
and we, like Tasmania, will have a child and it won’t be male or female,
it will be gender-free. That’ll be national…

And if your child is confused, the rights of your child will go to them,
you will have no rights as a parent. That child will go, ‘I want to be
either a boy or girl, please give me whatever I need’ and you as a
parent will have no choice."

Tanya Plibersek’s aggressive policy of extending abortion. While the
subject of abortion may have been viewed as too ‘controversial’ and
‘divisive’ for the Coalition to tackle, for many conservative religious
voters such as myself, this was the real deal breaker. Especially when
the deputy leader, Tanya Plibersek, promised that if Labor won the
election then they would offer free abortions in all public hospitals. [...]

In scenes, reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s defeat at the hands of
Trump, many leftist progressives had a complete emotional meltdown. [...]

(6) Labor promised a National Gender Centre and a Sexual Orientation
Commissioner

https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/morning-shows/federal-election-2019-kerrianne-kennerleys-huge-call-bill-shorten-will-end-life-as-we-know-it/news-story/86508c8610f70bdad6b596b179b76ac7

Federal election 2019: Kerri-Anne Kennerley’s huge call — Bill Shorten
will ‘end life as we know it’

Television star Kerri-Anne Kennerley has unleashed on Bill Shorten,
declaring that "life as we know it will be over" if Labor wins the election.

Television star Kerri-Anne Kennerley has launched a ferocious attack on
Bill Shorten, making the fairly significant call that he would spark an
"end to life as we know it" if he wins. [...]

But she reserved her most pointed attack for Labor’s plan to establish a
National Gender Centre.

"One thing I’m seriously outraged about, the millions and millions
they’ll spend on a Gender Commission," Kennerley said.

"These kids out there who are gender confused, and there’s a percentage
of people out there gender confused, they will put up this Commission
and we, like Tasmania, will have a child and it won’t be male or female,
it will be gender-free. [...]ased on any of the policy detail released
by the Opposition.

Labor hasn’t released significant detail about the National Gender
Centre, including its cost, but it says the initiative would provide
support and advocacy for transgender people.

Labor would also appoint a Sexual Orientation Commissioner.

(7) Labor spokesman Mark Dreyfus said Christian schools would have to
employ Gay/Trans teachers
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/dreyfus-warns-schools-legal-protection-will-go/news-story/446b63e15592d8894e2c9d8ccd15ecfe

Dreyfus warns schools legal protection will go - The Australian

May 8, 2019 - Labor legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus has told
faith-based educators a Shorten government would remove key legal
protections for religious freedoms, fuelling concerns schools will find
it more difficult to insist teachers agree to uphold their core values.

Mr Dreyfus yesterday told Christian schools a Shorten government would
remove key legislative protections for religious freedoms — enshrined by
way of exemptions to the Sex Discrimination Act — around the employment
of teachers.

The letter from Mr Dreyfus has fanned concerns after Labor deputy leader
Tanya Plibersek last week signalled a willingness to support religious
schools to continue to employ staff that "faithfully represent their
values".

Christian Schools Australia national policy director Mark Spencer told
The Australian the letter from Mr Dreyfus made it "very clear" a Labor
government would remove exemptions in the SDA covering teachers and
students.

"If we remove the exemptions for staff it will fundamentally change the
character of our schools," he said.

"We’ve already established that removing the exemption around the
provision of education would effectively change what we could teach. Now
we are talking about potentially changing who can teach. If we lose the
exemptions without some other form of protection for religious freedom
then we would be unable to ensure teachers acted in accordance with our
values."

In his letter, Mr Dreyfus said Labor would ask the "ALRC (Australian Law
Reform Commission) to provide recommendations on how best to remove the
exemptions from discrimination against LGBTQI students and teachers
contained in commonwealth legislation as a priority".

Ms Plibersek last week provided an assurance it was possible to find a
balance "where we don’t discriminate against people because of who they
love or how they identify but that those people who are employees of an
organisation have to faithfully represent the values of that organisation".

In April, Attorney-General Christian Porter asked the ALRC to undertake
a "comprehensive review of the framework of religious exemptions in
anti-discrimination legislation across Australia".

The review was commissioned after the Coalition and Labor failed to
reach agreement on how to prevent schools from being able to
discriminate against LGBTQI students while also preserving the ability
of faith-based educators to uphold key values.

The government asked the ALRC to report its findings by April 2020. Mr
Dreyfus indicated a Labor government could speed up the review.

(8) Labor leader Bill Shorten promised Gender Fluidity in schools,
including private religious schools
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/05/cross-about-cross-dressing/

Cross about cross-dressing?

Parents should be aware of what a Labor government has in store

David van Gend

18 May 2019 9:00 AM

Where is the parental rage to protect our children from an ideologically
creepy Labor-Green government?

Mums and dads across the country look set to elect a party that has
vowed to impose the kooky notion of gender fluidity on all of our
children, even those seeking refuge in religious schools. Labor’s
notorious Safe Schools gender programme will be back on steroids – that
perverse initiative first funded by Labor’s former Finance Minister,
Penny Wong, whose associated material teaches children ‘it’s a total lie
that all guys have dicks and all girls have vaginas’ and instructs
schools how to proceed with gender transition even without the consent
of parents.

