Craig Young says ‘With the New Zealand Labour Party, we don’t know how lucky we are. Witness its performance on LGBTQI+ rights, compared to its British and Australian counterparts.’
Unfortunately, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) has always been somewhat trailing its British and New Zealand counterparts when it comes to LGBTQI+ equality. This is because of Australian demographics, namely the size of the Australian Catholic church and its representation amongst working-class parishioners. That wouldn’t have been a problem, except for a strong tradition of conservative Catholic lay activism. In the fifties, anti-communist paranoia caused a split within the ALP and the resultant ‘Democratic Labor Party’ conservative Catholic breakaway party caused ‘the Split’. Thereafter, there was bitterness present for several decades, until the DLP’s constituency aged and died off. In the interim period, social liberalism asserted itself across most of the ALP, but the submergence of the DLP led to the return of conservative Catholics to the original. Thus, we witnessed phenomena such as federal ALP backwardness over marriage equality, delaying its introduction in Australia for several years.
More recently, that has been reflected in the Albanese federal government’s refusal to introduce anti-discrimination reforms to protect LGBTQ+ staff and students in religious schools, something that was achieved here in NZ when the Human Rights Act 1993 added sexual orientation and other new grounds to our anti-discrimination laws. Religious schools don’t have those special discriminatory privileges here as a result. More recently, the Albanese government said it would not incorporate questions about LGBTQ+ Australians within the forthcoming federal census. Given that census data is used to allocate resources and funding to particular constituencies, this has again incensed Australia’s LGBTQ+ communities. Fortunately, several ALP MPs have revolted against the federal government’s backwardness over this issue. Aware that its actions had triggered a growing backbench revolt, Albanese readjusted his earlier exclusion. The next Australian federal census will now have a question on sexual identity, but none on gender identity and intersex status. Needless to say, this is just as unsatisfactory and LGBT organisations inside and outside the ALP have expressed their annoyance over this development.
When it comes to the British Labour Party, things were once far better. During the Blair administration of the Noughties, there were several reforms that dealt with residual inequalities within LGBT communities that were accomplished. The gay male age of consent was reduced to sixteen, on par with straight (and lesbian) adolescents. Civil partnerships were introduced as a prelude to full marriage equality, and LGBTQ+ British inhabitants were protected under an anti-discrimination Equalities Act. Inclusive adoption reform and trans-inclusive anti-discrimination laws occurred well in advance of New Zealand. But then…
While all was well when the modernising Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron won power and introduced marriage equality at the same time as New Zealand, unfortunately, turmoil lay ahead for the Tories, as they lurched into factionalism and populist backwardness under Boris Johnson over the Brexit referendum. Consequently, a tiresome series of moral panics began against UK transgender communities, as political objectives that were achieved easily under our Ardern Labour-led governments faced stonewalling and then deliberate obstruction and opposition.
As the Conservatives descended into chaos, a risk-averse Labour leader took charge of the party, Sir Keir Starmer. Unfortunately, Starmer did not actively resist Conservative anti-transgender moral panics, instead creating little opposition by stating continuity of policy over such issues despite the absence of substantive evidence for the anti-transgender case. This has appalled many moderate UK Labour MPs and angered the LGBTQ+ communities.
What about the New Zealand Labour Party? Since the mid-eighties, New Zealand Labour has been seen as a reliable ally of our communities. It was the Lange Labour administration that passed homosexual law reform, provided the votes for antidiscrimination law reform within the Human Rights Act 1993, passed civil union legislation in the Noughties and a Labour private members bill introduced marriage equality and inclusive adoption reform in 2013. Under Jacinda Ardern, gender self-identification laws and conversion therapy bans were passed into law, and the current Hipkins leadership has been reliably supportive when it comes to transgender rights. So, why does Labour seem to attract so few social conservatives?
Part of the problem that the Christian Right has with Labour is that militant fundamentalists are viewed as potentially disloyal to the party, and prone to putting their sectarian religious conservative ideology above party discipline. For that reason, few get selected for higher party list places or constituencies and election seats. On its side, the Christian Right isn’t seen as a neutral movement, but pandering toward the centre-right of New Zealand politics. For that reason, it is cold-shouldered by Labour when it is in government.
Chris Hipkins is no Keir Starmer or Anthony Albanese, nor might any eventual future successors be. As for the Greens, they have a tendency to provide passive support, for which we are grateful, but New Zealand Labour tends to be the centre-left party that has done the substantive work and effort when it comes to LGBTQI+ rights. This is not the case in Australia, and in Britain, Keir Starmer appears to have confused opportunist reticence and tactical caution with substantive policy. We are lucky to be in New Zealand!
