Family First Party

Summary

Fair warning:
This article contains references to hateful content in relation to transphobia, queerphobia, and anti-abortion rhetoric. Please exercise due self-care.

Policies & Commentary

Unlike other political parties, the Family First Party (hereafter referred to as FFP) doesn’t have a simple policy document or even a policy page. What it does have is Issues, which are not so much policies as ideological statements accompanied by a handy-dandy form which you can fill out to take part in your petition of choice. Many of these don’t even concern Victoria, so I’ll only be analysing the remainder in the order they appear on the website. There’s enough, however, to give you a very clear idea of what FF is all about.

The very first “issue” FFP is concerned with – the one that gets top billing – is titled Tell Parliament: A Man Is Not a Woman.

It’s probably not surprising that this should have such a place of importance, given that FFP’s new Victorian leader is former Liberal Party MP Moira Deeming. Over the years, Deeming has become one of the faces of transphobia (what she calls “sex-based rights”) in this state, a regular attendee and speaker at anti-trans rallies.

Stripped of rhetoric, FFP’s anti-trans policies come down to this: removing every right that Victorian trans people have struggled to gain. In their words:

Restore the biological definition of man and woman in anti-discrimination law.

Return biological sex to birth certificates, passports and drivers licences across every state and territory.

Protect women’s sport, changerooms and private spaces from biological males.

Reform the anti-vilification laws being used to punish Australians for telling the truth.

These policies depend on the voter accepting FFP’s completely unsupported declaration that gender is identical to “biological sex”. There’s no argument to convince you – the party simply tells you this is so, and everything proceeds from that. It’s designed to short-circuit the thinking process, and to make FFP look like it’s stating “just the facts”. But even if you accept this notion of immutable gender, what it’s proposing is nothing short of inhumanity. FFP wants to strip the hard-won rights of a marginalised group, to enshrine discrimination and the right to harass, and for what?

What injustice is being addressed by these measures? Who is hurt by seeing another person’s drivers licence gender marker? Where is the harm in allowing a person to have their gender recognised by state identification?

Transphobes usually, at this point, bring up the spectre of “men in women’s sports”. They argue that it’s unfair, even dangerous, for a trans woman to compete alongside cis women. Never mind that it’s been proved, over and over again, that there is no issue here – and that it is, in fact, harmful not to allow trans and gender diverse people full access. Here is the Australian Sports Commission’s decision on this.

As for the notion of ‘protection’ in changerooms – well, I’ve already written at length about FFP’s obsession with something that simply isn’t happening in my analysis of their 2022 policies, so I’ll just point you at that.

Even leaving aside the brutality of these policies, they’re unworkable. For example, the anti-discrimination law they talk about “restoring” is federal, not Victorian, for a start. FFP would have no power in state government to change it.

FFP’s second policy is Discover the shocking truth about Drag Queen Storytime events in public places.

That shocking truth, apparently, being that drag queens do storytime gigs. This is a big piece of nothing that starts and ends with the lie that storytime is used to deliberately push adult concepts and a “trans agenda”. That’s simply not happening – at worst, a child might be read a book where a character has two mothers or likes to wear purple instead of blue. It’s scaremongering right out of 2023, and I’m honestly baffled by its presence here as one of FFP’s policies – particularly when there is not a single policy proposal attached to it, only a petition.

A similar problem exists with their policy on Christian schools and your religious freedom. It relies on statements that simply aren’t true – no Christian school is being forced to teach children that it’s perfectly normal to be queer. Victoria has removed some religious exemptions against discrimination – for example, staff or teachers can’t be fired, and students can’t be expelled, on the basis of their sexuality. However, there’s a loophole big enough to drive a truck through, as explained here. These institutions can discriminate against queer employees or students where:

to do so would conform with the doctrines, beliefs or principles of the school’s religion,
or
the discrimination is reasonably necessary to avoid injury to the religious sensitivities of adherents of the school’s religion.

That last provision gives a religious school an inordinate amount of scope to dodge state anti-discrimination laws, so once again, we see this is a policy in search of a problem. It’s not even a policy, in fact, merely an exhortation to sign yet another petition.

