Anthony Albanese’s about-face to include a question about sexuality in the next census, while the right thing to do, has left the deputy prime minister and treasurer in an awkward position.
Just the other day, they were both there giving media interviews defending the cabinet’s decision to remove questions about sexuality from the 2026 census.
The pair’s reward for playing as a team and standing up for the cabinet collective was delivered on radio this morning by Albanese when he announced he was reversing the decision.
This is the same Prime Minister who goes around claiming to be a modern-day Bob Hawke, running a “cabinet-style government”.
So much so that he did not even return to the cabinet to discuss the reversal.
For a start, it was always an odd decision by the cabinet. The argument used by deputy prime minister Richard Marles and treasurer Jim Chalmers to defend it was that leaving sexuality out of the questionnaire would avoid a “divisive debate”.
As the country’s Labour-appointed Sex Discrimination Commissioner pointed out, that’s more than a little patronising.
“It’s really a little bit condescending and paternalistic to say that because of the potential harm to those communities we’re not going to include them at all,” said Dr. Anna Cody.
Wise words.
Anthony Albanese (pictured left) has reversed a cabinet decision that his deputy prime minister Richard Marles (pictured right) publicly defended the other day.
The Sex Discrimination Commissioner has criticised Treasurer Jim Chalmers (pictured) for his patronising arguments on LGBTQIA issues
He also pointed out that excluding the LGBTQIA+ community from the census was in itself damaging to that community. Not that Marles and Chalmers seemed able to understand that, as they continued their advocacy. A pair of black knights stumbling around, Monty Python style.
As always, it took political fear to bring Albanese to his senses and reverse his decision for “cabinet-style government”.
But the change was only partial, a point that appears to be lost as the debate continues.
The Prime Minister has only committed to listening to recommendations regarding a single question on sexuality asked by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, rather than the multiple questions the ABS wanted in the census to give it granular detail about the LGBTIQ community to help with future policymaking.
Of course, the main priority of the Albanian government is not the formulation of good policies, but politics. That is why Albo only partially backed down in an attempt to achieve a political result rather than a good policy result.
Here we go again: Albo trying to walk on both sides of the street at the same time.
The prime minister was concerned that supporting additional questions addressing the specifics of LGBTIQ sexual orientation could cost him votes in the overall system.
The Greens have been campaigning hard against the cabinet’s initial decision: a conga line of inner-city Labour MPs whose seats are under threat have suddenly found their voice on the issue.
John Burns was the first to voice his concerns, followed by Ged Kearney and Peter Khalil. They all hold seats that are under siege by the Greens.
Everyone will be waiting for Albo’s partial about-face to take this matter off the agenda.
It is no wonder that the Greens are gaining ground among left-leaning voters. The Labour Party seems to take their political and ideological concerns seriously only when there are electoral consequences at stake.
More often than not, the governing Labour Party leans the other way in an attempt to appeal to the centre, but on this occasion that first response has been replaced by an intervention of Captain Albo’s choosing.
Which begs the question: where was Senate Leader Penny Wong on this issue when the Cabinet debated it?
Wong is often strangely misplaced in credit for finally legislating same-sex marriage in Australia. In fact, for years he set aside his support for the LGBTIQ community to support the Labor Party in government that opposed same-sex marriage, which in turn supported his rise within it.
It took conservatives in power to put same-sex marriage to a referendum, which received overwhelming support from the community, leading to its legislative approval.
Who was the proponent of this ultimately successful route to achieving equal marriage rights? Peter Dutton, who championed this approach in Malcolm Turnbull’s cabinet in an attempt to put the issue to rest once and for all.