Survey Gives LGBTIQA+ Community Voice On Election Priorities

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The religious discrimination debate showed that neither major party is listening to the LGBTIQA+ community.

The Coalition sought to roll back LGBTIQA+ discrimination protections in the name of “religious freedom”.

Labor tried unsuccessfully to tinker at the edges but it supported discrimination against LGBTIQA+ staff in faith-based schools and ended up voting the Bill through.

In an environment that’s so unfriendly to LGBTIQA+ equality, it is essential our voices are heard at the federal election due by May.

That’s why Just.Equal Australia is conducting an LGBTIQA+ community election survey that outlines a list of possible commitments the parties could make to us and then asks LGBTIQA+ people to say which of these are our highest priority.

Once a good representation of LGBTIQA+ Australians has given their views, Just.Equal will take this to the parties and say “this is what we want”.

We will also use the results of the survey as a standard against which to judge whatever policies the parties come up with.

As the social science research advisor on the Just.Equal team, Dr Sharon Dane has incorporated some important features, which she explains below.

“As people may feel that there are many issues of importance for the LGBTIQA+ community, it can often be difficult to prioritise them in a survey”.

“To address this, the survey uses a 2-step approach that allows participants to first narrow down their choices and then from this smaller selection rank the order in which they would like to see them addressed”.

“Importantly, strategies for improving the rights and conditions of individuals belonging to smaller groups within the LGBTIQA+ are also included. To make this fair, weight will be given to the responses from individuals belonging to such groups, for example, the priorities of trans people for trans issues, the priorities of intersex people for intersex issues, and the priorities of younger and senior LGBTIQA+ people for aged-related issues.”

The survey will take about 15 minutes to complete.

In 2022, it’s no longer acceptable for political parties to ignore what our community wants and tell us what their LGBTIQA+ commitments will be (if they have any at all).