Steve Price: Why I don’t need rainbow flags or lectures on the Voice
Surely Victorians don’t need a rainbow flag on a flagpole to treat someone of a different sexual orientation the same as anyone else, or a football administrator to tell us how to vote.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
On Wednesday in Victoria this week, rainbow flags were flown at state parliament and every local council office.
It was IDAHOBIT day — International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia — in case you didn’t know, and advocates said it was the first time in Australia, even the world, where rainbow flags had been raised on such a scale.
The Victorian government even hosted a drag story time event in state parliament.
Premier Daniel Andrews was there, and announced that $1.8m will go to Rainbow Health Australia.
This cash splash will help that organisation deliver inclusion training to make sure organisations are safe for the LGBTIQ+ community.
$1.8m is a hefty sum at a time when Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas is about to hand down a brutal state budget and Victorians are spending $10m a day paying off the state’s debt.
A quick google search reveals Rainbow Health Australia is based within the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at Latrobe University.
It’s funded by the Victorian government and has been working for 15 years to deliver positive change for LGBTIQ communities.
It appears to me at least to be a layer of employer training specific to queer Victorians – their words not mine – that mirrors training for companies to help provide a safe workplace.
In other words, you need to treat the handling of LGBTIQ workers differently to your straight workforce and you need to spend an extra $1.8m to do it.
Surely if employers need training to work out how to run an inclusive workplace you don’t need different training you just need to find a good boss.
I raise IDAHOBIT day and this little-known organisation, Rainbow Health Australia, as another example of how Victoria and the Victorian government is drifting further away from your average person.
Do we really need to hoist rainbow flags up every flagpole outside every council office in the state to be told we have to be inclusive of people of a different sexual orientation.
Most Victorians don’t have an issue in this space unless needless events like drag queens reading stories to schoolchildren are forced on parents.
Spending $1.8m on training programs smacks of political pandering to a vocal advocacy group by a state government that needs to be spending money on real things in a busted state.
It also for me raises real fears about what comes next.
That grant will be small change when we go down the next stage of Voice recognition, treaty and truth telling.
A casual glance across the ditch to New Zealand will give you a frightening preview of where Australia, and Victoria in particular, are headed.
It has been a 50-year budget draining divisive argument over everything from water and fishing rights to real estate grabs.
Treaty and truth mean compensation and Victoria’s Labor government is already well down this road.
Of course, in the pre-Voice referendum climate, no-one, especially the Yes advocates, want to talk about this next step.
The pro-Voice forces don’t want to scare the horses and are deliberately describing the referendum as simply a matter of recognition – it’s not.
Clearly in this space those with the loudest voices get the most attention but recent polls show Australians out in the real world are not only not listening, they strongly disagree.
A poll this week showed a simple question around the question of a Yes vote had slipped from 64 per cent support to 53 and sinking.
Sporting groups like the NRL and AFL should look at what their demographic and those polls are saying about the Voice referendum.
Footy crowds overwhelmingly don’t want politics shoved down their throats by unelected elitist boards like the AFL Commission.
It’s no coincidence that the AFL wants to use this weekend’s Indigenous round – another wonderful Kevin Sheedy-inspired tribute to Indigenous players – to give the Yes vote a push along.
Dreamtime at the MCG will likely draw a crowd of 80,000 plus and on published polls half of that number will not support the referendum.
It would be much more honest of the AFL bosses to just let the football do the talking.
Outgoing AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan this week showed his glass jaw when it comes to his advocacy of a Yes vote. He said: “Those who yell at us to stick to football don’t understand who we are. We don’t lecture or tell others what to do.”
Gil, that’s exactly what you are doing.
He calls his views on the referendum leadership, but what they really are is political posturing from the outgoing boss of a football competition.
Given the unfolding mess over allegations – unproven – of racial stereotyping and worse at one of his own clubs – Hawthorn – McLachlan would be better off sorting that mess out rather than accusing critics of sport getting involved in politics as yelling at him.
I don’t need a rainbow flag on a flagpole to treat someone of a different sexual orientation the same as anyone else or a football administrator to tell me how to vote.
Go Tiges!
DISLIKES
• As predicted the CBD destroying city council has slapped parking payments on weekend visitors and two- hour limits.
• Price of winter warming firewood up again three years running.
• Appalling timing of President Biden’s Australia trip cancellation and its impact on the Quad meeting.
• Tragic deadly hostel fire in Wellington NZ.
LIKES
• Reigniting of the Nuclear energy debate in Australia as a back -up to renewables.
• Community footy at its best at the Sorrento Sharks last weekend.
• Jason Day back on the PGA winners list after a five- year drought.
• Qantas allowing passengers on domestic flights to buy for as little as $30 the right to have an empty seat next to them.
Originally published as Steve Price: Why I don’t need rainbow flags or lectures on the Voice
Price: Patton now Allan’s sacrificial lamb amid Vic’s law and order dramas
Shane Patton tried to be the top cop, the tough cop, the bloke in charge of all of Victoria Police — but he also tried to play politics, and in the end it was the politics that burnt him.
Complex extradition process giving crims a passport to freedom
For every long-range arrest set up overseas — after many years and much money — plenty of fugitives remain one step ahead of the law and out of reach.