Because being truly liberal means

AT last, a liberal with influence. Speaker Sue Hickey last week exposed the paternalistic and controlling Liberal Party.

She showed that being truly liberal, as opposed to conservative, means respecting diversity and ending discrimination.

And not content with her rightly voting with the Greens and ALP on the issue of gender she has turned her mind to ensuring disadvantaged women no longer have their right to terminate a pregnancy undermined by the Health Minister Michael Ferguson who is on the extreme Right of politics.

One hopes that the lifesaving pill testing legislation proposed by the Greens is also supported by Ms Hickey and the ALP because once again the religious Right in the form of Mr Ferguson would rather keep their heads in the sand and risk the lives of young people at music festivals.

Those who say Ms Hickey should simply be a rubber stamp for the Hodgman Government reflect their ignorance about how democracy is supposed to work, or they are simply authoritarian.

In a real legislature as opposed to the supine type favoured by governments these days, members vote according to whether a policy accords with their values and policy outlook.

They should not be bound by outmoded notions such as party discipline. In fact it is people like Ms Hickey who might encourage others to enter politics.

Intelligent people, those who like to think for themselves, are turned off politics in Australia because the party system is so rigid that anyone who steps out of line is attacked and disendorsed (this columnist is a victim of this culture having been disendorsed by the Liberals in Tasmania in 2002 for supporting refugees and expressing my view that the hard Right, led by federal backbencher Eric Abetz, is a cancer in the Liberal Party).

Ms Hickey was on the side of rationality in last week supporting amendments to legislation which simply recognises the issues of intersex and transgender when it comes to registering births, and the consequences that flow from such registration.

A careful reading of the amendments and speeches by MPs, as opposed to reading the hysterical nonsense of the Australian Christian Lobby and their parliamentary friends like Mr Ferguson and the Attorney-General Elise Archer, shows that Tasmanian law is simply coming into line with what is happening across the world.

The fact that no other Australian jurisdiction has modernised its laws is not argument against it. In fact, is it not desirable that liberal values such as respect for diversity and eliminating discrimination, are enshrined in law?

The opposition to these law reforms come from people who, if they are honest with us, want to live in a fantasy world where there are only men and women and there is only heterosexuality. These people seem to loathe and be

In Sue Hickey, Tasmania at last has a liberal with influence, writes Greg Barns

offended by sexual diversity.

What Ms Hickey was doing in supporting the sensible amendments to birth laws was reflecting liberal values.

In doing so she exposed again the sad truth which is that the Liberal Party is anything but. It is a deeply conservative party run by a cabal of hard-Right Christians who are intolerant, paternalistic and closed minded.

This same group of people dragged their feet on the provision of a pregnancy termination service for women in Tasmania.

It took 11 months to find another service to replace the one that left last year. Why? Because Mr Ferguson and his chums oppose abortion and the Premier Mr Hodgman, who is an empty vessel when it comes to philosophy, went along with it.

Now Ms Hickey wants to ensure access to termination services is available for lowincome women in Tasmania. Once again Ms Hickey reflects liberal values which are aligned with genuine freedom of choice, the right to control one’s body, and equality.

One hopes that Ms Hickey, and the ALP for that matter, supports another excellent piece of sensible life-saving legislation introduced by the Greens last week.

This is legislation to stop people dying or ending up seriously ill from ingesting drugs at music festivals.

Mr Ferguson, yet again, does not get it. He thinks if he says “don’t do drugs” then young people will heed his message.

Along with the Police Association he would rather, it seems, people die and endure serious harm, than recognise that drug use is a health issue and we need to mitigate loss. The logic of Mr Ferguson and the Police Association is the same that drove some in the 1980s to refuse to embrace condoms as a means of ensuring safe sex.

Ms Hickey should support this legislation because she obviously believes in evidence based policy.

She is not infected with the religious-Right toxicity that has destroyed the Tasmanian, and for that matter, national, Liberal Party and turned it into a deeply authoritarian reactive political force. Hobart barrister Greg Barns is a human rights lawyer who has advised state and federal Liberal governments.