A trans flag flies out the front of the Victorian Parliament, proudly announcing that we have no meaningful political opposition in this state. Welcome to Woketoria!
The Leader of the Opposition Liberal Party, John Pesutto, aligns perfectly with Labor Premier Daniel Andrews on identity politics – or gender ID – when it comes to women’s rights. This week, Pesutto led a successful ploy to suspend Liberal MP Moira Deeming for nine months. It followed his earlier announcement that he was intending to move a motion to expel Deeming for her involvement in Posie Parker’s Let Women Speak tour, now widely (and misleadingly) reported in the Australian media as an ‘anti-trans rally with neo-Nazis’.
This sequence of events represents an astonishing sell-out for a ‘conservative’ leader. What is he conserving, exactly? His political career? It sure isn’t the quaint category of woman! He certainly was not conserving the rights of women in Victoria who need laws to safeguard sex as a protected category. Instead, he moved against a woman in his own party who had the integrity and courage to stand up for her convictions, which Pesutto has forgotten he doesn’t have to agree with.
Deeming is unfortunately a victim of the new Liberal-Labor consensus and, concomitantly, the lack of any meaningful opposition. As a former teacher from the western suburbs, Deeming has already left her political home once having come from a distinguished line of Labor Party politicians (not that you’d know it from her Wikipedia page).
In her maiden speech, Deeming said she was from ‘good Catholic Labor stock … born and bred on the political left coming from a long line of union leaders, card-carrying Labor Party members, and Labor MPs’. Her great-grandfather was John Joseph Holland, a western suburbs Labor MP for over thirty-five years as well as a councillor for the city of Melbourne. She also has Māori heritage and chose suffragette colours for her maiden speech. Hardly your average ‘far Right extremist’!
Needless to say, she has unreservedly condemned the neo-Nazi gate-crashers at Posie Parker’s Let Women Speak event and questioned the wisdom of police ushering them onto the steps of Parliament. But, of course, it is optics that matter in a largely simulated media-driven reality. In the meeting called to discuss her position in the party, Deeming was told by one of the leadership team that her image ‘can’t be rehabilitated’ and therefore her position in the party was untenable.
Labor was Deeming’s natural home, but alas, an anachronistic belief in the ‘category of woman’ has her rapidly escorted to the ‘crunchy con’ waiting room where those of us who are old Left (whatever that means) hang around in liminal shock wondering what happened to our political class. I have a few sheep and a flock of hens so this helps me to understand: it’s a mix of mindless conformity and a corporate-backed pecking order, but I digress.
Originally, 11 out of 31 MPs in the Liberal party voted to expedite the motion to expel Deeming, while 7 conservative stalwarts tried to delay the motion and find an ‘alternative sanction’ for the civil infraction of believing in the category of woman. In the end, Deeming submitted ‘new material’ which led Pesutto to announce:
‘The new material she supplied this morning opened the doorway to a sensible proposal that I put to the party room that saw her accept the nine months [suspension], losing the party whip position as well. Given Moira had proved what I had been seeking and recognised why it was important to do that. The conduct I wanted condemned has been condemned.’
To which Deeming replied:
‘I unreservedly condemn the poor-taste Nazi jokes and Nazi analogies listed in the annex of evidence against me. I believe I am innocent of all imputations and accusations of any connection whatsoever with Nazism in any shape or form and any bigotry whatsoever toward the LGBTQ+ community. I have repeatedly and consistently condemned these heinous views, and I reiterate my condemnation of these views in the strongest possible terms.’
Pesutto further told the ABC that he would ‘not be ruling out further punishment’.
‘If [the Party room] sees evidence that there’s a difference between what we were assured in written and oral presentations to the party room and what is being posted on social media then yeah, there will be consequences with that. The party will be looking very closely, all of us, who believed what was put to us. If, as I’ve seen this evening, there are comments on social media that are inconsistent with that … that is a matter Moira would have to take very seriously because there will be repercussions. I am determined to make diversity and inclusion a top priority in the Liberal Party and anyone who cannot live up to that will not be given a platform.’
Just as the Liberal Party caved on the longest lockdown in the world with not an oppositional peep, despite the profound damage to human well-being, children’s learning, socialisation, and the economy – not to mention irreversible damage to civil liberties and the institution of government itself – now they’re unwilling to stand up for their own MP as she defends a mix of conservative family values and an historically progressive understanding of women’s rights.
If you want to know why heterodox political alliances are forming between conservatives and gender-critical feminists, or between those who are anti-lockdown on the left with the working class ‘deplorables’ and libertarians on the centre-right, or indeed why the far-Right is growing, look no further than this tragic farce. Legitimate concerns regarding children’s safety and women’s rights are dismissed outright as the LibLab elite consensus bulldozes on.
Where does this leave us?
The Labor Party has betrayed the working-class base that made up its core constituency, themselves decimated after 30 years of neo-liberalism or what, in Australia, we used to call ‘economic rationalism’. Under successive state and federal governments, wealth disparity has increased significantly. Poverty is a major problem, with older separated or divorced women suffering the highest rates of homelessness. As the doyens of identity politics have asserted, profound and ever-increasing wealth inequality – that disproportionately affects women – is of less importance than pronouns and gender ID.
Likewise, the Liberal Party have betrayed their core values: the sanctity of individual rights and freedom of speech, alongside conservative values regarding the importance of tradition and the sanctity of the family.
What do we have left? A composite LabLib Party who stand for nothing but careerism and global capitalism – note, not small-scale capitalism which would arrest their descent into tyranny: small business, small farms, the corner store – no, they support corporations that offshore jobs and taxes, exist in ever-increasing monopolies that then buy out government and the culture industries, produce more and more ‘bullshit jobs’ and, together with the corporate-state, impose a stranglehold of bureaucracy over everyday life. To this we may add the imposition hyper-liberalism in law and social policy that is anathema to ordinary people. The conflation of sex with gender and the destruction of women’s sex-based rights is evidence of the militant march of progress.
In the end, we have neither the benefits of Labor: organised class opposition to unfettered capitalism; nor the benefits of classical liberalism: the sacrosanct rights of the individual and his or her free speech. Remember the classical liberal adage? One has the right to an opinion, even if those in power (or the majority) disagree with it. Our town square is – or was – defined by this fundamental civilisational pillar. Moreover, the right to be wrong is a pillar of academic, journalistic, scientific, and political freedom. We are so inured to the technocratic governance model now that we have forgotten this.
If Liberal democracy is given life through an opposing generative tension between liberalism – or the rights of the individual – and democracy – or rule by the people – this tension is increasingly coming unstuck.
What we have now is the fundamental moral bankruptcy of both sides of this creative tension. The Labor Party has moved into their controlling shadow where government knows best regardless of the people while the Liberals have collapsed into crass commercialism devoid of a values framework. As part of this they are now in unison with the Labor Party on the most fundamental issues of the day, and indeed, on the shaming of one of their own MPs.
With Deeming’s suspension, we have witnessed another grave injustice and have lost of any meaningful opposition in Victorian politics.
