OPINION
David Gibson (he/him) is Chair of GRAI, a former Queensland MP and Minister, and former Chair of the Australasian Study of Parliament Group (Queensland Chapter). He has published on disability and LGBTI issues as they relate to democracy, representation and participation. His interest in equality and democratic institutions is informed by both public life and lived experience. David is married to a trans man.
When One Nation wins a seat like Secret Harbour, it is tempting to look at its policies, recoil, and wonder what on earth has happened to the voters. Fair question. But perhaps we should also ask what has happened to their trust in politics.
Stevie Lane’s recent OUTinPerth article rightly identifies both the risks One Nation’s growing support presents for diverse communities and the pressures facing many of the people who voted for it. People struggling with housing, mortgages and everyday essentials have every right to be angry.
The question I would add is: how did Labor and the Coalition allow so much of that anger to become political territory for One Nation?
Older LGBTI people know rights never simply arrive and stay safely in place. Many lived through a time when the law did not protect us. Often the law was the problem. Governments criminalised homosexuality and legalised discrimination. Later, those same democratic institutions helped dismantle those injustices.
There is a lesson in that history. Rights have to be defended. But perhaps our history should also make us curious about what is happening around us.
One Nation did not create the frustration that delivered Secret Harbour. It tapped into it.
The 2025 Australian Election Study found only around one in three Australians believed people in government could be trusted. More than two-thirds thought those in government were looking after themselves.
It isn’t hard to understand why. If you work, pay your taxes and do what responsible adults were supposed to do, but still struggle with the mortgage or rent, cannot find a GP and wonder whether you will ever afford a home, eventually you ask whether the system works for people like you.
That experience is not equivalent to the discrimination LGBTI people experienced. But the question underneath it is familiar: does government see me, and does government work for people like me?
Perhaps our history should make us more curious, not less, when other Australians say they feel politically abandoned.
Secret Harbour should therefore be a warning not just about One Nation, but to Labor and the Coalition. For decades the deal was simple: get annoyed enough with one major party and eventually vote for the other. Increasingly, Australians are choosing neither.
Some One Nation voters undoubtedly hold views about minorities that I profoundly disagree with. But pretending that explains everyone who votes for them is convenient rather than useful.
We know our own communities are more complicated than that. Earlier this year, an openly gay man in a relationship with a Muslim partner was elected to Parliament under the One Nation banner. Representation does not always arrive in the person we expect, from the party we like, or with politics we agree with.
That can be uncomfortable. So can diversity. If we only celebrate diversity when it looks and thinks exactly like us, we have probably missed the point.
Stevie is right that marginalised communities cannot become the price paid for addressing people’s frustration. LGBTIQA+ people, migrants and other minorities did not create the housing shortage or cost-of-living crisis.
But governments actually have to address the frustration.
The cost-of-living crisis is fuelling frustration, frustration becomes cultural grievance, and cultural grievance can become political opportunity. Sooner or later someone discovers there are votes in finding a minority to blame. Lesbian and gay people have been there before. Trans people are there now.
This is where leadership matters.
Political leadership means taking legitimate concerns about housing and the cost of living seriously while refusing to allow minorities to become the scapegoat. Progressive leadership means not dismissing those concerns simply because we dislike where someone has politically taken them.
We can stand beside a trans person worried about their safety and listen to a bloke worried about his mortgage. We’re grown-ups. We can do more than one thing at a time.
Stevie also points to another uncomfortable part of this story. One Nation is gaining a parliamentary platform while long-promised equality reforms in Western Australia remain unfinished.
Our Equal Opportunity Act dates from 1984, a time when I was considerably younger and had a perm, Wham! was in the charts and nobody had heard of Wi-Fi. More importantly, our discrimination laws have not kept pace with the community they are supposed to protect.
The Law Reform Commission review began in 2019, attracted 995 submissions and resulted in 163 recommendations. In 2022, the Government broadly accepted most of them and committed to drafting a new Act, including stronger protections for LGBTIQA+ Western Australians and anti-vilification laws.
We are still waiting.
That delay matters beyond the legislation. Government asked Western Australians to participate. They did. People told their stories, organisations like GRAI made submissions and experts considered the evidence.
Then the government stalled.
For LGBTIQA+ Western Australians, the message is that these protections matter, but apparently they can wait. There comes a point when another review, consultation and promise stops looking like careful government and starts looking like hesitation.
Our rights do not sit safely on the shelf while governments hesitate.
The answer to declining trust in mainstream politics is not to borrow One Nation’s politics by vilifying others, nor to sacrifice minority communities in the hope of winning voters back.
It is to earn that trust.
Listen to why people are angry. Fix the things governments can fix. Be straight about the things they cannot. And when it comes to equality, lead.
Older LGBTI Australians know government does not automatically deserve our trust. We also know it can earn it through leadership, reform and laws that make people’s lives demonstrably fairer.
Western Australia has done the review. Government has consulted. We have the recommendations.
Now amend the Equal Opportunity Act.
