Major news outlets have templates for a bunch of predictably upcoming stories ready to go. For elections, they'll have rundowns of campaigns and leaders for all the major players ready to publish for all foreseeable outcomes. For notable public figures in their declining years, they'll have obituaries and public tributes drafted, just needing to slot in the applicable date the person in question departs this earthly life. In the U.S., the mass shooting draft is ready to go at a moment's tragic notice. It's standard journalistic practice, enabling news sources to research the background info in more sedate times and enabling them to get the story out faster when it breaks.
After the Liberal National party won today's state election in Queensland, journalists there may wish to draft a future article: "She voted LNP. Then she needed an abortion". Because we've got a pretty good idea how this will go.
On the heels of the dismantling of Roe v Wade in the U.S., figures on the Australian right have been itching to make abortion a battle in the culture wars here, too. And they've been scarily successful; an amendment banning all late term abortions was recently rejected by the South Australian parliament,
Abortion seemed like a settled issue in Australia. We're an unfortunately conservative nation in many respects, at least when it comes to changing the laws, but the issue of abortion was not one of particular public debate. This lead to a weird disconnect between lived experience and the law; although abortion remained technically illegal in many states until very recently - in my home state of NSW, abortion was technically illegal until 2019; however, a court ruling in 1971 held abortion to be legal if a doctor had an honest and reasonable belief that, due to "any economic, social, or medical ground or reason", the abortion was necessary to "preserve the woman involved from serious danger to her life or physical or mental health which the continuance of the pregnancy would entail". This meant, in effect, that it was reasonably easy to obtain an abortion, as long as you could access a clinic and could pay for the procedure, but even then a good deal of the fee was repayable through Medicare. There was no parental notification, no wating period, no being forced to look at an ultrasound. It would have to be a through a clinic, though.
For decades, first trimester surgical abortion was theoretically illegal but widely available, but medical abortion remained banned and unavailable thanks largely to the efforts of your old friend and mine, Tony Abbott, whose conservative Catholic beliefs and influence as a government minister ensure the drugs for medical abortion were unobtainable until 2012. Even after that, restrictions on importation of miferpristone have persisted until very recently. For many women, management of an first term miscarriage, or access to first trimester abortion, still necessitates a surgical procedure.
The anti-abortion proponents in Australia don't have a large evangelical Christian population base to draw on in support of their cause, but they are working from the tradition of fear and misinformation influencing successive parliaments to maintain de jure if not de facto bans on abortion. They want to make abortion unobtainable in Australia; in law, in practice, in blissful ignorance of the realities of the lives of women. They were unsuccessful in their tilt at South Australia, but must be rubbing their hands together at their success tonight in Queensland, visions of distressed women forced to continue pregancies against their will dancing in their heads.
Abortion scarcely ranks as a concern for the vast majority of Australian voters, but they're determined to change that. The LNP seem to have gained power in today's Queensland state election, and somehow qabortion became one of the major divides between Labor and the LNP. With no groundswell of support, no widespread calls to change the laws, LNP leader David Crisafulli, the ostensible new Queensland Premier - who voted against the decriminalisation of abortion in a 2018 state parliamentary vote on the issue, was so nonplussed by the efforts of minor party candidates and members of his own party to make bans on abortion a central issue of the election that he avoided direct questions on the issue 132 times during the campaign.
Queensland is Australia's Florida. Comparisons between regions of Australia and their hypothetical American counterparts are usually weak, but with Queensland and Florida the comparison actually is apt. Most major Australian fun parks are located on the Gold Coast, Australia's Miami.
Australian retirees do flock to Florida, like their American counterparts head for Florida. Queensland has crocodiles, Florida has alligators. And they're both home to some of the most reactionary types of their citzenry. Queensland has gifted the nation with such types as Pauline Hanson, Clive Palmer, Bob Katter and a a host of others that turn their political tricks on the state rather than federal stage.
Their aided and abetted by a local media controlled by the Murdoch family. Queensland has traditionally suffered the lack of a major competitor to the Murdoch owned Queensland Courier Mail and their regional associates, who leap into action at the whiff of any attempt to stick it to the left and have never let the truth, or the devastating human consequences of its lack, get in the way of a good story.
Media fixation on a youth crime wave, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, has been the other major issue of the state election. The LNP have responded by gleefully scaring the shit out of people; per the party website, due to "Labor’s Youth Crime Crisis":
Families who are scared to sleep at night after intruders invaded their homes, business owners and their staff who have lost their livelihoods when their shops were broken-into, communities who fear youth criminals are running rampant on the streets without consequences.
They've responded wih the asinine slogan "adult crime, adult time", promising "we will make Adult Crime, Adult Time law so youth offenders committing serious adult crimes will serve the same time as adults."
What does that even mean? Does it mean anything? Are there serious crimes that aren't adult crimes? Adult crimes that aren't serious? Do twelve year olds committ fraud and embezzlement now? More relevantly, does a twelve year old who drives a car stolen by one of their mates, runs a red light, and hits another car causing srrious injuries to the drver of the other car - that's a serious crime. It may have life long consequences for the innocent party. But it still doesn' mean the twelve year old thought through the consequences of their actions in the same way as a 22 year old doing the same thing could. That's why we don't allow 12 year olds to drive at all; they don't have the decision making capability to operate a car safely. They can't possibly. Consequences for the victims are taken into consideration but not the deciding factor in the legal system. Compare the 12 year old who ran a red light with a 48 year old pillar of the community with a flawless driving record who caused a similar catastrophe running a red light while distracted by panic rushing to hospital on the news a family member was ill. The injury to the victim the same. We'd never know because it would barely make the news, the identitiies of both parties concelaed. Would anyone argue the 48 year old should be tossed in jail and the key lost because after 30 plus years driving they should have known bwtter than to drive in such a state, that they should have taken an Uber?
The thought of hearing all this, and the inevitable hate, misinformation and nonsense that was bound to be uttered by candidates interviewed live, meant that despite the prospect of a a fun night of ABC News Queensland election coverage?
With your host, Jessica van Vandoren!
The always effervescent David Speers!
Antony Green and his trusty sidekick, Oops That's The Wrong Screen!
And... the Too Close To Call Dancers!
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