Labor’s Assistant Equality Minister-in-waiting, Louise Pratt, has
expressed her delight at the US initiative of drag queens (male
transvestites) visiting primary schools to give kids ‘glamorous,
positive, and unabashedly queer role models’.  Pratt enthuses, ‘Drag
Queen Story Time is a wonderful idea that celebrates diversity.’ And
Pratt is well placed as a literary critic, since according to Star
Observer, the Senator is ‘an out lesbian (whose) longtime ex-partner is
a trans man and activist working in the WA community.’ To diversify
further, they co-parent their child with another Labor politician and
his male partner, ‘one of whom is the biological father’.

Vote Labor, mums and dads, and you will get a Minister for Equality who
really walks the walk, who knows that moral instruction in gender
fluidity and sexual diversity must start at home – and must then be
imposed on every single child in every classroom in the land. There,
four-year-olds will be read the Australian classic, The Gender Fairy,
which tells wide-eyed kiddies, ‘Only you know whether you are a boy or a
girl. No one can tell you.’

Are you getting angry yet, dear parents?

Labor’s Attorney-General-in-waiting, Mark Dreyfus, has issued terms of
surrender for religious schools. He has warned in writing that they will
lose their present liberty to discriminate between employing teachers
who uphold Christian doctrine on marriage, sexual behaviour and gender,
and teachers who prefer to uphold LGBT doctrine. Thereby decreeing that
Christian schools can no longer be Christian.

Labor’s Health Minister-in-waiting, Catherine King, will make it a
‘personal priority’ to outlaw attempts by doctors or counselors to help
gender-confused children get comfortable again with their true sex.

She smears this as ‘conversion therapy’ and her ideological ban would
prohibit psychotherapy that explores the cause of a child’s gender
confusion. Of many relevant causes in the medical literature, one is
where emotionally-disturbed parents persistently cross-dress their
child, which messes mightily with the child’s gender self-image.

Evidence, you say? Professor of paediatrics at the University of Western
Sydney, John Whitehall, recently reviewed  a raft of published studies
showing how gender confusion in children has been treated successfully
with psychotherapy, and he focused on a landmark study by Kosky from
Western Australia.

Dr Robert Kosky was Western Australia’s State Director of Child and
Adolescent Psychiatry Services and published in the Medical Journal of
Australia in 1987 on ‘Gender-disordered children: does inpatient
treatment help?’.

Kosky found that ‘the essential disturbance in these cases was the
inability of the parent of the opposite sex to accept the child, except
on the conditional basis that the child met certain of their needs.’

The troubled parent would only accept the child when it was
cross-dressed into the gender that the parent could relate to – usually
a mother dressing a boy as a girl. This typically started around two
years of age when the parent ‘with delight, found that, when the child
was dressed in clothes of the opposite sex, play together was fun… when
the child adopted these behaviours, the parent changed from a cold
mechanical interaction with the child to warmth and affection.’ Later,
under the influence of this powerful parental reinforcement, ‘the child
cross-dressed on his or her own’.

That, ladies and gentleman, is a plausible psychodynamic cause of a
child’s disturbed gender identity. But under Labor, child psychiatrists
like Kosky would be forbidden to uncover any such cause! Ask no
questions, just give the kid hormones and, in due course, castrate them.

That is medical madness.

Consider the case of Walt Heyer, a quietly-spoken elderly gentleman whom
I met in the USA. For many years Walt passed himself off as a woman
before regretting that move and reverting, as best one can with a
surgically-damaged body, to his natural male sex.

What led Walt to want to be a woman? He explains the strange form of
abuse that messed with a little boy’s sense of self:

My mom and dad didn’t have any idea that when they dropped their son off
for a weekend at Grandma’s that she was dressing their boy in girls’
clothes. Grandma told me it was our little secret. My grandmother
withheld affirmations of me as a boy, but she lavished delighted praise
upon me when I was dressed as a girl. Feelings of euphoria swept over me
with her praise, followed later by depression and insecurity about being
a boy. Her actions planted the idea in me that I was born in the wrong
body. She nourished and encouraged the idea, and over time it took on a
life of its own.

Back in Western Australia, treatment for the confused cross-dressed kids
involved in-patient psychotherapy while still attending the local
school. Dr Kosky reports that ‘no conscious attempt was made by the
staff members to encourage masculine or feminine behaviours’ but with
the programme of counselling and family insight therapy, cross-dressing
quickly ceased and improvement in mood was noted.

So the kids were gender-confused; the doctor uncovered the pathological
cause and treated it; the kids got better. That is the medical model
which will be banned by this ignorant, ideologically-rigid Labor party
if it wins government, so fatally beholden to Rainbow Labor and its
gender-fluidity fundamentalism.

Let’s hope that enough enraged parents come to the defence of their
children on election day. Fingers crossed.