Next up, we have Speak up for the human rights of unborn babies. Yet again, this is a petition, not a policy – and like the others, it’s based on misinformation and misdirection. FFP confidently states that in Victoria, ‘abortion on demand’ laws now allow babies to be killed right up to the moment of birth. This is simply not true. Under Victorian law, an abortion can only take place after 24 weeks’ gestation if – and only if – two medical practitioners agree that circumstances medically necessitate it. Hardly “abortion on demand”.

Reading FFP’s policy, though, you could be forgiven for thinking that a Victorian person could carry a pregnancy to term, give birth, then change their minds and decide they don’t want a baby after all – and that a doctor would then be compelled under the law to commit infanticide. Of course, that is patently absurd – but that is the implication you’re supposed to take away, and there is no excuse whatsoever. Such a belief places people in physical danger of everything from harassment to outright violence from misinformed (perhaps wilfully so) people who believe these lies.

We move on to yet another petition, this time to protect kids by shutting down gender clinics.

FFP would have you believe that in Victoria, children can undergo gender affirming surgery and be medicated with harmful drugs that could damage them for life. It’s simply not true – and it beggars belief that FFP doesn’t know this, when the information is readily available with 2 minutes’ work on Google. The law is clear: under the age of 18, reconstructive surgery for the purposes of gender affirmation is not an option. Top surgery for trans men over 16 may be considered in a very few cases, based on strict assessments of competence, medical maturity and parental consent. So we have yet another “policy” that is a petition based on either misstatement or actual falsehood.

Are we seeing a theme yet?

Next is the alarming WARNING: Your religious freedom is under fire like never before.

Firstly: rubbish. Secondly: the only religion FFP is concerned with is Christianity, and what it calls Judeo-Christian family values.¹A nonsensical phrase given the clear doctrinal differences between Judaism and most forms of Christianity – but that’s an argument for another day. There’s a lot of very vague stuff under this heading, most of which does not even pretend to be about Victoria. “Woke activists” are coming for your religion! Christians will be barred from shops! Schools are being attacked! All “people of faith” are threatened!

I repeat: rubbish. Christianity enjoys a privileged position in Australian society, even here in “woke” Victoria. It’s telling that FFP can’t provide even one example of a Victorian situation in which Christians are being subjected to unreasonable government treatment or prevented from living and declaring their faith. Again, it just wants you to accept that what it says must be true, and go sign yet another petition.

That’s all there is. No energy policy, no housing policy, nothing addressing cost of living. Not even a position on data centres or potholes. The closest FFP gets to local issues is to lie about Victorian law. In an interview with 3AW’s Tom Elliott, Deeming spoke at length in response to a question about measures that could be taken to pay down Victoria’s debt. Apparently, though, FFP doesn’t find this issue worthy enough of its focus to develop concrete policies to address it – not even a few lines of token motherhood statements.

The only policy area in which any actual policies are proposed is transphobia. This suggests that, of all possible issues on which a party can run, FFP considers advocating for the oppression, humiliation, and across-the-board suffering of trans and gender diverse folk to be the most important. Think about that for a moment.

This is a party entirely fixated on a very narrow religious worldview that relies on outright lies to punch down on and persecute people who already suffer from discrimination. A party that would impose its dogma on all Victorians, that wraps itself up in hysterical rhetoric and cloaks its bigotry in fake righteousness. To say FFP is wildly out of touch with the issues Victorians are most concerned about is an understatement.

FFP isn’t interested in whether you can fill up your car’s petrol tank or pay your rent or mortgage. I suggest you return their disinterest by marking them low on your ballot.

If this article has caused distress to any LGBTQIA+ readers or their allies, I offer a heartfelt apology. Engaging with this content on any level is horrible. Please don’t forget that you are brilliant and courageous and worthy to be celebrated – and please, if you feel you need support, reach out. I’ve listed some organisations below:

• Queerspace
• Rainbow Door
• Q Life
• Lifeline
• Kids Helpline