Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s “men in blue ties” speech yesterday has once again – inadvertently or not – drawn focus to Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s religious beliefs.
Gillard, during the launch of a fundraising group, Women for Gillard, warned that the Coalition’s “men in blue ties” would “banish” women from the centre of political life and make abortion “the political plaything of men who think they know better”.
On the face of it, she’s echoing the fears of many women, given Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s expressed views about abortion. He has said that he thinks abortion should be “safe, legal and rare” (an apparent softening of his earlier views).
He and the person who will sit in his Prime Ministerial chair when he is absent, should he win government, are both, indeed, men.
However, abortion is mostly a state issue – not federal (with the caveat that the Commonwealth controls Medicare). Abbott was also health minister in the Howard Government, and did nothing to erode women’s rights in this area.
When Gillard is overseas, a bloke – who presumably owns a blue tie or two – is the Acting Prime Minister.
In this context, I can’t help wondering if her message will be read by some people as being not only about gender, but also about religion – specifically the religious beliefs of Tony Abbott.
Gillard, an atheist, has always been careful about issues of religion in her public statements.
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Labor and the Left as a whole, less so (Abbott, who once studied for the priesthood, is known in some quarters as the “Mad Monk”, and references to his Catholicism abound in commentary.).
Interestingly, one of Gillard’s “faceless men” who supported her elevation to the Prime Ministership, is the South Australian Right faction leader Don Farrell – a Catholic who appears at least equally as conservative on social issues as Abbott, including having widely-reported misgivings about the abortion drug RU486.
Intriguing, too, is that fact that former Labor leader Kevin Rudd is, like Abbott, deeply religious. But who can name his denomination? It is rarely mentioned, and his Christianity is almost never brought up in the rough and tumble of political debate.
Shades of the old Catholic/Protestant divide? I hope not.
Nevertheless, some commentators never cease going on about Abbott’s religious beliefs and how religion has no place in politics, as if a person can remove their religiously-formed ethical beliefs like shrugging off a jacket.
Abbott himself has tried to calm the debate, saying his faith must never dictate his politics – but what does that even mean?
In an Australian context, it is a futile and empty debate.
Every political leader brings a world-view to the role – how is religious background different to any other formative belief system? Precisely how should a politician purge their religiously-informed ethical convictions from their policy-making? What would that look like, and would it even be desirable?
Australia, it could reasonably be argued, has always been well-served by conviction politicians – and, in contemporary times, I would count Howard, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating among them.
All of them were influenced by religious ideas. Hawke, a declared agnostic, was a child of the manse, Keating our most recent Catholic Prime Minister, and Howard, who grew up a Methodist, reportedly still goes to church.
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Religious belief – or at least an ethical base informed by religion – doesn’t appear to me to be any hindrance to good governance. A case could be mounted for the opposite being true.
Religious people have made substantial contributions to Australian political life, including from outside Parliament, precisely because they have strong ethical convictions. There is, in reality, no separation between their ethics and their religion.
Jesuit priest Father Frank Brennan has an impeccable record in the field of Aboriginal reconciliation – I haven’t heard any commentators telling him to butt out (although Keating once described him as a “meddling priest”).
What about the Reverend Tim Costello, a Baptist. Are his contributions to political debate unwelcome?
Martin Luther King Jnr, also a Baptist minister, used biblical teachings explicitly in his civil rights campaigns. Unwelcome? Hardly.
I have lost count of the number of times I’ve heard politicians and community leaders open meetings by acknowledging the traditional Aboriginal custodians of the land (Gillard did it yesterday) – it is an implicitly spiritual affirmation.
So what exactly is the fear? That Abbott will institute a state religion? Please.
It seems to me that religion is only used as a political tool when we don’t like the political beliefs or policies of the person in question.
And in that regard, it’s just another version of playing the “man” and not the ball.
Great evil has been done in the name of religion; and great good. It’s a very human endeavor.
Abbott has and will make promises about what his government will and won’t do. And yes, he has made statements about abortion and lots of other issues.
With Martin Luther King in mind, wouldn’t it be terribly ironic if we failed to judge him only on his words and deeds?
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