(9) Wealthier areas voted Labor, despite its plan to tax the rich;
showing that Culture War determined outcome

https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/we-have-two-australias-election-results-show-a-growing-divide-within-the-nation-20190524-p51qu8.html

'We have two Australias': Election results show a growing divide within
the nation

The pollsters and the punters said it would be Bill Shorten’s election
night.

However it was Scott Morrison who delivered the victory speech. [...]

"We have two Australias," says regional economist Terry Rawnsley. "One
which has benefited from a generation of economic change including
deregulation, reduced trade barriers, technological change and
globalisation is in the inner cities. Then we have another Australia
which has struggled with these changes, including the loss of
manufacturing jobs, increased job insecurity, little growth in wealth."
[...]

Even so, voting trends exposed some deep political fault lines.

One runs though Australia’s capital cities, home to two-thirds of the
population. Inner-metropolitan areas, which have experienced strong
economic conditions over the past five years generally swung to Labor,
or in some cases, the Greens.

But the Coalition polled well in outer suburbs and most regional areas.

In Sydney and Melbourne there were striking swings against the Liberals
in the party's traditional strongholds. The defeat of former prime
minister Tony Abbott, at the hands of independent Zali Steggall, in the
harbour-side seat of Warringah was emblematic of the trend. ...

In Melbourne there were notable swings to Labor and the Greens in the
Liberal bastions of Kooyong, Higgins and Goldstein. But the party
comfortably held the outer urban seats of Casey, Deakin and Flinders
foiling Labor hopes of strong gains in Victoria. Inner-Brisbane also saw
swings to Labor but, again, the Coalition was dominant in the outer
suburbs and picked up seat of Longman on the city’s northern fringe.

The Coalition also performed especially well in the "mining seats" on
Queensland’s north coast where there is widespread concern about jobs
security.

Analysis of two-party preferred swings across all 151 electorates by
associate professor Ben Phillips, director of the Australian National
University’s Centre for Economic Policy Research, revealed a strong
correlation between blue-collar workers and a swing to the Coalition,
particularly in Queensland.

Overall, voters in areas with lower incomes and lower levels of
education were most likely to shift to the Coalition, even though they
stood to benefit from many of the redistribution polices put forward by
Labor, including increased spending on health, education and childcare.

However, in areas with a high proportion of voters earning more than
$100,000 a year and among those holding a bachelor’s degree, the swing
went against the Coalition.

"We found the higher educated and higher income groups did shift to
Labor, as was expected prior to the election, but the working class
didn’t seem to follow them," says Phillips.

He also found a strong correlation between regions with a high
proportion of Christians and a swing to the Coalition.

Regional economist Terry Rawnsley says perceptions about economic
security were crucial to the election result. [...]

Rawnsley’s research shows economic growth in regional Australia has been
much slower in the decade since the 2008 global financial crisis than
during the decade before it. Growth in Australia’s regions has also
lagged Australia’s big cities, especially Sydney and Melbourne. Many
big, globally integrated cities across the world are becoming less
connected to their hinterlands.

The election results suggest the economic and political interests of
inner-urban Australia are diverging from other parts of the country. [...]

Bowe says many regional voters are hostile towards political concerns
expressed by those in the "globally connected knowledge economies" of
the big cities.

"That is the story of the US presidential election and it’s the story of
Brexit," he says. "This is cutting across the traditional cleavages of
class-based party voting." [...]

(10) A Populist revolt stuns the Elite
https://www.city-journal.org/lnp-morrison-victory

Australian Politics, Upside-Down

A populist revolt stuns Canberra, and elites respond predictably.

Emmett Hare

May 20, 2019

The Liberal/National Party’s election victory in Australia on May 18 was
the latest electoral result to shock the punditry. Like Brexit and
Donald Trump, it was a conservative victory that few expected. Voters in
Queensland, Australia’s agricultural and industrial power center, turned
to the LNP in support of the proposed Carmichael coal mine that would
provide up to 5,000 jobs to the local economy—but which the Labor Party
and Green Party opposed. Labor’s supposedly unlosable "climate change
election" proved a debacle, as exit polls predicting that the party
would gain up to 18 seats turned out to be wildly inaccurate. With
postal votes and some others still to be counted, the LNP was poised to
pick up three seats and win an outright majority in the 150-seat House
of Representatives.

As they did in Britain and America in 2016, elites have cast the result
as a failure of conservative voters to understand what’s good for them.
LNP coalition voters were "angry," and Prime Minister Scott Morrison
used "scaremongering" to exploit the rubes (though Labor’s apocalyptic
language about the urgency of reducing carbon emissions was frightening
in its own right). The result has revealed that disappointed Labor
supporters are plenty angry themselves ("RIP Australia" is trending on
Twitter), though much of their anger is directed at Queensland voters.

Queensland locals did not take kindly to a former Green Party leader’s
400-person, 1,700-mile motor convoy from Hobart, Tasmania to the
Clarmont in Queensland’s Galilee Basin to protest the new coal mine,
also known as the Adani mine for the Indian company that will develop
it. Some local businesses closed their doors to the "Stop Adani"
caravan, and activists reported threats and hostility from locals
supportive of the project. The showdown became a proxy for a larger
battle between the major parties, as Labor put global warming and
emissions reduction at the forefront of an ambitious policy agenda.

