Moderate Liberals in Victoria have learned nothing. The state needs a Matt Kean
Once again, Victorian Liberals have failed the test of leadership. This week, the state’s opposition leader, Matthew Guy, promised to amend the Equal Opportunity Act to allow religious institutions to discriminate based on their faith. In practice, this will allow discrimination on the basis of gender and sexuality. The lack of resistance to the policy by anyone in the Victorian Liberal party is heartbreaking and politically isolates the LGBTQ+ community.
The approach sees the Coalition continue Scott Morrison’s tactic of using division as an electoral strategy, despite the fact his reward for this approach was a backbench seat and a legacy as the prime minister who lost the seat of Kooyong.
According to the Liberal candidate for Hawthorn, John Pesutto, the issue will be “addressed with nuanced solutions”. It is not clear where the nuance lies in making it legal to discriminate against someone because of their sexuality or gender. You either can or you can’t. You can either allow people to hurt others for the things they can’t control about themselves or you can limit the choice of others to discriminate.
Pesutto lost his seat at the 2018 election in part because of his significant role in promoting the African gangs scare campaign. Since then, he has sought to rebrand as gay-friendly by appearing regularly on LGBTQ+ radio station Joy 94.9. The party’s return to using division as an electoral strategy has likely tarnished any goodwill he may have built with the community.
Given he voted against gay adoption in a conscience vote in 2015, against allowing trans Victorians to change their sex on their birth certificate in 2016, and against the antidiscrimination legislation in 2016, it’s questionable to what extent he actually supports the community. Actions speak louder than words.
Right now, the community is looking for leadership from moderates within the Victorian Liberal party and hearing nothing. Silence is as good as complicity when it comes to discrimination, hate and intolerance. It hurts even more knowing now that at least 208 LGBTQ+ Victorians have taken their lives in the past decade. Frustratingly, it doesn’t have to be this way.
In New South Wales, deputy Liberal leader Matt Kean has earned respect and admiration for his willingness to publicly call out homophobia and transphobia in his own party and the community at large. The refusal by any Victorian Liberal MP to adopt his principled style of leadership is an example of the moral failure that has kept them out of power in Australia’s most progressive state for so long.
A Liberal MP once asked me how then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull could improve his ratings. “Fortune favours the bold, if he pushes for popular reforms like marriage equality and climate action against the wishes of the right of his party, but in line with the community, he’ll be viewed as a courageous and principled leader. He’ll be untouchable,” I replied. I was laughed out of the room. In the end Turnbull wasn’t bold and shortly after that he wasn’t prime minister.
Moderate Liberals defend themselves as nice guys in a broad church. They argue they can change the party from within – only if you elect them, of course. For over a decade now I’ve been asking a former Liberal MP the same thing: “When are the moderates going to take over?” The answer is always the same: “Next year.”
The nice guy argument seems to do a lot of heavy lifting for awful Liberal party policy. Maybe the problem with the broad church argument is the fact that it’s a church – not a broad community. Everyone is welcome in a community but not everyone is welcome in a church.
At the federal election, seven highly accomplished independents defeated seven sitting Liberal politicians and shook the foundations of Australian political culture. All of those independents came from electorates where the yes vote during the 2017 marriage equality survey was highest. Many of the volunteers that put those independents in office were queer. Those same voters are watching carefully.
At least 10 significant community independents are challenging seats at the Victorian state election, including Melissa Lowe against Pesutto in Hawthorn. If Liberals want to win these seats and avoid the path of a Republican-style political spiral then they need to start asking hard questions about who they are, what they stand for and why. The answer to such questions shouldn’t be homophobia, discrimination and division.
Principled, compassionate and courageous leadership is the only worthy path to government.
Rob Baillieu is a co-founder of Voices of Kooyong, the former volunteer manager for Dr Monique Ryan, and has volunteered for numerous independents at the state election.