Barnaby Joyce discovers the political power of pinkwashing

Australian conservatives frequently warn us against importing foreign values — perhaps imported pinkwashing should be added to the list, writes Carl Gopalkrishnan.

PARMINDER SINGH'S REPORTED COMMENTS about gay people were appalling. There is no point pretending otherwise, or pretending they do not expose a problem within multicultural Australia.

Homophobia exists within culturally and religiously diverse communities, and those of us who believe in multiculturalism do it no favours by denying that.

For some LGBTIQ+ people, particularly those within multicultural families, comments like Singh’s can be deeply painful. They reopen an old and sometimes brutal question: must I choose between being queer and belonging to my family, faith or culture?

But listening to the public response, another thought occurred to me: here we go again — political recruitment 101.

Suddenly multicultural queer Australians become particularly valuable. We can be asked to explain our communities, condemn their prejudices and provide evidence for arguments about the failures of multiculturalism.

The fear involved can be genuine, which is precisely why the technique works. The threat can be real and the recruitment can also be real, which is what does your head in. I know this because, in a counter-terrorism environment in my own work, I experienced even law enforcement playing my sexuality, fear and privacy to achieve its own aims.

The good guys and the bad guys read from the same playbook when it comes to queer Australia.

The kids are alright — it's the One Nation Adults who are a concern

From Vietnam to today’s anti-Hanson rallies, young Australians have a proud history of speaking truth to power while the adults tell them to get back to school.

Which brings me to Barnaby Joyce.

Joyce was right to condemn Singh’s comments. But then, defending One Nation, he suggested it might be “one of the gayest parties in Australia”. Joyce, for all his comic timing, is not a dumb man. He knows better.

Having gay people in a political party is no character reference for everything else that party believes, including its renewed attacks on multiculturalism.

Now, nobody with any sense would ever compare Barnaby Joyce to a Middle Eastern leader, but we have watched this manoeuvre play out in the Middle East for decades.

It has a name: pinkwashing.

LGBTIQ+ acceptance becomes evidence of wider political virtue while the homophobia of another community becomes evidence of its cultural backwardness. Queer people become useful as proof of who champions individual rights more and, by implication, who the bad guys must be.

Australian conservatives frequently warn us against importing foreign values. Perhaps imported pinkwashing should be added to the list.

Singh is therefore neither a sophisticated nor particularly original political problem. His comments deserve condemnation, but people with homophobic views are hardly difficult to find.

What matters is how useful such a person can become. Before the next election, another Singh will come along, another offensive comment will be found, another invitation will arrive for multicultural queer Australians to choose which side we are on.

With One Nation increasingly consequential in Australian politics, expect more of it.

Barnaby and Co sit down!

Barnaby Joyce recently made headlines (again) for a bizarre mid-interview disciplinary action against a canine companion.

But recruitment requires the world to be rather simpler than it actually is. Bias against multiculturalism helps pinkwashing in this case, and racism within LGBTIQ+ communities is already documented.

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner explicitly recognises racism and religious discrimination occurring within queer communities. So we can dispense with the question of whether queer Australia has a racism problem as though the possibility itself were controversial.

Queer people can be racist. We can be Islamophobic. We can oppose multiculturalism. We can vote for One Nation. Sexuality does not confer political virtue any more than ethnicity or faith does.

This is also why our LGBTIQ+ peak organisations should be careful that their legitimate advocacy doesn’t play into recruitment campaigns.

They should condemn Singh’s comments and defend queer people hurt by them. But multicultural queer Australians should not suddenly become valuable when our voices can be used against our own communities, while receiving considerably less attention when we speak about racism within queer Australia.

Neither should frightened queer people be encouraged to believe that safety requires identifying another minority as the enemy.

Some of us remember a human-rights movement in which fighting homophobia and fighting racism were understood as parts of the same moral project.

That movement was never perfect, and queer communities were never magically free of racism. But there was an aspiration towards solidarity: our experience of discrimination might teach us something about the dignity of people unlike ourselves.

I grieve the loss of some of that memory.

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As Australian politics becomes more polarised, our community should expect more invitations to be frightened, protected and recruited.

Fear is powerful political material, particularly when it grows from something genuinely threatening.

But radicalisation is not something that happens only in ethnic or faith communities. Our shared queer community is made up of human beings too, and we are no less susceptible to the comfort of good guys, bad guys or a ceramic toaster promising to keep us safe.

The choice remains ours. When a political party offers protection, we can ask what else they want us to believe, whom they need us to fear, and what part of ourselves or somebody else’s humanity we are being asked to surrender in return.

Nobody is too enlightened to be recruited.

Singh has since apologised for his comments, but the political usefulness of the episode remains.

Carl Gopalkrishnan is an Australian artist and policy practitioner with long-standing experience in multicultural policy, social cohesion and community engagement.