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.
“Managing Director” of a religious (so called) body???? this guy is all about self promotion and not too much about true Christianity
Yeah, not so much Christians as scoundrels – Iles and the ACL.
Prosperity religions have always (throughout their short histories) have always been more about power and dominion over others than they about christianity.
I think that the main games is and always will be $$$$$$
Sad but true, I’m afraid.
They are but Christianist, a term used by Andrew Sullivan a conservative, gay, Catholic author and blogger in 2003 concerning the then President, Dubya, The Faux Texan and his push concerning a “Faith Based Administration”, as we can see now here in Australia with Smirko,The Happy Clapper and his Brethren.
“I have a new term for those on the fringes of the religious right who have used the Gospels to perpetuate their own aspirations for power, control and oppression: Christianists.
Interestingly Sullivan first used the word “Christianist” in 2003 to describe Eric Rudolph, the US Christian religious terrorist. Who was convicted of a series of anti-abortion and anti-gay-motivated bombings across the southern United States between 1996 and 1998, which killed three people and injured 150 others.
Rudolph also planted the bomb at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.
Sullivan extends his explanation…
“Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. …It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.”
“But any pretense of a religious foundation for Christianism breaks down on many of the issues Christianists now consider their highest priority — cutting social services, blocking access to health care, lowering taxes, undermining public education, repealing restrictions on the ownership and use of firearms, endorsing harsh law enforcement methods and restrictions on the right to vote in communities of color, defending the Mexican border, and closing the door to refugees, to name a few.”
You are joking, right? The ACL has been a bastion of true Christianity. Always was, always will be.
It seems that the “Broad Church” that is the Liberal Party is seriously fractured.
The Liberal Party didn’t have the decency to change its name as it forced most of its moderates to “Suck it up or leave” during the Howard era.
The Nasty Party or the Party for dodgy deals, rorts, downright lies and very smelly behaviour which has been excused or “forgiven” by the least trustworthy Prime Minimal the Australians have ever had to deal with is no longer a broad church.
It got too broad. Not sure why a liberal would want to get too close with the deep right anti-everything reactionaries of the NP. The coalition was always a disaster waiting to happen. And here it is.
We are moving from left vs right to centre vs outer. The ACL brand of christianity is on the outer now, and like all bullies facing Relevance Deprivation Syndrome, are spitting the dummy. Your bbq standard centre right tradie voter has more in common with the centre left bloke drinking craft beer, but still not brave enough to be woke enough to not eat meat.
The NP, the ACL, and reactionaries generally, have failed to appeal to our better educated populace. Their day is done. Leave them to graze peacefully in the paddock of irrelevance at what, 17%? of the vote.
look at the TPP primary vote here (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-party-preferred_vote. It’s been in decline since 1993 but has dipped below 80% for the last decade.
Climate change, covid vax, tax and who pays it and who doesn’t, fuel, energy, health, on all these issues TPP aren’t cutting through to a growing voting mass who aren’t authoritarian followers, aka rusted on voters.
Thanks for watching this for us Kishor, it can’t have been pleasant.
Isn’t Dave Sharma of the Jewish faith. Why should he listen to the representative of a false messiah? Isn’t Trent Zimmerman Gay? Why would he vote against being discriminated by the ACL?
No, Sharma is of Indian extraction.
He was ambassador to Israel.
If you found a good candidate in the UAP, that would be a miracle!
Their definition of good candidate and yours would be entirely different. As long as they are to the right of the far right, the ACL will be happy.
Clive Palmer stumbled not once but twice this week not figuratively like Albo but literally. Once at the National Press Club as he was stepping down from the podium and the second one which landed him in hospital was when he overexcitedly tried to jump on the stage at the UAP conference today.
Same with the Greens, no good candidate in sight.