If Deves can be silenced then ALL women can be silenced. – Jacinta Nampijinpa Price
The Prime Minister shies away from the culture wars but hopefully no longer.
For the past week, controversy has raged around Scott Morrison’s captain’s pick candidate, Katherine Deves, for the seat of Warringah on Sydney’s northern beaches.
After initially backing her campaign to save women’s sports from the intrusion of biological males, he backed away when under pressure saying the government had no plans for a bill.
Cultural elites had piled-on Deves for tweets highlighting the mutilation of children receiving controversial and experimental “gender affirmation” surgery.
She was accused of Nazi slurs but all she was doing was highlighting the need to learn from history and not be silent when bad things happen to vulnerable people.
Deves’ opponent in Warringah, former Olympic skier Zali Steggall, dodged questions about whether she would have won her medal if she was competing against biological males.
Deves’ past social media commentary is robust but not inappropriate – she raises issues that should be discussed and not cancelled, as I pointed out in the Spectator at the weekend.
Sadly, Morrison and Liberal campaign HQ were spooked and joined the pile-on, forcing her to apologise and delete her Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Thankfully Morrison stopped short of dis-endorsing Deves despite growing calls from within his own party.
Then today in a post-Easter miracle, Morrison found some spine and came out swinging.
“I’m not going to allow her to be silenced, I’m not going to allow her to be pushed aside as the pile on comes in to try and silence her,’’ he said.
“I will stand up with her, my team is standing up with her, and we will make sure that she won’t be silenced.”
It would be great if this meant the Liberals allowed her to reinstate her Facebook and Twitter accounts. I’m not holding my breath.
But that the PM is standing up on a culture war issue is significant enough, given his track record.
He did not want to be talking about transgender issues during the election campaign.
He should have had no such fear. Mainstream Australia is crying out for leadership pushing back on Australia’s slide to the rainbow woke left.
They don’t want boys in girls’ toilets at school or competing against them in sport.
They resent “modern Liberals” like Matt Kean for calling them “bigots” for thinking this.
Morrison should lean into this issue. Albanese won’t because it is Labor policy to facilitate taxpayer-funded sex-change operations for children.
This is why you are hearing crickets from Labor.
Suddenly there’s a contest of ideas at this election.
The rainbow left and their uncritical media barrackers are on a vicious mission to slur and silence Deves.
They know if she is allowed to continue advocating for women and girl’s sport and for the protection of children against harmful rainbow ideology, their radical project to re-shape our society is in jeopardy.
They are hell-bent on building on the success of their campaign to de-gender marriage in 2017.
If rainbow activists can’t force parents to accept girls receiving “top surgery” to remove healthy breasts and have biological males competing against them in sport, the same-sex marriage campaign was for nothing.
On Easter Monday night a picture of indigenous Liberal Senate Candidate for the Northern Territory, Jacinta Price, with Deves appeared on social media.
“Katherine Deves is a champion for women’s rights and common sense. I back her 100%.
“If Deves can be silenced then ALL women can be silenced.
“Enough is enough! We women have fought for decades for our rights and now they’re under attack.”
This was the most significant push back of rainbow woke activism since the marriage campaign.
Did it help ScoMo find his mojo?
We may never know.
But one thing is for sure, courage is contagious.
Politics needs a pandemic of it.
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