“The cheque is in the mail,” and “I’m off the booze” are two of the biggest lies Australians are used to hearing. Thanks to NSW Treasurer Matt Kean, we can add two more to that list.
“The last thing I’m doing is undermining the Prime Minister or the [NSW] Premier,” he told 2GB presenter Ben Fordham last week, before adding the humdinger of porkies. “Scott Morrison is the best person to lead this country and I’m going to be doing everything I can to make sure that happens,” he said.
There is no place in a mainstream political party for bigotry. Coming out as Trans would be hugely challenging, especially for kids, and political leaders should be condemning the persecution of people based on their gender, not participating in it. https://t.co/3gMymtzvz3
— Matt Kean MP (@Matt_KeanMP) April 15, 2022
Right now, Kean is doing everything he can to ensure the disendorsement of Katherine Deves, the co-founder of Save Women’s Sport Australasia and the Liberal candidate for the Sydney seat of Warringah. Deves, who maintains that women’s sport should be restricted to biological females, has apologised for controversial comments she made about the ethics of transgender children undergoing surgery, particularly her claim that speaking out against this practice was analogous to opposing the Nazis.
Morrison and NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet sat on the special committee that selected Deves. Both continue to support her. “She is a woman standing up for women and girls and their access to fair sport in this country, the PM said last week. “Now I’m not going to allow her to be silenced.”
But for Kean, his principle compels him to take issue with Morrison’s choice, or so he would have us believe. “I’m not going to turn off my conscience because there’s an election,” he told Fordham. “What does it say to a young teenager struggling with their identity if a community leader is comparing them to sex offenders?”
Kean had used a similar line the day before during an ABC interview. “She [Deves] also said that half of all male trans people are sex offenders,” he told RN Breakfast host Patricia Karvelas. “I mean that’s just outright bigotry.”
It was outright balderdash, but Kean was the culprit. Karvelas did not call him out for it, but Fordham did. What Deves had said in a since deleted tweet was “Half of all males with trans identities are sex offenders, compared with less than 20% for the rest of male estate,” that term referring to the UK male prison population. As Fordham told Kean, who disingenuously refused to acknowledge context, he had just verballed Deves.
As for Kean’s claim he is trying to ensure the return of the Morrison government, little needs to be said. Much like former PM Kevin Rudd tried to ensure the return of the Gillard government in 2010, you could say. Kean is as helpful to the Coalition as former PM Malcolm Turnbull has been since he was punted. On that note, guess which miserable ghost told ABC this week he agreed with Kean that Deves should not have been preselected?
Kean is still smarting from his humiliation last year when, as Energy and Environment Minister, he was forced to withdraw Turnbull’s appointment as chair of the Net Zero Emissions and Clean Economy Board. That he nominated him in the first place says much about his judgment. As the Sydney Morning Herald reported at the time, a revolt by non-city Liberal backbenchers claimed Turnbull “had damaged the Liberal Party brand after he left politics and that he was not representative of anyone living outside the north shore or eastern suburbs of Sydney”.
As Turnbull did during the Abbott government, Kean plays to the fawning media coverage that comes with being the leading progressive in a conservative administration. Last year he used a speech to the Better Futures Forum to attack the federal government over climate action, saying “The community expects our leaders to get on with it, or get out of the way.”
And last month he demanded the federal government provide for universal affordable childcare. “This is a national issue and, with the federal budget weeks away, Canberra should lead,” he said in a speech for the NSW Women of the Year awards. “It impacts too many people; it is too important for the economic security and opportunities of women across this state.”
Indeed, he is a champion of gender equality, having last week set gender diversity targets for Treasury corporations. Earlier this month he called out Tabcorp, Boral, Premier Investments and Goodman Group, saying they needed to do more in this area. “I’m calling on listed companies to set KPIs, be transparent and take proactive steps to increase female leadership across their organisation,” he said.
Compare that with the maiden speech he gave in 2011. “As a Liberal, I believe the essential elements of our civil society must be freedom, equality, and opportunity: freedom to live our lives unfettered by the State … the opportunity to achieve the goals that we set for ourselves using our own talents and attributes, not those outcomes that government would preordain.”
It is not the Liberal Party that has changed, but rather Matt, who demands the mountain come to him. If anything, this latest episode proves that identity crisis and the angst of transitioning are not confined to gender.
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Imagine a society that was free of contrived outrage and professional offence-taking. I would feel, dare I say, blessed to experience that. Unfortunately, ours is one where the mentality ‘It’s all about me and my feelings’ prevails, as the PM discovered last week during the leaders’ debate.
Responding to a question about the National Disability Insurance Scheme from a woman with an autistic son, Morrison commiserated with her. “Jenny and I have been blessed, we’ve got two children that don’t – that haven’t had to go through that,” he said. Predictably a pile-on followed.
Shadow NDIS minister Bill Shorten said the PM was being “insensitive” and insisted he apologise. Former Greens leader Christine Milne said the comments were “downright offensive,” implying “God blessed him but not others”. Katy Gallagher, manager of opposition business in the Senate and the mother of an autistic child, said she found them “really offending and quite shocking”.
Apologising the next day, Morrison stated the obvious: he did not intend any offence in saying what he did. His accusers, many of whom angrily hold that every child is a “blessing”, undoubtedly knew this. Call me cynical, but had he instead told the mother in question “Ultimately every child is a blessing,” the same critics would be furiously insisting the PM had no idea about the realities of caring for a disabled child.
Morrison’s remarks were not dissimilar to those of Labor MP and chief opposition whip Chris Hayes. “As with any pregnancy, I think it would be every parent’s fervent hope and prayer that they would have a healthy child,” he said just five months ago during a parliamentary debate concerning mitochondrial disease.
Over to you, Katy Gallagher and Bill Shorten. When can we expect you to publicly admonish your colleague?
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