By contrast, the LNP coalition supports the Adani project, though the
party made few other promises beyond maintaining the economic status
quo—a rational approach, given that Australia has not endured a
recession since 1991. The LNP proposed a 10-year tax-cut plan and
assistance to new homebuyers, appealing to older- and middle
class-voters. Like Trump, Morrison positioned himself as a populist,
campaigning against Australia’s political class in Canberra.

Social media exploded when the outcome of the vote became certain. Some
Australians abroad vowed not to come home; some who voted in support of
Australia’s version of a Green New Deal proclaimed that their sympathy
for farmers enduring severe drought, or for those living in economically
depressed areas of Queensland, had run out. Cattlemen who lived through
Australia’s repeated, severe droughts apparently did not grasp, as
Melbourne artists did, that only by voting Labor could they save
themselves from dry seasons and severe weather. Likewise, aspiring coal
workers in the Galilee Basin who supported the Adani project clearly
failed to understand that, by voting for the LNP, they were effectively
supporting the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott noted the realignment of the nation’s
voters in analyzing the loss of his own seat in the Warringah area of
Sydney. He cited the popularity of the Labor Party’s far Left and of the
Greens in high-income areas, and the corresponding rejection of the
Labor Party by voters in less well-off districts. Some former Labor
supporters say that the party now represents an alliance of the affluent
and hipster anti-capitalists; both factions despise the party’s
working-class base.

The political realignment is familiar to observers of the Brexit vote
and the 2016 American presidential election. The losers, again, will
have to accept that persuasion is made more difficult by insisting that
anyone who disagrees with them is stupid or immoral. Voters clearly
rejected Labor’s our-way-or-the-highway environmental austerity. In
Australia, finding common ground on these issues shouldn’t be so
difficult: the Liberal-National coalition is openminded about renewable
energy and has staked out moderate positions. In drought-stricken areas
of Queensland, farmers have been innovative in water conservation and
environmental stewardship. The way forward for Labor is to dispense with
the vitriol and make a genuine effort to reach out to voters who chose
economic stability over progressive extremism.

Emmett Hare is a political consultant in Brooklyn.

(11) Aussie revolt against 'Social Justice': Voters reject authoritarian
politics of 'Progressives'

https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/05/20/the-aussie-revolt-against-social-justice/

The Aussie revolt against ‘social justice’

Voters have turned their backs on the authoritarian politics of
so-called progressives.

NICK CATER

20th May 2019

Australia’s re-elected conservative prime minister Scott Morrison began
his victory speech on Saturday night by rubbing salt into wounds. ‘How
good is Australia?’, he declared, evoking a deafening cheer from his
punch-drunk supporters packed shoulder to shoulder in the ballroom of
the Sydney Sofitel. ‘How good are Australians? This is the best country
in the world in which to live.’

Pride in one’s country, like faith in God, was once an unremarkable
sentiment for a prime minister to express. Yet in this election, to make
a patriotic statement was to venture into fiercely contested territory.

For Morrison’s progressive Labor opponent, Bill Shorten, Australia is
perhaps a slightly better country than it might have been had it not
been for the brave crusades of earlier social-justice campaigners. But
Australia’s supposed national indifference to the environment,
inequality, discrimination and its lingering colonial stain makes it an
embarrassment in the eyes of the world, in Labor’s view.

Labor’s policies, designed to restore Australia’s virtue, are peppered
through a policy document that runs to 309 pages. Labor would hold a
referendum to become a republic and rid ourselves of the embarrassment
of a colonial queen. Centuries of racial exclusion would be ended by
guaranteeing one race – indigenous Australians – seats in parliament.

The failings of Australia’s so-called non-discriminatory immigration
policy would be fixed by discriminating between LGBTI asylum seekers and
the boringly straight. Refugee status would be automatically granted to
those whose stated sexual preference was illegal in their home country
with or without evidence of actual sexual activity or actual persecution.

Australia’s biggest export, coal, was blackening our reputation and the
size of Australia’s carbon footprint was a national disgrace. Labor
would set an emissions target three times more onerous than that
required by the Paris Agreement, but could not say how much it would cost.

Australia’s highly progressive tax system wasn’t progressive enough.
Labor would embark on a massive redistribution programme to address
intergenerational equality and other socioeconomic injustices.

At its core, Saturday’s election was a contest between two tribes. One
consists of those who identify themselves principally by the place in
which they live and shared social values. The other defines itself by
its allegiance to international causes and the presumption that the
global educated class knows better than the rest.

Morrison represented the Somewheres, as David Goodhart christened them,
while Shorten was the Anywhere man, harvesting grievances, no matter how
small, and turning them into monumental issues of social injustice that
made us an outlier in a progressive-minded world community.

Support for Shorten’s platform bordered on the fanatical among the
university-educated professionals whose influence appears to grow deeper
at every election. For doctors, teachers, academics and other
professionals who rely wholly or in part on government largesse for
their income, the new progressive dawn heralded by Shorten couldn’t come
soon enough.

