Calls from senior Liberal Party members to drop Katherine Deves for a swath of transphobic comments have grown even louder, but the candidate for Warringah says she’s not going anywhere.
On Tuesday morning NSW Treasurer and prominent moderate Matt Kean unloaded on Deves in an interview with ABC’s RN Breakfast, saying she’s “not fit for office”.
This comes after a series of leaked emails from party members, reports about some MPs’ opposition to her candidacy, and high-profile government ministers’ refusals to endorse her candidacy have all heaped pressure on Scott Morrison’s captain’s pick.
Deves has dug her heels in. In an email on Monday to party members she said she intends to still run for the seat: “I’m not going anywhere.”
Some have raised the possibility that the Liberal Party is playing five-dimensional chess by using Deves’ repulsive comments as a vote winner. Yesterday Zali Steggall claimed that the prime minister is using Deves as a dead-cat strategy to draw attention from other more damaging topics. Others have even posited the idea that running an anti-trans candidate is a ploy that concedes the socially progressive Warringah electorate in order to shore up more votes in more conservative seats. These theories make no sense.
Deves has well and truly become a national negative story for the government. Crikey, news.com.au, Guardian Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald and other publications have published different yet equally shocking transphobic comments made by Deves over the past two years. Google searches for Deves’ name outstripped Morrison and Anthony Albanese at points during the past week. With 6000 archived posts made over the past two years, there’s reason to expect that further extreme comments will come to light as she suffers political death by a thousand tweets. The drip, drip, drip of negative stories will keep coming.
Australians overwhelmingly support trans people having the same rights and protections as others. While trans women in sport may be a more divisive topic, Deves is now associated with denigrating a marginalised group as sex offenders, labelling them mutilated and comparing them with the Stolen Generations.
These views are not broadly popular anywhere. No politician facing reelection has run to support her except Morrison. Liberal Party candidates in nearby seats have either run from her (Trent Zimmerman) or refused to be drawn (Dave Sharma). If there was really an attempt to try to use anti-trans sentiment for more conservative seats, surely the party would have chosen a candidate to run in those seats rather than in Warringah, which voted 75% yes in the same-sex marriage postal survey.
The question remains: why was Deves selected? She does not have a long history in the party. At the end of 2020, she said she’d voted for every party and was “politically homeless”. In March the NSW Liberals’ executive committee gave her an exemption from rules requiring candidates to have been party members for at least six months.
Her CV doesn’t necessarily set her apart from other candidates either. According to The Australian, Deves is a recently admitted lawyer who says she used to work as a “marketing executive”, but there are scant details on that. She is a working mother of young children, certainly a demographic that could use more representation within the Liberal Party and the Parliament.
A LinkedIn post from a University of Sydney page congratulating both Deves and Steggall — two graduates of their diploma in law program — for their candidacy shows the pair has not dissimilar backgrounds and even look a little alike. Ultimately, Deves was picked after moderate frontrunner Jane Buncle dropped out and was chosen over conservative-backed candidate Lincoln Parker. (Bet they wish Gladys Berejiklian had changed her mind now, huh?)
Without a doubt, Deves biggest claim to fame before the past few weeks was cofounding Save Women’s Sport Australasia. Her Liberal Party candidate bio references this activism as being a “women’s advocate” — if there’s another aspect of her work in this area it’s certainly not public, nor has she advertised it.
These views on transgender people were known to the party. At least two senior Liberal Party members told Nine papers that the prime minister and the party apparatus knew about her views. Morrison chose to highlight her and her crusade against trans women in sport on the first day of the campaign.
When it comes down to it, it’s clear Deves’ advocacy played a central role in her being chosen to stand for their party’s formerly blue-ribbon seat. Her abhorrent views on transgender Australians are a feature, not a bug.
How did the Libs get it so wrong? I don’t think they did. I’m pretty sure Morrison knew exactly who his pick is, even tho he’ll be denying it should it become necessary to dump her. Appealing to the lowest human instincts, trying to benefit from grudges, prejudice, fear and outright hate is what they do. If needed they’ll pour fuel onto the fire too.
While I think that nowadays we can be too quick to criticise and punish people for their views, and it’s quite legitimate to hold uninformed opinions about issues that only recently became the focus of public debate (but after the first shock please go and educate yourself) I find Deves’ pronouncements incredibly offensive. Not only to trans people but also to the victims of Holocaust. It seems such ignorant, offensive comparisons (people in lockdown calling themselves Anne Frank, anti-vaxxers comparing their treatment to the treatment of Jews during WWII etc) are very common nowadays.
Ah, yes, and Piers Morgan apparently thinks his fight for ‘free speech’ is exactly like Mandela’s fight against Apartheit.
Even worse: In his haste to load the parliament with religious and social bigots, Western Australian liberal party candidates include yet another pentecostal and a Sky news employee. speed on the Australian Gilead.
Morrison is not serious about Deves, he couldn’t give a bugger if she wins the seat or not.
Deves’s candidacy is designed to suck up attention that might otherwise go to pork-barrelling and integrity.
Morrison learned the great lesson of his career when at age 14 he won the role of the Artful Dodger in his school’s production of “Oliver!”. He’s been reprising it wever since, and it’s always worked.
Her pick is completely multifunctional – dead cat, culture war, getting rid of those pesky ‘lefties’ in the party – good value.
Yes, the author is completely wrong to say those explanations “make no sense”. All this publicity for Deves and her views stops discussion of other topics that are much more dangerous to the Coalition. Deves’s views may be repugnant to a majority of voters but it is unlikely many voters will flee the Coalition about one candidate and an issue that is far from central to their concerns, so this is still helpful to Morrison. And for Deves this pure gold – like Hanson before her, her political future is assured by all this attention, all the more because these days anti-social media rules, it is fuelled by outrage and extreme views and she’s nailed it.
Racism, sexism, xenophobia, bigotry, and religious discrimination are the subjects the PM has and will continue to use to attract voters. There is no lie too low or rort to objectionable for this alleged man of god the great example of the Pentecostal church to use .
Regardless of the sideshow, the main problem facing this country is obvious ClimateChange. As a promoter of fossil fuels the PM increases the wealth of the fat coal miner and the nasty grandmother to the detriment of the future we leave our grandchildren.
Of course Morrison welcomed her trans hate. She can openly say, all the things that Morrison can’t.
But this is not an election shifting issue. Jobs N Wages is an election shifting issue. And Labor is not even trying, they are too wedded to the mass immigration solution.
This is a very clever ploy using micromanagement of extremist views that the great Christian fraud has used all his political career
I think Morrison chose her because he agrees with her. Comments referring to ‘Gender Whisperers’ whatever they are, introduction of clearly anti transgender legislation in the last weeks of parliament, agreement with the concept of banning transwomen from sport all point to this.
There may be other political advantages but I believe Morrison chose her because Morrison himself is transphobic.
This is Morrison’s pay-back to the conservative, churchy Christian set who have thought themselves betrayed by the same sex marriage legislation and Morrison’s own failure to get the idiotic religious discrimination laws through parliament unamended, never mind that she has no hope of winning the seat. I’ll concede that Deves has the added benefit of manufactured controversy and distraction, but can’t see its appeal as a dog whistle to the wider electorate.
Just posted similar thoughts – what happens when I don’t read the earlier comments first.
yes and no. I think the real target is first-generation family-oriented migrant voters in key western Sydney marginals who don’t see these issues through a ‘fairness’ lens.
This is a very large and critical group of voters.