Well, it didn’t take long. Only two weeks ago I wrote about Liberal councillor Ben Hood’s attempt to force medically-vulnerable SA women to give birth. Now it’s some guy in Queensland – Robbie Katter (yeah, Bob Katter’s nepo baby). Well, two guys if you include Liberal leader David Crisafulli, who will potentially be the Queensland premier after the election in two weeks. 

This time, the proposed ban is a lot more drastic – taking the laws back to 1899. And more realistic, too. This one isn’t just a stunt. 

Quick recap: As it currently stands, in Queensland one can freely choose to have an abortion up to 22 weeks; after that, it must be approved by two medical practitioners. These current laws were introduced in 2018. 

As part of his election campaigning this week, 47-year-old* Robbie Katter (leader of the state branch of Katter Australia Party) told Guardian Australia that if the Qld Liberal Party wins, he will introduce a bill to completely repeal the current laws. This would make abortion a criminal act again, taking the laws back to how they were in 1899. As a backup option, he will introduce a 16-week abortion ban.

The 1889 criminalisation laws made it illegal for anyone (including doctors) to perform an abortion at any time, and for anyone to help a woman get an abortion. The maximum sentence was up to 14 years jail. The only exemption was for surgery required to save the mother’s life. 

Should we worry about this one?

Yeah. I called the situation with Ben Hood in SA a political stunt. I stand by that, because his bill has no chance of passing; Labor has an outright majority in SA, so even if every Liberal councillor supported that bill (and some have confirmed they will not) it would still be blocked.

But the political landscape in Queensland is not the same. The state currently has a Labor government, led by Premier Steven Miles, but polls show they’re probably going to lose seats. That gives the Libs either a majority government, or a minority government with the balance of power sitting with the Katter party (currently has four seats) or the Greens (they’ve got two). The Liberal party is not campaigning on abortion at all, but the party allowed a conscience vote on the 2018 abortion legislation.

So, Katter can introduce the bill as a private member (like Ben Hood did), and if Crisfaulli allows another conscience vote, enough conservative Libs might pass it. 

Crisafulli keeps saying “it’s not part of our plan” and refusing to answer other questions about it. But the thing is, in 2018 all but three Qld Liberals voted against the decriminalisation of abortion. Crisfulli himself voted against it. Jarrod Bleijie, his deputy, voted against it.

I don’t about you, but that feels much more real to me. 

The ABC asked Tony Barry, a former Liberal Party strategist, some questions about all this and I just want to take a moment to unpack what he said:

“While the topic clearly matters to a lot of people on both sides of the debate, former Liberal Party strategist Tony Barry doubts abortion is a vote-changer for many. ‘These sorts of issues are important to a lot of people, but they're not the most important issues in the electorate at all,’ he says. ‘It's incredibly important not to be distracted by these issues which, important as they might be to people on both sides of the debate, they're not moving votes’.”

This is a total misread of the situation. Barry may be right that in this election an abortion ban raised by a minority party is not the most pressing issue for Queenslanders. The problem is Katter (and conservative Liberals) would impose the ban even if the public doesn't want it. That’s what a conscience vote allows for! It’s crazy for a political strategist to not acknowledge that. 

This is a stunt by Katter too, but it’s also a very strategic – taken directly from the playbook of pro-life lobbyists in the U.S. When Roe v Wade was overturned in 2021, I wrote this:

“What’s genuinely scary about these events in the U.S. is that the legal decisions are completely out of step with the political will of the public. While it might seem like abortion is a ‘contentious’ issue in the States … two-thirds [said] they did not want Roe v Wade to be overturned. So how did this happen? A much smaller, extremely conservative Christian group has been able to ‘capture’ the Republican party on this issue.

While our [Australian system of government] is protected by compulsory voting and the presence of minority parties and independents, our government is still susceptible to manipulation and capture by small, noisy and well-resourced groups… All kinds of interest groups will be looking at the strategies employed by the pro-life lobbyists in the U.S. to see how to split government action from public support.”

And, here we have it. The Australian public overwhelmingly supports the right to choose. Robbie Katter will try to get the Queensland government to ban abortion anyway. 

Don’t get me wrong, it’s also a stunt. Everything I wrote about using culture wars as a profile-raising tactic still stands. But the outcome of one man’s political pursuits could put women in real danger – an age old story we just can’t seem to ditch. 

*Why have I specified the age of Ben Hood and Robbie Katter? It’s a deliberate choice to highlight that these views are not only held by “old men”, which is how I often hear young progressives and feminists describe anti-abortion and pro-life lawmakers. These men are in their 40s; they’re not old. They’re not holding onto beliefs from ‘another era’. It’s in our best interests to remember that. 

– Crystal
Founder & Chief of Everything at Zee Feed
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Smart stuff on the Internet 💭

All the stuff I found on the web that made me think, smile, or have an ‘aha!’ moment. Spend your Sunday reading them – you'll be better off for it:

1 year of Gaza genocide: Is Israel’s economy ‘in a process of collapse’? on Andalou Agency
A perspective I had not considered, and given that money is one of the few things that government’s actually care about it’s an important aspect to understand. "The full story is what is the perspective of the population regarding the future. People who don’t believe that there is a future. People who don’t believe that the state of Israel will ever be able to recover from this crisis. They don’t invest. They don’t want to raise their children in Israel. They don’t want to look for a job or study. This means that the economic crisis will only get worse and worse. There is no prospective for recovery.”

If you want a short video version of that story, watch this on Reels or TikTok.

Australia’s voice referendum no vote won’t define Indigenous policy forever on Guardian Australia
“The no vote is contained to that proposal, on that fateful day, one year ago put to the Australian people alive in 2023. That day does not define Aboriginal policy forever more. I have not been able to read his words until now – the memory of his speech and that time is far too painful – but the prime minister put it best that night, ‘this moment of disagreement does not define us.’”

Hurricane Milton is the dystopian peak of engagement bait on Dazed Digital
“Calloway denies claims that she used the storm to drum up publicity. Regardless of whether or not this is true, the influencer’s decision ultimately paid off, generating more publicity, and therefore pre-orders, for her upcoming book… Watching a weather event with uncertain outcomes play out on the internet felt incredibly dystopian and, while news channels in the past would show the aftermath of disasters, we’re now seeing them unfold from the eyes of the victims. We might be entertained, but at what cost?”

The Editors Protecting Wikipedia from AI Hoaxes on 404Media
This is fast becoming my favourite indie tech outlet! “The group’s goal is to protect one of the world’s largest repositories of information from the same kind of misleading AI-generated information that has plagued Google search results, books sold on Amazon, and academic journals… As an example, Lebleu pointed to a Wikipedia article about an obscure species of beetle that cited a real journal article in French. ‘Only thing, that article was about a completely unrelated species of crab, and made no mention of the beetle at all.’”

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