The renewable-energy sector feared the return of a conservative
government pledged to end the subsidies which made up most, if not all,
of its profits. Shorten’s 50 per cent renewable-energy target would
provide its meal ticket for a decade at least. Labor’s plan to adopt a
Norwegian-style electric-vehicle plan opened up new avenues of
rent-seeking, each one lined with charging stations paid for at the
taxpayer’s expense.

There was widespread acclaim in the media of course, particularly by the
public broadcasters who are ipso-facto members of the rent-seeking
class. The ABC’s claims of impartiality were undermined by its
supporters, the Friends of the ABC, who manned polling stations with
printed instructions to voters to put the conservative barbarians last
on their numbered preferential voting paper.

The misty-eyed delusion that Labor would win on Saturday night spared
almost no one in polite society. Pollsters came to assume that
respondents were telling them the truth and that those who refused their
calls were a representative cross-section of the population, rather than
world-weary outsiders who had come to assume their views would be
ignored and couldn’t be faffed to play the insiders’ game.

Betting companies fell for the delusion, too, assuming that the big
money placed on a Labor victory was a guide to a wider sentiment. A week
from the election, Morrison was the 7-1 outsider. Two days before the
election, SportsBet paid out on a Labor win.

The script for election night would be familiar to those who followed
the Brexit referendum count or the US presidential election. It began
with confident, smiling faces on ABC TV. Early results from election
booths were discounted as outliers. But as the percentage of votes
counted rose and the trend continued, their faces began to tighten and
the silences grew longer.

The resident psephologist began grumbling about glitches in the
Australian Electoral Commission’s computer. The air was visibly sucked
out of the wrinkled face of Barrie Cassidy, a senior ABC political
presenter and former adviser to Labor prime minister Bob Hawke. By the
end of the night, he was as expressionless as a punctured football.

The results unleashed a torrent of self-righteous and self-pitying
national self-loathing. ‘It’s not Morrison, it’s not the Liberals, it’s
not the policies, it’s not Queensland, it’s not Dutton. It’s the country
that’s rotten’, wrote Guardian Australia columnist Brigid Delaney,
summarising the feeling of the people in the room at what was supposed
to be Labor’s election night party: ‘The fact that their vision for
Australia’s future was not affirmed made them feel estranged and
alienated from their own country.’

Grief gave way to anger on Twitter. ‘F*** you Australia’, wrote Harry on
the Left Side. ‘We had a great opportunity to build a just, fair,
progressive, environmentally responsible, clean-energy powerhouse of a
nation and once again you squandered it… Don’t complain I no longer
care.’ Captain Fluffula added: ‘Jesus f***ing Christ, I am so angry and
sad, what a f***ing shitty country we are since Howard.’

Avril, whose handle is decorated with flags from multiple nations,
wrote: ‘So, Australia wasn’t immune from the f***witterry that brought
the world Trump and Brexit.’ Grug, Karen, Jackson, Bitchy Single Person
and countless others were on a unity ticket, each one ashamed, very
ashamed or deeply deeply ashamed to be an Australian on Saturday night.
Van Badham consoled herself. ‘At least I go to bed knowing that I did
everything I could.’

The morning light offered little clarity to those whose entire worldview
had been repudiated in the space of a few hours. ‘I held my son this
morning and said, "You are the most precious thing in the world to me"’,
wrote Clementine Ford. ‘"Bird", he replied.’

Crushing as the defeat was, the Anywheres will inevitably recover, and
return to prosecute the case for progressive change towards an elusive
utopia. Once again they will be disappointed by the apparent
indifference of the Australian middle class, the largest and wealthiest
of any nation in the world, which repeatedly shows a preference for
prime ministers who like the place pretty much as it is, flatly
egalitarian, in which it is perfectly fine to be better off than your
neighbour, but never to assume you are better than them.

It is a place where the economy has ticked over for almost 28 years
without a recession, immigrants succeed, the late autumnal sun shines on
election day, and everyday Australians get on with the business of
nurturing a family and striving to achieve a comfortable, stable and
independent life a cut above the average in the best bloody country on
Earth.

Nick Cater is executive director of the Menzies Research Centre and a
columnist for the Australian.

(12) The rise of the blue-collar patriots - Brexit, Trump and Australian
revolts

https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/05/22/the-rise-of-the-blue-collar-patriots/

The rise of the blue-collar patriots

What the Brexit, Trump and Australian revolts share in common.

RAKIB EHSAN

22nd May 2019

The political shocks keep on coming.

The political rise of Donald Trump to the office of the US presidency
sent shockwaves throughout the Western world, as did the UK’s decision
to leave the EU in June 2016. These were political earthquakes in their
own right. And the National-Liberal coalition’s surprise victory in the
Australian federal election this week has quite rightly been labelled by
the country’s prime minister Scott Morrison as ‘a miracle’.

For the opposition Australian Labor Party, this was an ‘unlosable’
election. They were consistently ahead in the polls and were widely
expected to end their six years in opposition.

There are striking parallels to be drawn between these seismic political
events.

All three events, completely unexpected by the swathe of metropolitan
sophisticates in the spheres of politics, media and research, have what
I call ‘blue-collar patriots’ at their core.

