Doug PollardTranscript - Corey Irlam Sep 9
Corey Irlam, from the Australian Coalition for Equality, sizes up the post-election landscape.
DOUG: Now, we’ve just had an election. You might have noticed. We didn’t have a result for a long time, you might have noticed that, too – but we now know who our Prime Minister is, it’s Julia Gillard. We also know that things are going to start getting interesting from here on so I want to take a look at just how interesting they might be, with my next guest from the Australian Coalition for Equality, Corey Irlam. Good morning, Corey.
COREY: Good morning, Doug – and yes, you’re correct. My red-headed cousin has got in.
DOUG: [laughs] Yes, she just about squeezed in. Even the Fairfax press, never mind the Murdoch press, are going on about: oh, she’ll never be able to do it, cracks are appearing already. ‘This is never going to work’. What’s your take on it?
COREY: I think on that point people need to recognise that these whole, last two weeks negotiations with the independents have been about not blocking supply and not doing frivolous, no confidence motions. It hasn’t been about them joining and signing up to the ALP. So it’s right and justified there should be a difference of opinion on how to tackle certain issues.
DOUG: Yes. It’s going back to an older way of doing business, the way it used to be done in England. The way it’s still done in the US. That - - -
COREY: (and)In many parts of Europe.
DOUG: In fact, you have to build a fresh coalition for every bill you put out there, don’t you?
COREY: In the US, yes. You have 150 or more in the lower house - - -
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
COREY: - - - and there’s often 20 or 30 sponsors to a bill and then they’re coddling together each, individual vote. Which is why lobbyists in the US are paid much, much better than anyone in Australia.
DOUG: You’ll have to put in for a rise, Corey - - -
COREY: I don’t get paid at all these days.
DOUG: Well, then you’d better put in for a rise. You’re going to have a lot of work to do. M’mm - - -
COREY: It’s going to be interesting for the gay and lesbian community, the election brought about some good results in the surveys that we did to party. Most notably the fact that we have bipartisan support for antidiscrimination laws with a little bit of fudging ‘round the edges as to exactly what they’ll do - - -
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
COREY: - - - that will happen in the next 12-months, I think the bill will be introduced within that timeframe – maybe, 15, 18-months and that will probably be the first thing off the rank of substantive LGBT reform – LGBTI reform, I should say. Hopefully, it will affect all our community unlike parts in the US when we had the Non-discrimination Bill omitting transgender community.
DOUG: Yes. They took ‘transgender’ out of it in order to get it through, didn’t they?
COREY: They did and it didn’t get through.
DOUG: (and)Then it didn’t anyway – bad move there; now, there’s been a lot of chatter on the Internet about how we push the equal marriage boat from here. There seems to be a division of opinion among activists, generally. As to whether the idea the Greens have to bring on their same-sex marriage bill immediately or pretty immediately and demand a conscience vote, is a good idea or not? Some people seem to think if that gets up and then fails, that’s closed the door and instead we ought to go after civil unions. Some people think if we go after civil unions and that gets up, that’ll slam the door on marriage for the foreseeable future. How do you see it - - -
COREY: Look, the Australian Coalition for Equality’s policy is that we support civil unions at a state base level – partnerships, relationships register there are many different names but more importantly that those relationship registers or whatever you call them should have a ceremony, should be open to both heterosexual and same-sex couples and that they stay at the state base level until such time as we reform the Marriage Act. The reason for that is we feel that introducing a civil unions scheme in the national level is not an appropriate way to achieve equality, it’s accepting second best and so we definitely wouldn’t be supporting the structure of the civil unions scheme at the national level until such time we have marriage equality. How to go about getting marriage equality – well, I fully support the Greens introducing the Bill and Sarah Hanson-Young last week sent out a media release saying that she would be introducing it in the first, few days of the new parliament. In the Senate. (and)What that means is that that Bill will stay on the books until such time as there’s time available for it to be debated and that could be anywhere throughout the next term. There’s a certain conversation that needs to happen around when is that right time. At the moment we have no conscience votes from either the Labor or Liberal Party on the issue and so, we would see what we saw last time. Which was a very scripted and very disengenuine(sic) debate on some people’s part, when we had the vote on the Bill in 2009.
DOUG: Which got us absolutely nowhere? Really. Except to keep the issue on the agenda and I think that’s part of the argument about whether we should let this – you know, support this Bill going forward, again. ‘Cause some people are saying if this goes forward again and it doesn’t get a conscience vote and it’s just another voting-by-the-numbers like it was last time, what does it achieve except to piss people off?
COREY: Look, I think you need to understand there is a strategic difference between introducing a bill and immediately bringing on a vote for that bill when the necessary work hasn’t been done in the background. Until we have indications that the Labor Party is going to change its policy or for that matter, the Liberal Party vote in regards to marriage as a whole. Or even in regards to a conscience vote then there’s not going to be much more other than Greens support and everyone else saying ‘no, we don’t support it because that’s our Party policy’.
