Deb Frecklington seeks broad support in a state that backs abortion rights, but some LNP MPs and poll candidates are pressing for a more divisive approach
Last modified on Sat 17 Oct 2020 06.01 AEDT
At a campaign stop this week, the Queensland opposition leader, Deb Frecklington, was asked about the Liberal National party’s policy to review the state’s abortion laws. She quickly changed the subject.
“I haven’t got the details of that yet, it’s not a priority,” Frecklington said.
Last month an LNP frontbencher, Christian Rowan, told an audience of rightwing Christians a very different story.
Rowan gave the host of an obscure online chat show an “iron-clad guarantee” the LNP would wind back elements of Queensland’s termination-of-pregnancy laws, passed in 2018, which removed abortion from the 119-year-old criminal code.
Church and anti-abortion groups have begun a well-funded and misleading campaign to target Labor and Greens candidates in marginal seats over their support for legal abortion, and a proposal to allow voluntary assisted dying.
At the same time, LNP figures are worried that any increased election focus on such conscience issues could undermine its chances. The views of the party’s membership are significantly out of step with the vast majority of Queensland voters on both abortion – two-thirds of Queensland voters supported decriminalising abortion laws in 2018 – and euthanasia.
While Frecklington is attempting to win broad support, including in progressive urban electorates, some MPs and candidates are pushing for a more divisive, ideologically-driven approach.
In the video of Rowan’s interview, viewed 400 times on YouTube since 22 September, the interviewer expressed his concern that the LNP’s promise to conduct a review into certain aspects of the 2018 law, including gestation limits, used language that is “perhaps a little bit slippery, with lots of wiggle room for nothing to happen”.
“I guess I’m wanting some reassurance,” he tells Rowan.
“Is there a fundamental position, a philosophy within the LNP parliamentary party that the current laws are actually toxic, abusive and dangerous, and as a matter of urgency need to be changed and remedied in the next term of parliament? And the only question is what the actual details look like.”
Rowan, sitting in front of two framed photographs of Queen Elizabeth,responded: “I would say it’s an iron-clad guarantee.
“The LNP has given a firm commitment that we will be reviewing those aspects of this most draconian and heinous legislation,” he said. “It’s clearly gone too far.”
‘Baseless lies’
Election funding disclosures show the LNP federal senator Gerard Rennick this week donated money to Cherish Life, an anti-abortion group running an anti-Labor campaign.
Cherish Life’s biggest supporters include the Brisbane Broncos chairman, stockbroker Karl Morris, who donated $5,000 in August. Since making the donation, Morris has given $15,000 to the LNP.
At the 2019 federal election, Cherish Life’s billboards and flyers – which claimed “more babies would die” under Labor – were condemned as “baseless lies”. The group’s current Queensland election material includes statements that experts say misrepresent the detail of the state’s 2018 termination of pregnancy act, which removed abortion from the criminal code after 119 years.
The laws made abortion legal until 22 weeks gestation, and thereafter with the approval of two doctors who take into account “all medical circumstances” and the woman’s “current and future physical, psychological and social circumstances”.
Cherish Life’s election information claims the law allows pregnancies to be terminated “for any reason” until 37 weeks, and that the law legalises sex-selective abortions.
A 2018 ABC fact check of the claims about late-term abortions found they were “baseless”.
The Queensland-based deputy medical director of Marie Stopes Australia, Dr Catriona Melville, said Cherish Life’s claims were “disinformation” and “scaremongering”.
“It’s absolutely not correct that abortions are occurring during late term for no reason. Women don’t seek abortion for no reason,” Melville said. “After 22 weeks you need approval and assessment by two doctors, but that is exceptionally, exceptionally rare.
“Sex selection abortions are not legal, nobody does that. Really the campaign is scaremongering – it’s just disinformation, it’s shaming and stigmatising.”
Cherish Life’s chief executive, Teeshan Johnson, told Guardian Australia in a statement that “the claims Cherish Life makes in our flyers and advertising obviously are accurate”.
The rightwing lobby group’s claim that Labor had legalised abortion to birth for any reason was based on their interpretation of the criteria for obtaining a termination after 22 weeks, which they considered “loose” because it included “social reasons”.
“If a woman wanted a sex-selective abortion past 22 weeks gestation, it could be easily obtained under the very loose parameters for abortion from 22 weeks up to birth,” Johnson said.
That assertion has been disputed, however, by leading Brisbane obstetrician Carol Portmann, who told Buzzfeed that the idea a doctor would support a termination for psychosocial reasons or sex selection in the latter stages of pregnancy was a “ludicrous fallacy”.
Labor had said its laws are about making abortion a health issue, rather than a criminal one, and empowering doctors to make decisions in the best interests of their patients.
Christian Soldiers on the march
The term “westside Liberal” used to refer to Brisbane’s most progressive “small l” liberal faction, which controlled the Queensland Liberal party until about 20 years ago.
In the past few years, the “Christian Soldiers” faction of the LNP has fought for influence in Brisbane’s western suburbs.
Rowan, a former National, represents the progressive city fringe seat of Moggill, where there is a strong Greens vote. The LNP candidate in the Greens-held western suburbs seat of Maiwar, Lauren Day, was backed for preselection by the party’s rightwing.
LNP sources say the notion conservatives are running for the party in critical progressive areas shows the extent of internecine conflict that is damaging their statewide chances – where factional influence is taking precedence over a “horses for courses” approach in target seats.
Other LNP candidates, such as Janet Wishart, a pastor at megachurch Citipointe, running for the marginal seat of Mansfield in Brisbane’s south, have made clear they are anti-abortion.
Paul Williams, a political scientist at Griffith University, told the Guardian in July the LNP’s position on abortion appeared to be “ideologically parochial” rather than smart politics.
“What is not understandable is why a party that has been in opposition for so long, and is staring down the barrel of defeat yet again, would be so parochial they would make policy based on their own convictions that doesn’t appeal to [urban] constituents,” Williams said.
Frecklington’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Moderate LNP members say the opposition leader clearly does not want abortion or euthanasia to become an election issue.
“It can only hurt us in Brisbane and the Gold Coast,” one member told Guardian Australia on condition of anonymity. “But it’s clear there are some on the right and outside the party who think that Christians being in control after the election is more important than actually winning the election.”
A leaked list of Cherish Life’s target seats shows the lobby group’s campaign is mostly running in seats where members of the Christian right are attempting to enter parliament for the LNP.
Interestingly, it does not include South Brisbane, where the LNP will likely run third behind the Greens and the former Labor deputy premier and treasurer, Jackie Trad, who spearheaded the 2018 abortion laws.
Trad said the video of Rowan committing to winding back abortion laws showed an LNP government would include “extreme religious operators”.
“What’s clear to me is that Mrs Frecklington is either a leader who just outsources control of the party – and the agenda of the party – to other people and doesn’t know what’s going on, or she’s very happy for these sorts of commitments to be made to secure votes without telling the people of Queensland what’s going on,” Trad said.
“We also saw [former premier] Campbell Newman always put himself forward as a moderate on social issues, but went into the parliament and repealed civil unions, and that was at the behest of conservative religious groupings within his own party.
“This stuff is frightening – it’s really, really frightening.”
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