Mark Latham: How did Bill Shorten get himself in such a tangle?

FOR MANY voters, one of the surprises of the election campaign has been discovering Bill Shorten’s lowly opinion of the Australian people, Mark Latham writes.

Mark Latham asks how did Bill Shorten get himself in such a tangle. Picture: Mick Tsikas/Getty Images

• FAMILY INVESTORS TO LOSE $20K UNDER ALP PLAN
• SHORTEN DEFENDS FORCING CANDIDATE TO RESIGN
• TURNBULL COULD LOSE MORE SEATS TO XENOPHON
• HOPEFUL INDEPENDENTS WANT RETURN OF CARBON TAX

For many voters, one of the surprises of the election campaign has been discovering Bill Shorten’s lowly opinion of the Australian people. We have heard a lot from the ­Opposition Leader in the past six weeks — and much of it has belittled the character of our regional and suburban communities.

Latham believes Shorten has shown he has a lowly opinion of Aussies. Picture: Chris McKeen

It’s yet another example of the New Left habit of elitist sneering against places like Western Sydney.

On the question of indigenous reconciliation, Shorten believes “systemic racism is still far too prevalent”, citing the booing of Adam Goodes as an example of how “discrimination percolates down to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait peoples on the street every day”.

In reality, modern Australia has been incredibly generous to Aboriginal communities, supplying vast amounts of government funding and welfare support.

The main damage to indigenous people has come from other indigenous people: through horrific rates of child sexual abuse, domestic violence and repetitive crimes against each other.

Anti-Swans AFL fans booed Goodes last season for the same reason Swans fans booed his Aboriginal colleague Lewis Jetta earlier this season — they don’t like them as footballers.

In Jetta’s case, he was seen as a traitor, having defected to the West Coast Eagles.

In Goodes’ case, he was seen as a quasi-politician, someone who had turned a simple game of footy into a political platform with his cornball war dances and left-wing dogma.

There is no evidence in attitudinal surveys, at sporting grounds or away from them, that Australia is a “systemically racist” country. We are, in fact, the world’s great multicultural success story: a model of easygoing tolerance that other nations envy. In his campaigning, Shorten has also recycled the Left-feminist/anti-male slur that “women are not safe in their homes” — that we have become a nation of wife-beaters, amid a “domestic ­violence crisis”.

The people who voted for Shorten in his Melbourne seat should be trusted to vote on something as important as gay marriage, Latham says. Picture: Kym Smith

Yet official ABS statistics show that, for non-Aboriginal families, Australian women have never been safer, with an annual domestic assault rate of one-in-100.

Females are graduating from higher education and pursuing (equal pay) career paths in record numbers, a tribute to gender tolerance and meritocracy.

As a mate of mine said on the weekend: “Why does Shorten think he can win our votes by fighting us?”

To make things worse, in Friday’s Facebook leaders debate, Shorten cited the Orlando terrorist massacre and murder of British MP Jo Cox as reasons why Australia shouldn’t have a democratic vote on same-sex marriage (reserving the decision for parliamentarians).

Shorten claimed that “haters would come out from under their rocks”, spreading homophobia.

But in rejecting Islamic terrorism and other crimes, we should never argue for less democracy and freedom.

We should always want more, sending a message to ­jihadists that we won’t compromise our values and way of life because of their perverted beliefs.

In any case, who are these homophobic haters who have sent Shorten into an anti-democratic panic?

They must be the same white-skinned bogans booing Goodes and beating their partners every night.

Or they might even be suburban school principals, of the non-government variety.

“I don’t understand why kids whose parents are (gay) should have to go to school and see stupid posters on the walls,” Shorten complained on Facebook.

His preferred education model is the Safe Schools program — teaching our children there’s no such thing as biology, that science is a con-job and that all forms of knowledge have been manipulated by capitalism.

How did Shorten get himself in such a tangle?

If national voting on same-sex marriage is certain to foster hate and homophobia, then Labor’s proposed referendum on indigenous constitutional recognition should also be abandoned due to its incitement of racism.

If the Opposition Leader thinks the average polling booth is actually a sub-branch of the Ku Klux Klan, then he’s in the wrong job.

The same people who trusted him with their votes in the Melbourne electorate of Maribyrnong can be trusted to vote on straightforward issues like same-sex marriage and constitutional change.

If there’s a problem in our democracy, the answer is always more democracy.

That way, people can have ownership of political reform, adding to the legitimacy of contentious change.

Other than for a handful of religious fanatics, Australia is a homo-tolerant society.

National progress in the equal treatment of gays and lesbians over the past 40 years has been remarkable. A plebiscite on same-sex marriage is likely to be carried, so why not give the people their say?

If the odd homophobe (such as one of Malcolm Turnbull’s Kirribilli dinner guests) says something stupid, nothing is more likely to marginalise him and uplift the gay community than a popular verdict in favour of marriage equality. If Shorten is genuinely worried about extremist views on this issue, he needs to look closely at his new-found allies at Safe Schools.

Radical Left-feminists see marriage as an oppressive institution, a bourgeois tool for controlling the masses.

In her 2014 memoirs, for instance, Julia Gillard revealed the real reason why, as prime minister, she opposed same-sex marriage.

She was against any form of marriage — straight or gay — because it was “redolent of the yesteryear stereotypes of women”.

Shorten has fallen for the politics of identity separatism, subdividing the nation on the basis of race, gender and sexuality.

This is a contradictory philosophy that defines people not as citizens sharing a common humanity but as individuals complaining about their place in society on the basis of personal identity.

Left-individualism of this kind is no less damaging to the ideals of progressive, community-based politics than the individualism of the far-Right.

Instead of teaching people to work together — crossing identity boundaries and defining common goals — it encourages them to segregate themselves socially, spooked by the false demons of a ­supposedly racist, sexist and homophobic Australia.

Labor’s mighty refrain of “Solidarity Forever” has been replaced by the discord of ­“Diversity Forever”.

Under this doctrine, we are becoming a nation of identity-obsessed enclaves, losing the spirit and shared bonds of community. The cause of the good society is being lost.