Alex Antic (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to speak in relation to the urgent need to stamp out the ever-present, corrosive and divisive scourge known as identity politics. Identity politics is the phenomenon of basing one's own world view as the oppressed group and then constructing one's identity around a supposed membership of this group. The cult of identity politics preaches universal and common interests between a group of persons based on ethnicity, race, culture or sexual orientation, and the absurdity of this ideology calls for Australia to be recast not as a nation united but rather as a confederation of identity groups divided by loose connections of sameness.

Identity politics is the dastardly love child of political correctness and postmodernism and it's the bane of good decision-making. It walks in lock step with its equally cancerous cousin, gesture politics. Fuelled by instant social media adulation and a desire to prove their worth, many politicians have become focused on gestures rather than outcomes, pandering to the woke mob in the process. Straight from the Marxist playbook, identity politics showcases a manipulated conflict between the oppressor and the oppressed. It seeks to manufacture conflict where there is none.

Pursuant to this world view, people must be victimised by the system and the system needs to be dismantled. Personal responsibility is not required here. The unreasonable, unrelenting and unfettered criticism of our institutions, such as family and the church, make it easier to tear them down and replace them with the dystopian and oppressive bleak world that those who prosecute this claim want. So why do we continue to indulge it? Why do we continue to allow it and why haven't we woken up? Why have we allowed our precious tax dollars to be squandered at the altar of identity politics? Our universities have fallen to this curse. They have become obsessed with that which divides us, rather than that which unites us. A 2017 survey of the titles and descriptions of 746 history courses offered across 35 Australian universities revealed that there are significantly higher occurrences of gender, environment, identity and sexuality in courses than there are enlightenment or reformation.

But the prize for the worst exponent of using public moneys on left-wing identity politics must surely go to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The ABC harbours the most virulent haven of taxpayer funded identity based dialogue in this country. It's become little more than an identitarian taxpayer funded left-wing activist group at war with mainstream Australian values. It's segmenting our community into small groups and it's doing so with your money. It's a complete joke. Most of the left-wing identitarians are not champions of the working class. They are not themselves living in low socio-economic conditions. They are simply those revelling in a liberator complex. But what will these socialists do when the revolutionaries come for their champagne? Standing up to the ideologues of divisive identity politics appears hard because the voices are loud. It appears hard because many of your institutions have done nothing but wave the white flag. It appears hard because politics has shown little more than jelly backed weakness in the face of the onslaught. People have a right to feel let down. It's now up to everyday people, people who are frustrated by the political class, to fill the void. The only thing more powerful than speaking the truth is speaking the truth in numbers with like-minded friends. So let's all start speaking the truth and let's start pushing back at those who seek to divide us.