“You’re not getting the red carpet!” It’s the fairly simple message we gave to Malcolm Turnbull by not officially inviting him to the Sydney Mardi Gras parade in 2017. Honestly, we could have delivered a more acidic statement if we wanted to, but it was the least we could do to retain some of our dignity.
Along with other members of Community Action Against Homophobia, I brought the proposal to the parade’s annual general meeting after it was first pushed by one of the parade’s board directors, James Brechney. It was gratifying to register our dissatisfaction with the man who earlier this year made headlines as the first sitting prime minister to attend the parade.
The reality is that he hijacked the event. He got plenty of media as, one cynical selfie after another, he spruiked his supposedly gay-friendly values. But what did we get? He’s been nothing but a conduit for homophobes since then. Now he fills the tired boots of chief explainer of why we can’t have equality.
So we enjoyed seeing him shift in his seat as he was forced to respond to an interviewer asking him about his “uninvitation”. Channelling the “I have lots of gay friends” mantra of the homophobes he keeps company with, he replied that he has “had so many invitations” to the Mardi Gras parties of his friends that he and his wife Lucy would have lots of options.
Personally, I’d rather Malcolm and Lucy celebrate their marriage in private at Mardi Gras 2017. As long as he keeps us from enjoying the same, rubbing their government-approved relationship in the faces of us second-class citizens is just unseemly. You’d think his own public relations people might be able to point out the obvious indelicacy of it all.
But the public relations know-alls reckon it is our side which has erred by calling Turnbull out. On his blog, Andrew Bolt accuses us of the denouncing even our “friends as evil”. He asks me: “Is this the way to win them over?”
 Thanks for the tip, Bolt. Of course I deeply respect the strategic input of a man who warns of a slippery slope from legalising same-sex marriage to legalising bestiality.
But yes, people on our side have asked the same question. In fact, it would be reasonable to say the reaction to our red carpet retraction has been nearly hysterical. We have been questioned about everything from whether we’re alienating Turnbull as an ally and threatening corporate sponsorship of the parade to whether we are carrying through an exercise in Trotskyist entryism into Mardi Gras in the style of Jeremy Corbyn’s “takeover” of the British Labour Party.
Right. First up, someone claiming to be on our team while doing everything to uphold the status quo is not an ally; they’re a liability. But really, Mardi Gras started as a protest against the police brutalising our community. It was organised by gay liberationists and revolutionaries. It may be swarmed by corporate sponsors these days, but Mardi Gras will never be theirs. It belongs to us, and we say Turnbull’s not welcome.

Cat Rose

Mardi Gras snubs Turnbull, a small taste of what’s deserved

Last week I had the displeasure of talking with the attorney-general George Brandis during a video conference convened with LGBTI organisations around the country. At least I can report that he did not get what he bargained for.
The meeting was to discuss the terms of the government’s proposed plebiscite on marriage equality. But not only did every single organisation there reject the government’s proposals and push for it to just pass the damn thing, I had the job of giving him the earful he and the entire government deserve.
The Liberal government has dragged this issue out for years beyond its expiry date, vilified us as paedophiles and groomers over the Safe Schools program and is now insisting on a free pass for the bigots desperate to run a campaign promoting inequality. Yet we are expected to be grateful for any opportunity the Liberal Party gives us to have “dialogue”. What bullshit. As I said to Brandis:
“I will not thank you for giving up a measly hour of your time; you should have consulted us 12 years ago before you ever passed the homophobic Marriage Amendment Act that has put us in this position today. We’ve been through six prime ministers since then – primary schoolchildren would be able to pass this reform. The troglodytes in parliament being unable to pass a simple reform based on the fact that you made a promise that you wouldn’t is an absolute embarrassment to yourself.”
There are too many who like to “tone police” our community in the media and tell us that we owe these people “respectful” discussion. Well, as one activist put it to me afterwards, “There is a time for politeness and there is a time to tell the truth”.
As we know, a lot of people hoped for better with the supposedly liberal Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister. That hope is well and truly dead. Now is the time for anger. Did Brandis not think we would be even angrier when he used the meeting to call us all “fools” for thinking history is on our side?
Let’s ignore those who advise us to doff our caps and crawl to them as we ask them to please stop flogging us. As another person commented, “We’re flowers for humanity, not potpourri for the dead”.

