On 10 September 2024, I spoke about counting LGBTIQA+ Australians in the 2026 Census.
I want to talk about the census, not just as an MP whose electorate is home to a large number of queer people but also as a gay man myself.
The last couple of weeks have been extremely rough for the LGBTIQA+ community.
Counting us in the census was something that the community have been working on and campaigning for years to achieve.
To find out that this was not happening after it was dropped to Sky News on a Sunday afternoon was an insult. This Labor Prime Minister truly believed that his government could walk back a promise made to the community in the lead-up to the 2022 election and reaffirmed in Labor's 2023 national platform, seemingly without any blowback. And choosing Sky News, of all places, as the outlet to give this story to said it all for me.
It was yet another example of this government letting its fear of the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, call the shots.
But I was so proud to see the community unite and demand the government change its position, and the pressure worked. We first saw the government agree to ask a question on sexual orientation, and then a few days later it agreed to ask one on gender identity. But the intersex community are still left behind. The Greens will continue to urge and pressure the government to work with the intersex community and the ABS on a path forward so that we can ensure everyone in the LGBTIQA+ community is counted.
But the damage has, sadly, already been done. I've personally heard from numerous queer people in my electorate, from friends and from people across the country that their trust in the Labor Party has been shattered by this. It came at a time when so many people are already struggling—struggling with cost of living and housing stress—and then the general feeling from people was, 'You're not even going to give us this.' The protections for queer staff and students in schools were given up on, and now we couldn't even have something as simple as being counted in the census. Saying one thing in opposition and doing another thing in government is not how you win friends, and it creates an enormous sense of distrust in the community that can be impossible to recover from.
We don't expect much from the coalition on LGBTIQA+ issues, but we and I expected a hell of a lot more from Labor, and the paternalistic language that we heard from the Prime Minister did not make me feel better. I found it condescending. The queer community is not weak. We do not always need to be protected. We can fight for ourselves. We've been campaigning for this census change for years. It was a fight we wanted and were willing to have. It was the job of a supposedly progressive government to have our backs in that fight.
But I'm not even angry anymore—and I was very angry. I'm just disappointed.
On top of being counted in the census and protections for queer students and teachers in schools, what we need now is a LGBTIQA+ human rights commissioner—someone working in the Australian Human Rights Commission to ensure that queer rights receive the full attention that they deserve. Right now, across the world, we see the rise of the far right and the demonisation of queer people. We need an LGBTIQA+ human rights commissioner to help us hold the government of this country to account so that, even when the major parties show their true colours, there are even more voices calling them out and holding them to account. I've been calling for such a commissioner since I first arrived in this place just a bit over two years ago, and the Greens will keep fighting for one.
If the Labor Party are to have any hope of rebuilding trust with the queer community in this country, they should get on board and establish this commissioner.