It’s one thing to go after a party’s policies, or a candidate’s dodgy dealings. In fact, I’d argue we have a positive duty to hold a candidate accountable for their words and actions.
Voters should know when National Party leader David Littleproud advocates doing away with the civil rights of youth offenders, or when (now former) Liberal Party candidate Ben Britton pushes the ridiculous lie that pornographer makes men transgender. When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese backs away from an oft-repeated promise to implement the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full, voters need to be reminded of that promise.
Calling these things out serves a real public good. We become more informed, and better able to judge where to cast our votes when we have more than a headline or a pamphlet to go by. Without this kind of scrutiny, we run the risk of voting ourselves into potentially terrible situations.
When it comes to the candidates as people, however, there’s just no excuse for personal attacks, harassment, or intimidation. Nothing of worth This is, however, increasingly what we’re seeing, and it’s coming from two main places – the brave edgelords of X/Twitter, and people who like to pride themselves on being “true” Australians or “Christians”, but whose behaviour shows them to be utterly devoid of compassion, ethics, or integrity.
Take a browse at some of the X accounts run by the so-called Teal Independents. Zoe Daniel, member for Goldstein, regularly gets abused for the audacity of specifying her pronouns in her user bio. Monique Ryan, member for Kooyong, has been forced to limit replies to her posts because of commenters hurling personal insults at her, as has Zali Steggall, member for Warringah. Allegra Spender, member for Wentworth, cops personal comments about her appearance that would never be levelled at a male MP.
We’re not talking simple sledging here, the kind of rough-and-tumble politics where candidates regularly call each other names during debates and accuse them of “running from the media” or “pulling the wool over Australia’s eyes”.
As repellent as those attacks are, though, they don’t compare to the torrent of hatred that was unleashed on Avery Howard, Greens candidate for Fowler.
Howard was targeted for one reason, and one reason only: for being a nonbinary person. Commenters swarmed to posts on Facebook inviting them to “caption” a photo of Howard. Readers were asked, “Is this the type of person who you think can represent your values?” The replies were utterly, utterly vile, and I won’t reproduce them here. Suffice it to say that if Peter Dutton or Michaelia Cash were subjected to the same kind of dehumanising, bullying treatment, they would have been beating a path to their lawyer’s door, screaming “Defamation!”
This wasn’t some grass-roots response driven by wide community concern over a candidate’s policies or past bad dealings. It was a witch-hunt, and one person, more than any other, is responsible for this unconscionable abuse.
Her name is Monica Smit, and she is the founder and spokesperson for a lunatic fringe group called Reignite Democracy Australia.
I’ve written about Smit and RDA before over at Something for Cate, in the context of the 2022 election. It is, however, worth repeating this salient point that sheds light on the real motivations behind Smit whipping bigots into a frenzy at Avery Howard’s expense.
Smit’s views are virulently queerphobic. Her policies were hateful when she made her failed Senate bid in 2022, and, if anything, have become even worse this time round. Although she’s not running for office this time, RDA is still banging the transphobe drum and pushing lies about children being in danger from trans folk – particularly trans women – and drag queens.
RDA’s current website urges parents to violate the privacy of both their children and their children’s schoolmates. It advocates making secret video recordings of classes just in case children might be told that there’s nothing wrong with thinking about their gender identity. Teachers are encouraged to become “whistleblowers”, and RDA vows to protect them if only they’ll expose the terrible things they claim are going on in every public school.
There’s also a “candidate questionnaire”, in which RDA asks prospective candidates how they feel about “biological men in women’s sports”. There’s no wriggle room there – it’s as transphobic as it gets.
In her frequent videos, Smit shows the same bigotry. Her “vox pops” are nothing of the kind. Smit isn’t interested in finding out how people really think. Her focus is on spreading lies and brow-beating passersby into agreeing with her queerphobic beliefs. Her most recent campaign, aimed at misrepresenting and discrediting the book Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe, is a textbook example of propaganda trying vainly to disguise itself as “just asking questions”.