DOUG: But what are the chances of getting, say, one or more of the independents to flex a little muscle and say that they want to see this come to a conscience vote?
COREY: I think that there’s a very big difference between the argument of ‘we want a fair conscience vote’, ‘we want to see a vote’, ‘we want a real debate’ – all of those things – and the practical reality of that happening. My understanding is that in order for that to happen in the Labor Party it has to go to the National Executive or the national conference. Both of which aren’t looking likely to support a conscience vote anytime soon and in order for the Liberal Party to do so they would need to do it in their Party room; again, they would probably see that as a defeat toward their position of opposing marriage equality. Now, those positions need to be talked about with those parties, post-election. Now that there’s time to do so. Some realistic decisions need to be made once we have further information on what is the likely outcome as to how we should strategically push. They’re conversations that organisations like Australian Marriage Equality are already having, I believe?
DOUG: Yes. So I understand – m’mm, we will actually be talking to Alex Greenwich later on but not necessarily about that I don’t think. A lot of behind-the-scenes things going on, still - - -
COREY: Yeah and I think people need to understand we have a full parliamentary term that should last three years.
DOUG: M’mm, yes. That’s the other thing I was going to ask you about – is it going to last three years or are we in for a train wreck and back to the polls in – say, six months?
COREY: I don’t think it’ll be six months but – you know, if there really is a controversial piece of legislation and the government wants to get through but doesn’t have support of their coalition of independent Greens then there may be a reason to go back to the polls earlier. However, part of the commitment that the independents have been looking for was that a date would be set for the election and that it’d be held within 3-months either side of that date. So, there would be [indistinct] of when it would be held and that everybody would work towards maintaining parliament until that time.
DOUG: Yeah, but I mean - - -
COREY: It’s change-over time and it’s possible that there could be one but there’s nothing going at the moment – well, nothing in the pipeline at the moment that we know about - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
COREY: - - - that would split the parliament and cause a new election.
DOUG: Yes. But you’ve got Tony Abbott quietly rampaging I think is the way to put it at the moment, he’s obviously looking for absolutely anything he can do to drive a wedge into this and create a crisis if at all possible. He’ll have the support of the Murdoch press in particular and I suppose to some extent, the Fairfax press, too, seem to be fairly hostile to this new government, too.
COREY: Well, they backed a loser. Of course they’re going to be hostile. When the Murdoch press was backing Tony Abbott to form government it didn’t happen and they backed him quite hard the last, couple days of the campaign so it’s common place in situations like this for there to be speculation on destabilisation. But based on the evidence and things coming through there doesn’t seem to be anything that would justify that. At this point.
DOUG: The other thing is, can anybody afford another election?
COREY: Well, I don’t think either of the major parties can. Given how much they’ve spent on the last one. But you know, you never know where money comes from – I think for the gay and lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex communities this presents us with a unique opportunity. We don’t just have to deal with one of two parties – to use Bob Katter’s term, the Coles and Woolworth’s politics.
DOUG: [laughs]
COREY: If we’re now able to deal with IGA and also deal with – m’mm, good-old discount version coming out from Germany – I can’t think of their name? Aldi - - -
DOUG: Aldi.
COREY: Aldi.
DOUG: [laughs]
COREY: M’mm – and so, we’re able to raise our issues. We’re able to convince private member bills to be put in, to deal with our issues when necessary. In doing so we’re able to hopefully get our issues having more serious attention from the parliament beyond what they have been in the past. Now, whether that translates into marriage equality being passed this term I think that’s doubtful. It’s possible but it’s not looking great at the moment. I think there’ll be a lot of attention focussed on antidiscrimination and in doing that, there’s also the issue of the Sex Files that needs to be dealt with. Whether it’d be separately or whether it be(sic) part of that process.
DOUG: That’s(sic) the changes necessary for the transgender community.
COREY: Yes, that’s right. So this is where a transgender person has a legal document saying they’re Gender A – male or female, but their affirmed gender and way they present to society is Gender B – male or female.
DOUG: Right.
COREY: In some cases, a desire for them to have no specified gender on their documentation.
DOUG: Well, we’ve all got that to look forward to, Corey. But we’re going to have to call it a day, there. Thank you for your time this morning. You’re obviously going to have an interesting time, you’re looking forward to it aren’t you?
COREY: I’m already in the middle of it all and I’m - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
COREY: - - - loving being back from holidays, already.
DOUG: [laughs] Okay. Corey Irlam, thank you very much.
COREY: Thanks, Doug. ‘Bye, ‘bye.
DOUG: ‘Bye.