In Western liberal democracies such as the UK, US and Australia,
blue-collar patriots have traditionally pledged their support to
established parties of the left. These are patriotic people who have a
deep love for nation and family, as well as a strong sense of community.
And they are traditional working-class folk who live in industrial and
rural regions, which have not fared so well under the rampant market
forces of globalisation. Socially conservative, they are disconnected
from the generally relaxed attitudes of the metropolitan political
classes towards immigration and their celebration of ‘multiculturalism’.

The response of metropolitan ‘progressives’ to these shock results
speaks volumes, and highlights a broader crisis of social democracy. The
revolts in Britain, America and Australia should have prompted mature
calls for a period of serious introspection. Instead, blue-collar
patriots who voted for Brexit, Trump and Morrison have been crudely
labelled ‘racist’, ‘thick’, ‘xenophobic’ and ‘bigoted’ – depicted as
frustrated simpletons who were acting on nothing more than their
irrational jingoistic impulses.

In the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election, Democratic Party
candidate Hilary Clinton – the epitome of an establishment metropolitan
sophisticate – slated supporters of The Donald as a ‘basket of
deplorables’. In an act of sheer arrogance and complacency, Clinton was
the first Democratic nominee not to visit Wisconsin since 1972 – and
became the first one to lose the Midwestern state to the Republicans
since Ronald Reagan’s electoral mauling of Walter Mondale in 1984. With
his ‘America First’ message of trade protectionism and job creation,
Trump breached the Democratic Party’s supposedly impenetrable ‘Midwest
firewall’ in spectacular fashion – carrying the states of Pennsylvania,
Michigan, Iowa and Ohio (as well as Wisconsin) in the process.

The policy agenda of the Australian Labor Party under Bill Shorten’s
leadership was ultimately defined by its ‘climate-emergency radicalism’.
The Liberal National Party (LNP) of Queensland (where the coalition
partners are consolidated into one party), capitalised on Labor’s
confused stance on a proposed Adani coal-mining project in Queensland.
Feeding into a broader sentiment that Labor was not prioritising the
interests of its working-class base, the party suffered disastrous
results in the ‘Sunshine State’. This included a huge swing away from
Labor in the industrial and agricultural hub of Rockhampton, and the
loss of thousands of votes in Mackay in the eastern coastal part of the
state. Affectionately known as the ‘sugar capital’ of Australia, Mackay
was a longstanding Labor stronghold.

It is also important to note that the nationalist-populist One Nation
Party, founded and led by Pauline Hanson, polled 17 per cent in
Rockhampton’s electoral division of Capricornia, as well as winning 13
per cent of the popular vote in Mackay’s electoral division of Dawson –
with traditional Labor voters shifting to One Nation in large numbers.

Then we have the British Labour Party. After winning back a shedload of
working-class voters from UKIP in the 2017 General Election, it is
running the risk of being humiliated in its Leave-voting heartlands
tomorrow when the UK votes in the European Parliament elections.
Labour’s embarrassing fudging of Brexit, along with its putting up of
Remainiac MEP candidates like Lord Adonis, reflects a fundamental
disregard for many of its own traditional working-class Leave voters
across northern England and the provincial Midlands.

Blue-collar patriots are held in contempt by the political establishment
and even seen by many within their natural parties as an inconvenience.
And so they have no choice but to adopt a more ‘flexible’ approach to
elections. Tribal loyalties, which saw traditional working-class voters
repeatedly pledge their support to established parties of the left, are
fraying. Their tolerance for not only being unheard, but also ridiculed
by ‘representatives’ of parties they traditionally supported, is
understandably wearing thin.

The British Labour Party can never win a functioning parliamentary
majority without the support of its industrial heartlands in northern
England and the provincial Midlands. The Democrats cannot regain control
of the White House without the industrial Midwest. And to end its spell
in opposition, Labor must reconnect with regional Australia and rebuild
working-class support in its former Queensland heartlands.

Whether it is the UK, US or Oz, the picture is clear: without
cultivating strong support among blue-collar patriots, parties of the
left will struggle at the ballot box – an uncomfortable truth for the
chattering-class cosmopolitan elites of Islington, Manhattan and Canberra.

Critiquing the inequalities reproduced by market capitalism, and
promising a fairer economic model, is not going to be a magic bullet
when it comes to restoring strong ties between blue-collar patriots and
parties of the left. Their socially conservative nature – patriotic,
family-oriented, community-spirited – must be better appreciated, and
certainly not subject to the level of abuse and ridicule that has been
displayed in recent times.

Post-materialist over-indulgence and an unhealthy obsession with
identity politics is costing the political left dear across the West.
Blue-collar patriots, who have demonstrated astonishing party loyalty
over the generations, have had enough.

Dr Rakib Ehsan is a spiked columnist and a research fellow at the Henry
Jackson Society. Follow him on twitter: @rakibehsan

Morrison's Donald Trump-like election victory. Biggest swings towards
ALP in electorates with highest level of franking credits = share ownership

(13) It's not that Queensland changed; rather, it's the ALP which has
changed
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-22/quexit-is-not-the-answer-to-labors-loss-in-queensland/11139408

To all those #Quexiteers: don't judge, try to understand us and the
federal election result

The Conversation

By Anne Tiernan, Jacob Deem and Jennifer Menzies

"What the hell is wrong with Queensland?"

