Peter Dutton’s importation of Republican political tactics from the United States looks likely to deliver at least the reduction of Labor to a minority government at the next federal election, and, with some good luck, the outside chance of a Dutton minority government. But the importation of the standard US culture war trope of abortion won’t do him any favours. And the far right in his own ranks seems hellbent on doing exactly that.
The right-wing ecosystem in Australia — far-right politicians both within the Coalition and outside it, News Corp’s culture warriors in its newspapers and on Sky News Australia, keyboard warriors online — is heavily addicted to US culture wars, with American conspiracy theories, obsessions and tropes regularly deployed here without any regard for the fact that Australia is a different culture with a different political system. It’s unsurprising that, sooner or later, the Republican obsession with criminalising women’s control over their own bodies would be picked up here.
Ask Queensland LNP leader David Crisafulli, who has been dogged by the issue during his otherwise effortless glide to becoming Queensland’s new premier this Saturday night. Crisafulli is an opponent of so-called “late-term abortion” and nearly all of his MPs voted against decriminalisation of abortion in Queensland in 2018, but he has tried to avoid the issue during the election campaign. The far-right Katter Party, however, won’t let him, with state MP Robbie Katter insistent that the first thing he would do after the election was introduce a private member’s bill to recriminalise abortion.
The near-miss attempt by misogynist conservative MPs in the South Australian upper house to force women more than 28 weeks pregnant to give birth only intensified the pressure on Crisafulli, who stuck with the unconvincing line that changes to abortion laws were “not part of our plan” until last night. Unable to further evade the issue at a leader’s debate, he switched to a firm commitment that “there will be no changes to abortion law.”
While Crisafulli blamed Labor for the abortion “scare campaign”, his real problem is with right-wing obsessives determined to bring US-style abortion bans to Australia whether voters want them or not. A large majority of voters support access to abortion, which is why anti-choice campaigners focus on the lie of widespread “late-term abortions” as their reform goal.
Peter Dutton, understandably, wants to wish the issue away, saying “I don’t think it’s a debate that is shifting votes one way or the other.” Except, if voters gain the impression Dutton would allow attempts to roll back support for women’s reproductive choice, it may very well start to shift votes away from him. At the very least, like Crisafulli, he’ll have to devote precious airtime to various holding positions on abortion that will placate the far right as well as normal, everyday Australians.
Unlike Crisafulli, however, Dutton’s problems are much more within his own ranks. Far-right backbenchers Matt Canavan and Alex Antic are furious anti-abortionists; Canavan and Antic joined with Palmer party buffoon Ralph Babet to run a scare campaign about “born alive” abortions and Canavan in the past has pushed to repeal legislation preventing anti-abortionists from harassing women using reproductive health clinics.
A number of Coalition senators voted in support of a Babet motion on the “born alive” lie, including several frontbenchers. Jacinta Nampijinpa Price was one of them. Price, whose profile lapsed after she was employed as one of the Indigenous faces of the No campaign last year, is perhaps looking for another issue to restore the glowing coverage from News Corp she grew used to in 2023, and is now part of the deceitful campaign against “late-term abortions”.
That campaign looks for all the world like exactly the kind of thing the right loves to rail against: a group of elites — former prime ministers (Tony Abbott never shuts up about controlling women’s reproductive rights), former deputy prime ministers like John Anderson, senators elected with tiny handfuls of votes, highly paid media personalities — deeply out of touch with mainstream Australia using lies to foist their own minority views on the electorate.
Vibrant support for rolling back abortion rights within his own ranks creates a double bind for Dutton: he must find a way to reassure voters he doesn’t intend to change abortion laws, without upsetting colleagues who gleefully throw around terms like “infanticide” and want to impose their own views on mainstream Australians. And any failure by Crisafulli to head off Katter’s private member’s bill in Queensland’s unicameral Parliament will be headline evidence that the LNP — which now effectively runs the federal Coalition — can’t be trusted on reproductive rights.
Labor has its own divisions on abortion; the toxic role of the reactionary SDA union within the ALP means there remain some Labor MPs hostile to abortion rights, but the pressure within Labor is not to roll back access to abortion but to increase it through pressuring the states to expand abortion services in public hospitals. Like Queensland Labor, don’t expect federal Labor to refrain from exploiting just how divorced from ordinary Australians sections of the far right really are.
Is there reason to fear abortion reform in Australia? Or is it all just recycled US culture slop? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