This, then, is the person who decided to kick off a hate campaign against Avery Howard for no reason other than her dislike of Howard’s nonbinary gender identity. Not because she doesn’t like their policies, not because she has evidence of some prior broken promise or dodgy behaviour. Because she objects to Howard on a personal level founded in nothing more than long-held bigotry.
Smit’s by no means alone in this. Her bullying campaign got publicised by Libertarian Party candidate Craig Kelly, and picked up by the Aussies Eye on Australia Facebook group.1And wow, a more wretched hive of racism, lies, and conspiracy nonsense I haven’t seen since the anti-lockdown crowd were going strong. And everyone who contributed an attack or egged on those who were indulging their online bigotry also bears responsibility for this. Smit, however, is responsible for starting it, and keeping it going.
Remember the outrage that rightly erupted when Alan Jones suggested former Prime Minister Julia Gillard should be shoved into a chaff bag and thrown into the sea? When he claimed Gillard’s father had “died of shame” because of her “lies”? We were appalled then, and we should be appalled now that Avery Howard has become the target of a cyber-bullying campaign aimed at forcing them into – at the very least – withdrawing their candidacy.
Already Howard’s had to shut down comments on their online accounts. They’re standing firm on their candidacy so far, and hopefully, they have the support they need to withstand this onslaught of hatred.
And Smit? Well, she’s doubled down. At 7pm last night she posted on her Instagram account. Her response to the Daily Telegraph article basically boiled down to: everybody gets called names, I don’t whine about it so neither should Avery Howard, if they look like that then they have to expect to be picked on.
It’s the most disingenuous, self-serving tripe. It’s also wildly hypocritical.
This isn’t just a case of being called mean names about appearances. A huge number of the comments bullying Howard directly took issue with their gender identity, far more than those who focused on the colour of their hair. It’s a sustained campaign of bullying – and it’s still going on as I write this. That bullying includes threats of violence – like this frankly shocking one, which appeared on Smit’s “it’s just name-calling post”:
freedezi: An industrial woodchipper can fix the purple haired poo chewer
As for hypocrisy, well, you be the judge. Smit claims in her Instagram post that she never complains about being judged on her appearance. In her recent court case fighting against her arrests during Covid lockdown protests, Smit leaned heavily on her presentation as a reason why she should have received better treatment from the police. Over and over again, she repeated that she was a woman with “long blonde hair” wearing “a long skirt”, and suggested that the police should have treated her differently because of this. She also implied that perhaps she was targeted because of how she looks, which was unfair.2The implication was that police might have judged her by her appearance to be someone who would be easily frightened and manipulated. Yet here she is now, telling someone she encouraged others to bully, that they’re fair game because of their hair colour.
There are still over 3 weeks left in this federal election campaign. Already we’ve seen the Australian Christian Lobby attempt to use transgender kids to push their lies, and now Monica Smit and her bigoted followers are trying to make a candidate’s gender identity an issue.
If these people, many of whom profess to follow the teachings of Christianity (Smit identifies as Catholic), really cared about Australians, they’d be looking into real policies and real track records. But that’s just it. They don’t care about Australians. All they care about is pushing their lies and grabbing the spotlight in order to act out in hatred against people who do care.
This shouldn’t go unchallenged. It’s an ugly enough election as it is, and every time this sort of personal bullying occurs, it harms the person targeted and cheapens us as a people. If Ms Smit had any courage, she’d debate on a level playing field of facts and policies. She chooses not to – and therefore, I’m choosing to call her out as a spreader of misinformation and an encourager of hatred. And if she had any decency, she’d apologise to Avery Howard and call her followers to account.
I’m not holding my breath.
The rest of us, however, can do better. When we talk about the election, we should talk about the issues and implications of candidates’ promises, not what we think about a character’s gender identity or sexuality or looks. Because in the end, that doesn’t matter. What matters is their vision of the Australia they want to help create, and whether they keep their word.
Play the policies, not the person.
