By Paul Sakkal, Natassia Chrysanthos and Olivia Ireland
Labor is facing its second revolt this month after assistant health minister Ged Kearney joined five other MPs in calling for the Prime Minister to reverse the government’s decision to dump new sexuality questions from the census.
The move, which was made to avoid a culture war from conservatives, sparked baffled reactions from a growing number of Coalition MPs who declared they did not mind if the census asked Australians about their sexuality and gender identity.
Assistant Health Minister Ged Kearney.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Kearney said on Thursday it was important to speak out on the issue, taking a rare step for an assistant minister in breaking with the government’s position.
“The census not only informs policy and service delivery but paints a picture of modern Australia in all its beauty and diversity. For too long, LGBTIQA+ people have felt excluded from this picture,” she said.
“Over the past 12 months, I’ve been working with the LGBTIQA+ community to co-design Australia’s first 10-year national action plan for the health and wellbeing of LGBTIQA+ people. I’ve heard firsthand how important data is to this work. I’m working to ensure these views are represented within the Albanese Labor government.”
She joined Josh Burns and Peter Khalil, who became the first Labor MPs to publicly dispute the government’s decision on Thursday afternoon. They were followed by Alicia Payne, Michelle Ananda-Rajah and Jerome Laxale.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Labor backbencher Josh Burns in parliament.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Burns said the gay community in his electorate of Macnamara needed better policymaking informed by proper data collection, a day after senior ministers in the government argued that asking about gender and sexuality would spark division.
“They deserve to be counted,” Burns told this masthead. “I believe the government should reconsider the questions that will be put forward in the next census.”
Khalil, who like Burns and Kearney is under threat from the Greens at the next election, said he was wary of prompting a backlash against the gay community but, on balance, he believed including new questions was a good thing, adding that he had made his views known to the party’s leadership.
Several government sources, who requested anonymity to express frank views, said Burns was far from the only Labor MP confused by the claim, made by ministers Richard Marles and Jim Chalmers, that changing the census would have led to “nasty” and “divisive” debate.
It is the second time Labor has disappointed the LGBTQ community after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese abandoned his election pledge to change religious discrimination laws earlier this month.
Three influential conservative Coalition MPs told this masthead that counting LGBTQ people would not bother them, although Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said the new questions should not be included in the census.
Keith Pitt said it was “ludicrous” to suggest the Coalition would focus on the issue in a cost-of-living crisis; Garth Hamilton said Labor was “spooked” by a non-issue; and religious conservative Matt Canavan said: “I’m OK with it – maybe we should ask it.” On Friday, Liberal MPs Keith Wolahan and Bridget Archer added their agreement.
Asked about the proposed questions, which would have required Senate approval, Dutton on Thursday said the existing survey “stood us well as a country”.
“If you’ve got the woke agenda, which I think is at odds with the vast majority of Australians, then the prime minister should argue that case, but I think we’re pretty happy with the settings that we’ve got in place,” he said.
The decision to shelve new questions about sexuality and gender has attracted widespread criticism from equality advocates since it was announced on Sunday.
Eleven crossbenchers, including all the teals, wrote on Wednesday to assistant treasury minister Andrew Leigh (who is responsible for the Bureau of Statistics, which runs the census) with their concerns that LGBTQ Australians were “being denied the basic right to be recognised and valued”.
On Thursday, Victorian Deputy Premier Ben Carroll backed his state’s equality minister, Harriet Shing, in condemning the federal government’s decision, saying “Australian democracy depends on the census”.
Sex discrimination commissioner Dr Anna Cody wrote to Leigh on Thursday, saying the decision would have “serious implications for the health, wellbeing and general equality of LGBTIQA+ Australians and their families”.
“The aim of the census is to capture a snapshot of Australia, and the data it generates is vital for ensuring services and policy reflect the needs of our country’s diverse populations,” she wrote.
On Wednesday, Marles, who was acting prime minister, confirmed the government decided to keep the census the same as 2021 because it wanted to avoid a “divisive debate”.
But Cody, who is charged with protecting the LGBTQ community from discrimination in her role with the Australian Human Rights Commission, said that reasoning was not acceptable.
“I am concerned that this decision will strengthen the voices of discrimination and division that seek to disrupt the nation’s social cohesion,” she said.
More than 60 health and legal services signed a statement on Thursday saying they were dismayed and frustrated by Labor’s decision, which ignored the extensive work undertaken by their community and the Australian Bureau of Statistics to count LGBTQ people in the census.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.