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- So what if we upset the bigots?
After two days of mulling it over, I cannot think of a single good reason why the Labor government would have made its (only partially reversed) decision to exclude LGBTQI+ questions from the 2026 Census. As we posted about on Friday, testing questions to ask about gender identity and sexuality – as they had originally planned to – was unlikely to be very controversial. The public is generally supportive of LGBTQI+ rights and, let’s be honest, the census is administration. It’s not ‘extra’ spending, the questions are frequently updated… this is all part of the normal census process. It’s data collection.
That’s what makes the reason given by Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles so jaw dropping, tbh. On Wednesday, he said: “We do not want to open up divisive debates in the community now.” Divisive debates on… what? It seems to be a reference to the main criticism of the 2017 same sex marriage plebiscite; Malcolm Turnbull’s government could have done the right thing and introduced the legislation themselves, but instead he took the coward’s way and invited the entire country to vote on the rights of the queer community – therefore, opening the floodgates for homophobia and prejudice to be aired out in the name of ‘debate’.
But this isn’t like that at all. There is no need for discourse. Census questions don’t typically become the subject of public debate like policy does. If a person is opposed to a question being asked, they don’t have to answer it. Like I said, it’s administration.
I’m not sure whether I buy Marles’ reasoning, but I guess it recognises that there are hateful people in this country that will be upset about the LGBTQI+ community being acknowledged at all. There are more than a few of them in the federal parliament. These people would have absolutely used the census questions to try to inflame a culture war around trans rights (and existence). But they would have done that anyway. They sook and complain every time a marginalised group gets even a crumb of attention from the government. This would have been no different.
So, if Marles was being honest about the reasons for scrapping the census questions, what does that mean? Do we have to constantly tiptoe around bigots? We can’t have any conversation, take any action that will prompt them to say hateful things? If that’s the case, Australia stays where it is forever more. There will be no progress, no improvement to come.
If we never did anything to upset small-minded bigots, these things would still be our reality today:
Government can pick and choose which First Nations get to vote
Women banned from voting (important to note that white women fought for the right to vote for themselves only, not First Nations women or men, but I digress…)
Only white people allowed to migrate to Australia
Businesses can refuse to service or employ non-white people, women and the LGBTQI+ community
For each of those developments, groups of people were passionately against the changes. We didn’t stop just because they said so. While Australia today is far from perfect, it would be a very shitty place to live if we had listened to detractors and agitators on any of these points.
The LGBTQI+ community deserves to be counted. And they deserve the questions to be carefully designed so we know we’re measuring what’s intended. You may not know that the 2021 census included non-binary as an option for the question on sex, but this was poorly framed. Because the distinction between sex and gender was not made in the survey, the results were deemed invalid and every non-binary response was randomly re-allocated as male or female. That’s why testing questions before adding them to the census is so important.
The good news is that the public backlash was strong. And it was matched with pushback from the Greens, most of the independent MPs and Senators, at least six Labor MPs (probably more by the time this is published) and at least two Liberal MPs (again, probably more). There is political will to do better, all the government has to do is choose to listen to those voices and ignore those threatening a culture war. Excluding these questions from testing is a mistake… and there is still time to correct it.
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:
Should Pubs And Clubs Have To Stock Life-Saving Anti-Overdose Drugs Like Naloxone? On Pedestrian.TV
Great piece from Simran in her new job at Pedestrian! “If you saw someone overdosing, would you know what to do? There has been a growing push to stock the life-saving medication naloxone in pubs and clubs across Australia, in response to increasing risks of opioid overdoses. With more than 110,000 Aussies currently struggling with opioid dependence, the need for action is clear. But is it reasonable to expect venues to stock the drug?”
The secret inside One Million Checkboxes on EIEIO Games
Such a wholesome story about very clever teens. “I hadn’t been hacked. Someone was writing me a message in binary… The discord was full of some very sharp teens, and they were writing these secret messages to gather other very sharp teens to talk about botting the site. The discord grew from under 20 people when I joined to over 60 by the time I shut the site down.”
The U.S.-Led Ceasefire Talks Are Just Buying More Time for Israel’s Genocide on The Intercept
“Hamas is unlikely to agree to the terrible new conditions that Blinken has put on the table, and that rejection will in turn enable Biden, Harris, Blinken, and Netanyahu to further blame Hamas for ‘rejecting peace’. This will then buy Netanyahu more time to continue bombing, starving, and killing Palestinians. Then the cycle will repeat itself again.”
This super interesting TikTok about Shakespeare’s true (very contemporary) intentions for Romeo & Juliet.