Australia’s first Pentecostal prime minister ends his first full term in office leaving the religious right disappointed.
Australian Christian Lobby’s managing director Martyn Iles told a Facebook Q&A the wrong people were seizing control of the Liberal Party: “The wrong people seized control at a crucial moment.”
Iles’ criticism comes after Scott Morrison’s government failed to legislate religious discrimination laws, a key demand of groups such as the ACL ever since they failed to halt the passage of marriage equality.
In February the government’s third draft religious discrimination bill unravelled in a dramatic overnight session in the House of Representatives. After five government MPs crossed the floor to vote up Labor and crossbench amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act strengthening protections for gay and transgender students, the government withdrew its bill.
Iles’ pitch to voters is to choose “people over candidates”. He warned viewers that the prospect of a Labor win meant Christians “can’t be treated with indifference by the Liberals”.
And while the lobby unsurprisingly skews hard right, the Liberals could come under fire. Iles has promised to target the five MPs who crossed the floor: Bridget Archer, Fiona Martin, Trent Zimmerman, Katie Allen and Dave Sharma. Archer and Martin in particular face difficult challenges in their seats.
Despite the lobby’s policy failures, it could have some impact as an electoral force. In 2019 most of the marginal seats it targeted to help conservative candidates fell to the Coalition. One was Archer’s seat of Bass, the Liberals’ most marginal.
Iles also told Christian voters that there were circumstances where the Liberal candidate would be worse for their interests than the Labor candidate.
“There are cases when you need to suck it up [and vote for the Labor candidate],” he said.
While not mentioning which Labor candidates were “good people” of faith, Iles said the recent South Australian election was one where now Labor Premier Peter Malinauskas was more socially conservative than his Liberal opponent, Steven Marshall.
Although the religious discrimination loss still smarts, Iles was optimistic that Labor’s cautious position on the bill was a sign the party was responding better to conservative Christian voters. He cited Labor’s 2019 election review, which found it struggled among Christians, and said its shift over the past three years was a “positive change to the political dynamic”.
“[It was] pushing a lot of this hard woke stuff,” Iles said of its last election platform.
Iles also received several questions from ACL members considering voting for the United Australia Party. There’s been plenty of overlap between the anti-vaccine, anti-mandate mob and Evangelical Christians. Iles and the ACL never told members to get vaccinated, and instead pushed hard against mandates and COVID restrictions.
Iles stopped short of endorsing the UAP and minor parties, claiming some of their candidates were pro-abortion and euthanasia, but said he “absolutely sympathised” with the issues they were campaigning on.
“If you find a good candidate in those parties, by all means go for it,” he said.
