Cost of living trumps the census when Labor wants it to count

The argument over whether to ask Australians about their sexuality in the census was a landmine Labor simply did not have the stomach for, writes Joe Hildebrand

Politics is a confidence game in more ways than one.

Like a travelling medicine man you have to convince people you’ve got the cure for what ails ‘em but you also have to be supremely confident that you are right.

And it has to be both. If you can win over the public but your solutions are bogus, you lose. If you are completely correct in all things but cannot persuade the public, you also lose.

I learnt this and several other lessons the hard way last year during a public debate with former prime minister Tony Abbott over the Voice to Parliament.

It was hosted by a Liberal MP who was sympathetic to the Voice but it was clear most of her gathered constituents were far more sceptical.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, seen here at the 2023 Mardi Gras, was keen to avoid a fight over asking people about their sexuality in the census. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

Then the whole thing descended into farce when after the allotted time had expired an Indigenous man in the audience tried to take to the stage, only to be told that he couldn’t talk — a pretty ironic outcome for a forum about an Indigenous voice.

As always it was cock-up rather than conspiracy but that hardly mattered. The night itself was lost on the voices and the wash-up in the media the next day was predictable outrage that Indigenous voices had been silenced in a debate about an Indigenous voice.

In previous years, IT debacles have plagued the cenus. Here, manager at the Sandy Creek Hotel Luke Somerville tries to complete his census at work after not being able to. photo Calum Robertson

Somewhere in the middle of this absurdist maelstrom I lamented to Abbott — whom I deeply opposed but just as deeply respect — that I was clearly a terrible salesman.

“No,” he said reassuringly. “You’ve just got a terrible product.”

Maybe he was right or maybe we both were. Point being, it didn’t matter. Even if I was the best salesman in the world that counted for nothing if what I was selling was garbage.

As it turned out the Voice I supported and believed in did indeed descend into the lazy undergraduate left-wing tropes — it’s all Peter Dutton’s fault! And racism! — that ended up consigning it to oblivion.

That’s unfortunate but understandable — accidents happen, even $400 million nation-building ones.

Previous census’ have featured questions on Aboriginal heritage which have produced controversial results.

But accidents become crises when they happen again.

Here the apocryphal legend of John Howard simply cannot be stated more emphatically nor more often: He made every mistake in the book, but he only ever made them once.

First term governments f —k up. That is built in their DNA. All that matters is whether they learn from their mistakes or repeat them.

There is no doubt even from some of the most diehard Labor supporters — and I know plenty — that the Albanese government has hit its quota in this regard.

The Voice, in terms of how it was presented and prosecuted, was a massive mistake. What should have been a simple practical instrument for better policy outcomes ended up becoming a peg on which a laundry list of clichéd left-wing rhetoric, historical grievance and reheated culture war was hung.

In the end it looked like just another ideological vanity project that was a million miles from the concerns of ordinary people. And Anthony Albanese has rightly run a mile from anything with a whiff of leftist ideology about it ever since.

But the progressive pullstrings on the government still yank it in directions it does not want to go.

The ultimate zenith of this is the furore that has erupted in recent days on whether to include questions about sexuality in the Census.

Here I have to declare the ultimate disclaimer: My beloved — and at the time of writing current — wife is the media manager at Equality Australia, the body that has been campaigning for the government to include information on LGBTIQ+ people in our national database.

In rational terms this is a no-brainer. The census exists purely to capture information and wilfully ignoring information defies the whole point of the exercise.

But just because something is the right thing to do doesn’t always mean it’s the smart thing to do.

Right now anything the government does that makes it looks like it is distracted from its primary focus of tackling the cost of living crisis — which is the number one concern for the vast majority of the electorate — is a potential landmine.

And if it looks like it’s being distracted by anything resembling “woke” ideology — rightly or wrongly — that landmine takes on the proportions of a nuclear bomb.

Hence why the government didn’t want to touch the issue with a bargepole before the election.

It has nothing to do with whether or not Labor supports recognition for gay people in the Census — SPOILER ALERT: It does — it is simply a matter of whether this is really a good sell to the electorate in the middle of a housing and economic crisis.

Opening up a new battlefront on the rights of gay people to be counted in a quintennial survey isn’t exactly a war it wants to fight right now.

But the war you want is rarely the war you get — and the best war is a quick war.

So the PM may as well just have his minions get the Census thing done as quickly and quietly as possible so that he can focus on the things that matter most to most people.

And then when everybody’s happy again he can look back and say: “See? I did the right thing all along …”

Listen to The Real Story with Joe Hildebrand wherever you get your podcasts.