We’re flowers for humanity, not potpourri for the dead

Marriage equality – it should be simple. Yet a ridiculous number of roadblocks continue to be thrown in front of it by people elected allegedly to represent the country’s will.
Now that parliament has been recalled, Bill Shorten has pointed out that the prime minister could use this opportunity to finally grant a free vote on the issue. Using the strongest language he knows, Shorten said Turnbull would be “a traitor to the cause” if he does not.
Let’s get one thing straight: Malcolm Turnbull has voted against marriage equality every time it has come up, and has now gutted the Safe Schools program to placate the bile-filled flat earth society in his party.
More than 70 percent of people now support marriage equality in Australia.
He may have made an appearance at Mardi Gras this year, but it is too kind to suggest he might be some kind of “traitor” to “our cause” at this point.
But Shorten is right about one thing: the government has every chance to give us what we want – marriage equality now.
Instead, Turnbull insists that we need to wait until next year so that a plebiscite can tell us what the people really want. Politicians have known for years exactly what people want; they have just ignored it at every turn.
All the talk about “democracy” and letting the people decide is just the latest cover for a bigoted Liberal Party that wants to spend another year or more denying, by delaying, basic civil rights and ignoring public opinion. The attorney-general, George Brandis, won’t even release draft legislation for a plebiscite until after the next election.
Liberal Party MPs have said it would distract from more important issues, and that their party would be divided by it. Divided by what? It should be pretty simple to ask people whether they are for or against basic civil rights.
Anti-discrimination legislation may serve for every other contentious issue, but, we are reminded, there is something uniquely terrifying about two people of the same sex getting hitched.
Bollocks.
A lot of objections to a plebiscite rest on it being “divisive” to have a public debate on the question. Liberal Party antics show we can expect it to be divisive either way. It was no less hurtful to have them gut Safe Schools by executive order.
If it is debated in parliament this month, we will likewise have to stand up to people who object to our existence, and if it is passed we will have to stand against a right wing minority trying to tear things down.
But they are a minority. More than 70 percent of people now support marriage equality in Australia, a truly impressive majority against government-sponsored homophobia.
If a plebiscite actually came about, we should expect to win. But there is no reason why we should wait.

Stop the endless delay on marriage equality

The coroner described the story of Manjit Singh’s death as a 21st-century retelling of George Orwell’s How the poor die. Written in 1946 about his experience as a patient in a Parisian public hospital, Orwell’s essay tells of the indifference shown to the poor during their last moments in a world that owed them better: “This business of people just dying like animals, with nobody standing by, nobody interested, the death not even noticed till the morning. This happened more than once”.
Manjit Singh died in a public hospital in Sydney. “He was only 33 and had no close relatives with him, no wife or children to carry on after him”, the coroner said. “It is difficult to imagine what must have gone through his mind. He was lying in a hospital bed thousands of kilometres from home and his loving parents. His hopes … had turned to dust”.
But Manjit did not go unnoticed. The nurses and doctors at the Royal North Shore Hospital cared about him. It was they who ensured his story was told.
It was the Australian immigration system that met Manjit with indifference. “The hardship of Manjit Singh’s life, and the loneliness of his death, in one of the richest countries in the world is desolating”, the coroner concluded.
Manjit was a suspected victim of human trafficking. For two years, he worked 16-hour days seven days a week at North Indian Flavour on Oxford Street. He was paid just three lots of $300 in that time. Without changes to the immigration system, the coroner said, “it appears likely that cases like Manjit’s are and will remain the tip of the iceberg”. 
We have had a more recent glimpse of what lies beyond through a Four Corners investigation into the underpayment of wages at 7-Eleven stores. There now seem to be countless such examples, all telling the same story. Australia’s immigration laws expose 1.3 million people on work visas – or one in 10 workers – to acute forms of exploitation.
The employer who brought Manjit to Australia from India was one of the few people he knew here. He was promised accommodation but slept in a storeroom in which he was locked overnight. He bathed with a jug in a public toilet block. Manjit entered the country on a 457 visa. 
International students are the choice of 7-Eleven. Their visas restrict them to 20 hours’ work per week. At 7-Eleven they are frequently paid at this rate while working as many as 40 hours. Workers at these stores complain of attempts to limit their movement, including the withholding of passports and drivers’ licences.
Jessica Zaccaria, a 417 “working holiday” visa holder, recently complained to the Fair Work Commission about piece-rate payments at the fruit picking company Costa. “The work is difficult and physically demanding”, her witness statement read. “To reach the speed of which work would need to be performed in order to earn a decent wage seemed impossible.”
Earlier this year complaints were made against a labour-hire contractor in Madura that was charging backpackers $450 to place them in farm jobs where they were paid as little as 60 cents an hour. It was the local council that complained, alleging that up to 32 people were being kept in one house, with 12 more sleeping in the garage. These people are lured into the country by a scheme that offers visa extensions for taking rural jobs. 
The Fair Work ombudsman has admitted that workers who complained in these situations were at risk of not having their visa extension signed off on by their employer, describing them as being “virtually bonded”.
Manjit endured his situation with a promise of permanent residency after two years. Six months after the promise proved to be a lie, he was admitted to hospital weighing 52kg and suffering malnutrition, anaemia and tuberculosis.
It was around this time that he applied for a protection visa as a victim of human trafficking. After about 16 months he was granted a criminal justice stay visa. Prior to this, for lengthy periods he had no visa, no right to work and no legal right to remain in the country. He lived hand to mouth.
When he was discharged from hospital after his first admission, his situation was so desperate that nursing staff took a collection for him, cooked him food and gave him clothes. Their attempts to find him charitable assistance were largely unsuccessful due to his immigration status.
This is the spectre of impoverishment that hangs over workers on visas, and it explains the low wages and dangerous conditions people will accept. A recent Fairfax survey of Mandarin-language websites found 80 percent of advertised jobs offered wages below the national minimum. Many were openly advertised as “black jobs”. 
Manjit Singh succumbed to tuberculosis in 2011. This is the disease once known as “consumption”. It should have been preventable, but was activated in Manjit by his long periods of malnourishment. It should have been treatable but Manjit seemed reluctant to seek treatment due to his status as an unlawful non-citizen at several points.
Charges against Manjit’s employer have been dropped. When Red Flag asked the Commonwealth Department of Public Prosecutions about his case, a spokesperson said that the charges were “discontinued on 2 December 2014 as the CDPP did not consider there to be a reasonable prospect of securing a conviction”.
For its part, the immigration department submitted to Manjit’s coronial investigation, which concluded in July, that the current system is “not broken, so there is no need to fix it”.
Just a few months later, the body of a 47-year-old man was found in a public toilet block in Mildura. He is believed to have overstayed a temporary visa. Police say he likely died because he was afraid to seek medical assistance.
“He would have been quite ill prior to his death and could have sought medical treatment, but obviously, due to his immigration status, he’s decided not to do that”, an officer told the ABC.
The coroner said Manjit’s was one of the saddest stories he had encountered. Unless something changes, there will be more like his.

