Labor Lost One In Five LGBT Voters To Greens, Says Survey
Image: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (extreme right) and foreign minister Penny Wong (third from right) at the Sydney WorldPride march on March 5, 2023. Image: Twitter
Labor lost one in five LGBTQI voters to the Greens at the 2022 federal elections, a new survey by advocacy group Just.Equal found.
The study surveyed around 2,430 LGBTQI voters, mainly those who had voted Labor or Green in the previous elections, from 149 of Australia’s 151 electorates.
According to Just.Equal, around 21.3 per cent of the respondents who had voted Labor in the 2019 elections, said that they had transferred their vote to the Greens in the 2022 elections.
Labor’s record on the Religious Discrimination Bill and its limited commitments to LGBTQI rights were the reasons that the respondents gave for dumping Labor at the last elections, said Just.Equal.
‘Not Doing Enough’
“The survey shows Labor lost votes at the last election because it was not doing enough to ensure equality and inclusion for all LGBTIQA+ communities, and was seen as pandering to those who oppose our rights,” Just.Equal Australia spokesperson, Rodney Croome, said in a statement.
“To coincide with World Pride, Labor committed funds to LGBTIQA+ health research and overseas advocacy, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese marched in the Mardi Gras Parade, but as welcome as this is, Labor will need to do more to reclaim its lost LGBTIQA+ voters.”
“If Labor wants to win back disillusioned LGBTIQA+ voters it must develop a stronger reform agenda and find a louder voice to advocate for those reforms. Given how concerned trans and gender diverse voters are about the growing threat of anti-trans prejudice, only a party that addresses this head-on will win over these voters,” said Croome.
The organisation will present its findings to Labor MPs in Canberra this week. “We will be telling the government it’s time to commit to a range of long overdue reforms,” said Croome.
A Fast-Growing Demographic
Just.Equal has drawn up a list of issues that it wants the Albanese government to focus on. This includes protection for LGBTQI students and teachers in religious schools, protections for LGBTQI staff, clients and volunteers in faith-based social services, including hospitals, employment services and accommodation providers, national LGBTQI anti-vilification law, counting LGBTQI people in the Census, appointing an LGBTQI Human Rights Commissioner, medicare and PBS rebates for gender-affirming health care and for people who are intersex and have been subjected to non-consenting surgeries now requiring lifelong medical services, a national ban on unnecessary “normalising” surgeries on intersex infants, removing the gay blood ban and reinstating the ministerial Equality Portfolio
Dr Sharon Dane, a social science researcher who assisted with the survey design and analysis of the data, pointed to data from the US that shows LGBTQI people are the “fastest-growing voting demographics, with one-in-seven voters likely to identify as LGBTIQA+ by 2030.”
“As Australia is not likely to differ greatly when it comes to the number of people who are LGBTIQA+, the Just.Equal survey results suggest our politicians need to seriously listen to the needs of LGBTIQA+ communities or risk losing more votes to those who will,” said Dane.
Some time ago Bill Shorten reversed the wording on a Medicare form that had inclusively read “birthing parent” to “mother”. At the time I wrote to him, and to my local ALP MP asking how that decision fitted with ALP policies regarding LGBTIQ+ people. I am still yet to receive a response some 9 months later.