Such comments are at the polite end of social media responses from
progressive voters in other parts of Australia who were disappointed by
the Coalition's "miracle" win on Saturday.

Putting to one side the fact that the swings against Labor were not much
bigger in Queensland than some other parts of the country, and that it
had the most marginal seats in the election, the instinct to blame and
deride Queensland highlights exactly what went wrong for the ALP. [...]

As the only state where a majority of the population lives outside the
capital city, regionalism matters in Queensland in a way it does not
elsewhere.

Why Queensland is different

Settlement patterns in Queensland did not mirror other states. Regional
towns and cities developed as service centres and ports for the
hinterland industries, among them beef, gold, sugar, coal and gas.

The first railways in the 1860s ran from the ports in coastal towns to
these inland production centres, creating an interdependence not
replicated in other parts of the country.

Queensland's regions, therefore, developed as separate economic
entities, with limited connection to the rest of Queensland (including
the capital Brisbane), or indeed Australia.

This geography also informs the way people have historically voted. Any
threat to the economic viability of hinterland industries had a spill
over effect on the regional towns that serviced them.

As regions reliant on export industries, they have been highly
susceptible to cycles of boom and bust. Many are still suffering high
unemployment and depressed housing prices following a slowdown in mining
and the end of the LNG construction boom in and around Gladstone.
Frequent natural disasters have compounded their difficulties.

As a result, Queensland governments have had to be highly responsive to
the interests and fears of diverse communities.

The national focus of federal politics, however, is less conducive to
understanding the differences between, say, Cairns and Clermont,
Caboolture and Charleville. This hurt both Labor and the Coalition in
the recent federal election, as evidenced by the rise in first
preferences to minor parties like One Nation and the United Australia Party.

Labor suffered more, though, due to its policy-rich campaign platform
focused mainly on metropolitan, first-time home buyers and
environmentalists. This did not signal to regional Australians,
particularly those in Queensland, that their concerns had been heard.
[...] workers.

It may be that working Queenslanders no longer see their lives or
aspirations reflected in the federal Labor Party and its leadership.

The pathway that Andrew Fisher and Ben Chifley took, for example, from
engine driver to prime minister has gone the way of the poisoned Tree of
Knowledge.

Labor is now dominated by professional political operatives drawn from
the knowledge and professional classes — the group Bill Shorten personified.

When workers couldn't see their concerns and fears reflected in Labor
policies, they parked their vote with the permanent voices of
disaffection — Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer. And in the federal
election those parties' preferences flowed strongly to the LNP. [...]

An index of prosperity and distress in Australian localities developed
by the Centre of Full Employment and Equity identifies the seats of
Hinkler, Wide Bay, Kennedy, Maranoa, Flynn and Capricornia in Queensland
among the most economically distressed in the nation. Dawson, Blair,
Longman, Herbert and Rankin are classified as "high risk".

Another index developed by Griffith University researchers identifies
Gladstone, Logan (encompassing the marginal seat of Forde retained by
the LNP) and Far North Queensland as "hotspots" of energy poverty,
meaning they lack access to affordable energy services.

The prevailing discourse in Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne that this was
the "climate change" election obscured the role that economic insecurity
and disadvantage might have played in shifting votes to One Nation and
United Australia, which flowed as preferences to the Coalition. [...]

(14) Australian Labor Party (ALP) Platform 2018 - The word 'Gender'
occurs 148 times
The ALP policy document for the 2019 federal election was the National
Platform 2018:
https://www.alp.org.au/media/1539/2018_alp_national_platform_constitution.pdf

In this 310-page document,
The word 'Gender' occurs 148 times
LGBTIQ, 38 times
LGBTI, 7 times
Intersex, 55 times
Transgender, 35 times
Gender Diverse, 4 times
Inclusive, 42 times
hate, 2 times,
Racist, 2 times
Racism, 7 times
Intolerance, 1 time

12. All students should be educated in an environment free from bullying
and harassment, including racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and
ableist bullying and harassment. The right to education includes the
right for students to participate in school life as they identify in
sexuality, gender identity or varying sex characteristics.

40. Labor will combat racism and respond to expressions of intolerance
and discrimination with strength and, where necessary, the full force of
the law.

60. Schools must be safe environments for students to learn and for
teachers to teach - including same sex attracted, intersex and gender
diverse students and teachers. Labor will continue working with
teachers, students and schools to stop bullying and discrimination,
ensuring a safe place for LGBTI students to learn by properly resourcing
inclusion and anti-bullying programs and resources for teachers. Labor
will continue to support national programs to address homophobia,
biphobia, transphobia and anti -intersex prejudice in schools. This
includes ensuring gender diverse students are able to express the gender
they identify with.

63. Parents have a right to choose non-government schooling.
Non-government schools should be supported by public funding that
reflects need and is consistent with a diverse and inclusive society.

