Election 2022: ‘Identity politics diminishes people’, says Scott Morrison

Scott Morrison has rejected the rise of identity politics, declaring that it diminishes people and ­divides Australia.

Warringah Liberal candidate Katherine Deves. Picture: Jason Edwards

Scott Morrison has rejected the rise of identity politics, declaring that it diminishes people and ­divides Australia.

“I am not a big fan of the Balkanisation of humanity, I tend to see people for their own virtues and not being put into a box,” the Prime Minister told The Australian in an interview in Brisbane on Monday.

Mr Morrison said running a government driven by identity politics was not inclusive.

“I think running a government on that sort of thing is divisive and certainly not inclusive.

“I think it underestimates ­people’s capacity,” he said.

During the election campaign, Mr Morrison has been criticised for supporting the Liberal candidate for Warringah, Katherine Deves, in her campaign to ban transgender women from competing in women’s sport.

Ms Deves has been accused of humiliating transgender people and has defended her use of ­“surgical mutilation” to describe operations on children as the ­correct term.

Labor and some Liberal MPs have called for her to be disendorsed as a candidate in the Sydney seat but Mr Morrison has defended her campaign to have “women compete against women” in sport.

“Australians are more than their attributes. Australians are more than their gender, their sexuality, their race, their religion – they are the sum of all their parts,” Mr Morrison said.

“Most importantly, they are Australian.”

Mr Morrison said the first thing people needed to do was to “understand … that everyone is different”.

“I think identity politics diminishes people,” he said.

“It sees them only as a product of their physical attributes and there is no doubt that people with different attributes have different challenges. I don’t dismiss that, but fundamentally if you believe in the strength and power of individuals you see them as individuals,” he said.

Mr Morrison also said he was bitterly disappointed when his ­attempts “in good faith” to introduce laws to prohibit religious discrimination were brought together with proposed changes to the Sex Discrimination Act and were “weaponised” and “wedged”.

“The only thing that ended up doing was destroying the whole endeavour,” he said.