There’s an empirical test for divisiveness. If something appeases one section of the community and enrages another, it would seem to fit the bill.
Within a matter of days this week, the Albanese government went from levelling that charge at Peter Dutton to being accused of it themselves.
Having raised hopes and expectations in the LGBTQ+ community that new questions in the 2026 census meant they would finally, literally, be counted, it backtracked out of fear – fear of exposing transgender people in particular to a bigoted debate and of heralding another round of culture wars that would drown out its economic message.
Landing such a spectacular own goal and ending up doing the very thing you’re trying to avoid – via something as mundane as the non-collection of statistical data – is quite the political achievement.
Jim Chalmers’ free character analysis of Dutton as “the most divisive leader” in modern Australia – inserted carefully into a speech on Monday night – may seem unconnected to the mess he and his colleagues are now mopping up over whether or not to add sexuality and gender questions to the census. But there’s a thread running through it that extends beyond Chalmers’ involvement in both.
The treasurer’s salvo at the opposition leader goes directly to how Labor is seeking to prosecute its case for re-election. Ideally, it would be focused on policy and the fact that the Coalition has virtually none.
Chalmers argues it’s precisely because Dutton hasn’t outlined a policy agenda and doesn’t want to talk about it that the Coalition is leaning so heavily on issues around national security and talking up the risk of people coming from Gaza.
The treasurer’s thesis is Dutton is choosing divisiveness to cover his own policy failures. But there’s a parallel argument about motive: that with political fires burning on a range of fronts, the government has found its own alternative leaning post in Dutton’s unpopularity and some detected public doubts about him as a prime minister.
As the election contest heads towards the full-blown campaigning stage, the major parties are beginning to remind voters it won’t just be about judging what each party and leader offers individually but weighing them against each other and considering the consequences of their choice.
Character will absolutely come into it. Labor will continue to emphasise aspects of Dutton’s personality that they know make people hesitate – the divisive, nasty tag – and the Coalition will do the same about Anthony Albanese, calling him weak.
On the policy front, there’s a complication for Labor, despite the advantages incumbency delivers through the capacity to do things for people.
Facing an opposition’s fear agenda, it would like to be countering with hope as well as help. But it tried hope at last year’s voice referendum and that failed. Since then, the opposition has been able to argue that the government’s hope agenda diverted it from taking care of core business – managing the economy and easing the cost of living. And that’s a problem for Labor.
In order to counter that and offer hope again – and credibly – it needs to be able to demonstrate that business is indeed getting done and things are on the right track. So it’s trying to remove anything that might expose it to a new scare or drag it into another unwanted culture war and stop its messages getting through.
The census questions amounted to one of those. Separately, Albanese had already shelved promised religious discrimination legislation, arguing that it couldn’t go forward without Coalition support – code for “if they’re not backing, they’re attacking”. When the whole country is hurting financially and most people want governments to focus on is the pressure they’re under, it didn’t want to be forced into public arguments about faith and sexuality.
At the top of the government, there’s a view that adding the new census questions fell into the same category. Requiring a legislative instrument which could be disallowed in the Senate, some believed government critics on the right – and possibly on the left – would argue variously that the questions went too far or not far enough, exposing vulnerable communities and a vulnerable government to attack. The Greens say the suggestion they’d be a party to that is ridiculous.
Unfortunately for Labor though, the attempt to strip that particular barnacle drew more blood than anticipated. Having already been let down over the religious discrimination delay, the LGBTQ+ community was apoplectic when the planned new census questions were going the same way.
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Adding the questions had been a Labor promise. The Australian Bureau of Statistics had issued a statement of regret after the 2021 census when the Morrison government refused to do it then. Even allowing for some people’s ongoing reluctance to answer honestly, such questions elicit at least baseline data. No questions, no data. No data, no idea where to put resources.
Bizarrely, nobody in the government seemed to anticipate the vitriol or volume of the response – at least, nobody who’d been party to the backflip plan. It didn’t go to cabinet until Monday of this week, when it was presented as a fait accompli.
The ABS had been notified on Friday and advocates from the most-affected communities alerted on Sunday when a scheduled briefing ahead of the mandatory testing phase for the new questions was suddenly cancelled.
Senior ministers weren’t asked about it publicly until Wednesday, when acting prime minister Richard Marles said the decision sought to avoid “divisive” debate. On Thursday morning, Chalmers took to ABC Radio National to say it was to prevent “nastiness” but left the door open to change, pointedly noting the census wasn’t going to be held for another two years.
The reversal was already in train by then but Albanese was at the Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga, likely judging it neither the place nor time to be making public statements on the issue.
Once back, he spoke to ABC radio in Melbourne on Friday morning and executed a part reversal, declaring there would now be one extra question in the census – on sexuality. Without confirming directly, he made it clear that other proposed questions on sex characteristics – which would have quantified data on transgender and intersex people – were still not proceeding.
Irony may be an overused word but there are several in where the whole schemozzle wound up.
Having been unwilling to proceed and prosecute the argument in favour of what they’d promised, the government opted to retreat instead to avoid a damaging debate, and generated exactly that.
They also gave Dutton twin victories. In response to the reversal of the reversal, Dutton said Australia had a “weak prime minister who doesn’t know what he believes in”.
Just to rub it in, he added that if the government wanted LGBTQ+ people counted in the census, he was “fine with that”. Divisive? Certainly not. At least not when acquiescence hurts the other mob more.