OPINION
After the Equality Project’s podcast controversy, Australia’s queer community is hurting – but the deeper issue is how far-right tactics exploit our internal divisions. We’ve become easier to divide and perform for, instead of protecting each other. “Brave conversations” must begin in trusted community spaces, not on public stages. Until we learn that, we risk doing the far-right’s work for them — confusing politics for courage.
Many in our queer community are sad that Drummond Street Services and Queerspace withdrew from The Equality Project’s LGBTQIA+ conference after a controversial podcast between two white cisgendered men discussing a range of sensitive trans issues with no trans person present. These conversations have now been deleted and without a public transcript of the podcast many of us will remain confused and distressed by the tone of the debate. We can argue if this is truly transparent and accountable forever, but deeper issues should concern us.
Even without a transcript, clear themes emerged that remind us of how far-right organisations and influencers outside of Australia have strategically targeted our queer desire to belong to the mainstream. Our lack of internal diversity as a modern movement-so different from the enforced solidarity at the height of the AIDs crisis in the 1980s-just keeps growing.
As someone who has experienced difficult conversations at the intersections of queerness, multiculturalism and faith during terrorism incidents, I still think that courageous conversations matter, but we have a lot to learn about negotiating them in community spaces before going public so we can separate private, vulnerable conversations from performative advocacy. One is about people-the other about politics.
Firstly, let’s centre the hurt to trans people. The reporting around the Equality Project podcast infers that, instead of balanced disagreement with some trans advocacy positions, facts and language used to frame harsh, even sometimes violent attacks on trans identity, were aired. Trans people-highly sensitive to their physical safety- reacted as anyone threatened would.
Politically, it may surprise many to learn that this public hurt will please far-right strategists experienced in using the LGB to win over middle Australia while ditching the TIQ+. Some right-wing groups attack us while others step in to defend us when rejecting ‘violent’ extremism. So, extremism as long as it doesn’t promote or get violent is ok?
We get confused-and that’s the point. Collectively executed, this is a well-known ‘grooming’ technique of abusers. After all they say, if we can support gay, lesbian and bi, then how can anyone say we hate-speak? Denying trans folk isn’t like being homophobic right?
This slippery slope is what The Australian GLBTIQ Multicultural Council *(AGMC) found in their submission to the 2021 Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security’s “Inquiry into extremist movements and radicalism in Australia” which addressed the impact of far-right ideologies on LGBTIQ+ communities in Australia. As Chair of this now disbanded AGMC working group for the first year I was disappointed when, after a landslide of public submissions, the inquiry closed down and many nuanced submissions remained unpublished.
A second inquiry was then created by the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee on ‘Right wing extremist movements in Australia’ which tabled its report in December 2024. AGMC’s contribution did not appear to expand the complexities of how LGBTIQ+ in social cohesion operates for the far right movement. Instead, it references security agencies’ inability to deal with a buffet-style of ideologies and raised the death of the ‘left’ and ‘right’ extremism divide.
While ‘intersectionality’ between racism and sexism is well acknowledged in the report, queer lives are mentioned mainly as targets, and not as participants in far-right strategies themselves. Not breaking this taboo is a progressive priority that didn’t serve our community well this week.
The AGMC working group found that UK, US and Canadian researchers understand how right-wing extremists target LGBTIQA+ internal divisions we are seeing at the Better Together conference. These researchers noted how investing in LGB support became profitable when it strengthened Islamophobia. Those tactics have also gained traction in Australia in how we experience ‘commonsense’ or ‘fair-minded’ arguments on a host of issues such as trans people’s participation across society.
The AGMC submission noted in 2021 how some members of the queer community had already begun to empathise with some (not all) far-right positions unaware that this can legitimise some extreme, even violent, views. We are seeing that explode now in the US. Trans, queer migrants of colour, those opposed to war or to hyper-masculinity and gendered violence often appear next to interpretations of ‘woke’. The ‘great replacement’ theory too is not exclusively heteronormative. Even among “brave” conversations, this is a threatening line of investigation to many in our community.
Using the adjectives ‘difficult’ and ‘brave’ at this conference is problematic. The deleted podcast has been reported to use journalistic techniques with popular but rigorously challenged right wing views. A recent apology from Equality Project has helped, but won’t stop this happening again until we ask even deeper questions about who we look to to define us.
Many community advocates eventually discover that very few “brave” conversations work as ‘media-first’ events. They are stronger when begun as confidential community conversations. Like it or not “courage” and trust grows incrementally. The media is the last part of that education process, never the first.
When I chaired the AGMC far-right working group we set a bar for confidential conversations. People’s stories were never to be used for publicity or self-promotion, only the policy and advocacy process. Confidentiality, patience, listening skills, cross-cultural knowledge and lived experience all help to develop policy-appropriate translations for vulnerable people’s conflicted memories and emotions while keeping them safe.
Our working group sought out credible US, UK, Canadian and Australian radicalisation researchers who explained that many far-right movement influencers and political leaders were queer themselves. We documented that. We made a submission to Parliament. We facilitated a meeting between researchers and a US Consulate policy directors experienced in counter terrorism who recognised this gap. Our government and community hasn’t and that should concern us.
Carl Gopalkrishnan (aka Gopal) is a former senior policy adviser for Victorian peak multicultural organisations. He is currently a policy advisor on social cohesion among multicultural, faith and LGBTIQ+ communities. Carl is also an international visual artist based in Perth.
AGMC is a volunteer-run community organisation advocating for the rights and inclusion of multicultural and multifaith LGBTIQ communities whose research has highlighted racism and transphobia.