74. Labor acknowledges the right of all Australians, including
transgender and gender diverse people, to live their gender identity.
For many, this includes accessing specialist health services and for
some people can involve gender affirming medical technologies. Cost
should not be a barrier to accessing these services. Labor commits to
removing, wherever possible, barriers to accessing these services and
consulting with experts in government. This should materialise in a
focus on creating fair, equal and affordable access to medical care and
treatments relevant to trans and gender diverse Australians.

188. o The impact of gender inequality is compounded for women
experiencing intersecting disadvantage and discrimination, including
First Australians, culturally and linguistically diverse women, women
with a disability, rural and regional women, lesbians, bisexual women,
transgender and gender-diverse or intersex people.

189. Achieving gender equality will require enduring commitment from
government, working in partnership with business and the community to
close the gender pay gap, reduce violence against women, reach equal
representation in leadership and improve health and wellbeing.

189. Achieving gender equality will require enduring commitment from
government, working in partnership with business and the community to
close the gender pay gap, reduce violence against women, reach equal
representation in leadership and improve health and wellbeing.

307. o The assessment and review of protection claims of specific
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer asylum seekers
will be underpinned by appropriate and relevant assessment tools and
processes that reflect cultural experiences of the lesbian, gay,
bisexual,transgender, intersex and queer community;

319. In assessing asylum claims where the fear of persecution arises
from a person's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer
status, the fact that the country the person is fleeing has criminal
penalties for engaging in consensual homosexual sex is sufficient of
itself to establish that fear of persecution is well-founded, and any
assessment of the asylum seeker's identity and fear must take account of
the very different manifestations of lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, intersex and queer identity that other cultures, especially
ones profoundly hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex
and queer people, necessarily engender.

320. Labor will ensure asylum seekers who self-identify as lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer will be assessed by officers
who have expertise and empathy with anti-discrimination principles and
human rights law. Officers, translators and interpreters at all levels
of the assessment process will have specific lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, intersex and queer cultural awareness training to ensure
the discrimination asylum seekers face in their country of origin or
transit are not replicated.

330. Labor will take advice from the UNHCR in relation to any
arrangements with third countries to ensure resources and commitments
provide appropriate settlement support services to refugees, including
health and welfare services. Labor will prioritise establishing durable
and suitable third country resettlement agreements.

331. Labor will ensure there is a strong, independent voice within
government to advocate for the rights, interests and well-being of
children seeking asylum within the immigration system, including those
in immigration detention. Labor will appoint an officer independent of
the Department of Home Affairs, backed by the administrative resources
and statutory powers necessary to pursue the best interests of those
children, including the power to bring court proceedings on a child's
behalf. This will be done without reducing the Minister's obligations in
relation to unaccompanied non-citizen children.

347. Labor condemns sexual violence or derogatory behaviour towards
women, or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex Australians
and supports initiatives to eradicate such behaviour. Labor will ensure
all levels of sport in Australia are inclusive of Australians who are
lesbian, gay or bisexual, transgender or intersex and will:

o Work with all national sporting bodies to deliver gender and violence
education programs and challenging prejudice programs, covering
homophobia, biphobia and transphobia, for players, coaches, managers and
promoters across all sports and levels; and

o Require effective policies and practices to prevent discrimination on
the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status
(including women athletes with intersex variations), whether affecting
participants in sport or their families, or employees and volunteers in
the sector, including by making such action against discrimination a
condition of Commonwealth funding.

LGBTIQ place in a stronger democracy

81. Australia should be a society that embraces diversity. Labor will
support lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer
Australians and ensure they are safe, valued and respected.

82. The Yogyakarta Principles - including the 2015 amendments 'plus 10'
- application of International Human Rights Law in relation to sexual
orientation and gender identity, gender expression and sex
characteristics provide a substantial guide to government in
understanding Australia's human rights obligations to LGBTIQ Australians
and their families.

83. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer Australians
and their communities contribute much to Australian society.

84. Labor will work with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex
and queer Australians and representative groups to:

o Expand integrated advice and support services for lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer Australians, and ensure their
engagement in the policy development of government;

o Support lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer
Australians with particular needs, such as those who are young,
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, from culturally and
linguistically diverse backgrounds and those living in rural, regional
and remote Australia;

o Strengthen laws and expand programs against discrimination and
harassment on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, sex
characteristics and queer status; and

o Support and engage with communities and stakeholders to provide input
into government decision-making.

136. Australia's anti-vilification laws strike an appropriate balance
between the right to free speech and protection from the harm of hate
speech. Labor has successfully stood and will continue to stand with the
community against attempts to weaken the longstanding protections
against racial hate speech in the Racial Discrimination Act.

137. When prejudice against LGBTIQ people contributes to harassment by
the written or spoken word, such harassment causes actual harm, not
simple simply mere offence, to people who have suffered discrimination
and prejudice, and causes particular harm to young same-sex attracted,
genderquestioning or intersex people. Labor considers such harmful
harassment is an unacceptable abuse of the responsibilities that come
with freedom of speech and must be subject to effective sanctions. Labor
will ensure that anti-discrimination law provides such effective sanctions.