Vikki Campion: Thanks Bill Shorten, mothers aren’t ‘birthing parents’, they’re mothers

It took a moderate former trade union official to preserve the word ‘mother’ and bring some sanity to the ‘birthing parent’ debate. Bill Shorten sorted it like a boss. Maybe Manly should give him a call, writes Vikki Campion.

Why did it take a moderate former trade union official and ex Labor leader to show real leadership and shut down an otherwise bruising debate on whether we can use the word “mother” after birthing a child?

For every woman that has gone through the pain of childbirth, it is something we are owed.

Yet under the former Coalition government, a trial Services Australia form ended up replacing “mother” with “birth parent”.

Conservatives were cheering Government Services Minister Bill Shorten and scratching their heads as to why a Labor Minister had to fix a problem the Coalition allowed under their watch.

He reverted to the original form, which has three options, including “other”, where you write what you want to be.

In one swift move, it allows the less than 60 people who have transitioned and birthed to have their identity without forcing that same identity as “birth parent” on the hundreds of thousands of mums who want a card saying “Happy Mother’s Day” and don’t want to be recognised as clinical birthing objects.

New mother Sall Grover, with her new baby Isabelle, is not happy at having to sign a government Medicare form calling her a "Birthing Parent" instead of mother. Picture: Supplied

Ideologically vapid platitudes start at the top, as demonstrated at Senate Estimates earlier this year where Australia’s top health bureaucrats were in contortions trying to explain what a woman was.

Job applications should be gender-neutral, but in the miracle of childbirth, let us have something as amazing as being a mother.

Sall Grover, founder of Giggle, a social networking app for women had major problems with the new form.

The good thing about the return to cabinet of long-time politicians such as Mr Shorten is that as they are elected by the people, they understand, as a Minister, they have the ultimate authority.

They are the boss.

Weak ministers are run by their departments. Strong ministers run their departments. In one fell swoop, Shorten showed respect for tolerance in making an administrative decision restoring a status quo that had existed for years and shutting down an otherwise acrimonious and pointless controversy.

A strong Minister is not ruled by a hidden subcommittee of factional warriors poking their ideas into a minster’s office that they would not dare ventilate on talkback radio in their local seat.

Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme Minister for Government Services Bill Shorten during Question Time in the House of Representatives in Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Gary Ramage

Many people in the former Coalition government thought this “wink, wink, nod, nod” to identity politics would save them and they are now looking for other jobs after being voted out in May.

So many in elected positions misunderstand this most fundamental thing about politics – that you don’t have to be popular, you have to be strong. The history of politics in all countries is written about strong leaders. Populists are often dismissed, disregarded and even discounted as pejorative.

Interestingly, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese so far has enough confidence in his ministers that he expects them to make their own decisions in their portfolios.

He has not come into government as the lone ranger because he has a cabinet who has largely served over cabinet portfolios before and he respects them enough to trust what they do. Arming them with the ability to do their jobs, he has allowed himself time to represent Australia overseas without the same heat that was applied to Scott Morrison.

But he also hasn’t been haunted by miserable ghosts like Malcolm Turnbull polluting his every move. I could not have imagined Turnbull helping Morrison, the way Shorten did Albanese.

MANLY LOSES MATCH, WINS SOAP OPERA

The Manly Warringah Sea Eagles NRL team has every reason to be the best in the competition with its roster of players, but is leading the soap opera and losing games because the club somehow became immersed in symbolic recognition and identity politics, when its real task is to get more points on the field rather than column inches in the media.

Here are two different ways of handling complex, bruising issues.

One shows a politician exhibiting common sense; the other is a multimillion-dollar organisation with highly-paid PR gurus and a football team of star players with huge personal followings igniting a black and white debate when really it is
as diverse as the colours on the rainbow flag. Maybe they should have run their pride jersey idea past Mr Shorten and even the change room before they announced it.

There is something to be said for the art of politics where you learn the nuance of how to have a big corporate policy in a complicated public landscape.

This is what incoming Country Liberal Party Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price nailed in her maiden speech in parliament this week. It was inclusive, direct, from the heart, and based on real-life experience. The Northern Territory Warlpiri woman spoke of having “had more than my fill of being symbolically recognised”.

She called to “halt the pointless virtue-signalling”, to “focus on the solutions that bring real change that changes the lives of Australia’s most vulnerable citizens – solutions that give them real lives, not the enduring nightmare of violence and terror
they currently live”.

Symbolic recognition, whether in the form of a Welcome to Country on a Qantas plane landing, a rainbow stripe on a football jersey, or a “birth parent” box on a Centrelink form, has infiltrated corporations as much as the highest echelons of government.

If it’s mindlessly recited, what weight does it carry?