Worked to death in ‘one of the richest countries in the world’

In a blow to the forces of bigotry, the Australian Capital Territory legalised same sex marriage on 22 October. The Marriage Equality Same Sex Act 2013 is the result of the efforts of thousands of people around the country.
Our determination over the last decade never to give up – to rally in our tens, hundreds and thousands, to place a national spotlight on the injustice of discrimination and to keep that light shining when the Liberal and Labor parties wished it away – has clearly paid off.
It shows that protesting and making a fuss can have an impact; it will only fuel our determination to keep pushing for full equality for all people.
Outrageously, head grinch and homophobe Tony Abbott lodged a constitutional challenge to the legislation less than 24 hours after it passed. We now have to fight to defend these newly gained civil rights.
Abbott has asked couples not to marry before the federal government’s High Court challenge concludes. We are laughing at the request. Many will be getting married in Canberra in defiance of the prime minister – who describes homosexuality as “threatening”. The first legally recognised same sex marriages in Australia will go ahead in December.
ACT Chief Minister Katy Gallagher’s response to Attorney General George Brandis’ request to delay the laws was a defiant “See you in court”.
Whether the ACT’s laws stand up to challenge remains to be seen. Legal experts have differing opinions, but we know that their system is, to a degree, open to the influences of the outside world. Protests will be held around the country on 23 November, demanding that the High Court uphold the Marriage Equality Same Sex Act 2013.
If the ACT laws withstand challenge, it won’t be the end of the campaign. The ACT government’s eleventh-hour decision to change the wording of the legislation – from encompassing all people not recognised by the federal Marriage Act to recognising only same sex marriages – has understandably created ill-will and mistrust among a number of transgender people. And intersex people are systematically discriminated against by requirements to nominate a sex and gender.
Our campaign has always demanded that marriage rights be extended to all people, wherever they live, regardless of their sex and gender identities. So while we defend the step forward represented by the new laws, we call on the ACT government to fulfil its promise to expand the scope of its legislation. And we will have to keep fighting until we get federal change that eliminates all vestiges of discrimination.
[Cat Rose is National Union of Students Queer Officer.]

Mardi Gras snubs Turnbull, a small taste of what’s deserved

We’re flowers for humanity, not potpourri for the dead

Stop the endless delay on marriage equality

Worked to death in ‘one of the richest countries in the world’

Abbott vs. the ACT

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