Editorial
Sexual preferences

Lyle Shelton is the crab louse of Australian politics. He’s an itchy little man. In his entire career, the only thing he has won is a campaign not to drink recycled sewage. He finally found a cause more unpopular than himself and it was the consumption of human excrement.

Shelton led the unsuccessful campaign against same-sex marriage. He argued that anti-discrimination laws needed to be suspended so he could properly put his case. He likened the children of gay couples to the Stolen Generations.

Undeterred by his failure, he joined Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives. He was on top of the Senate ticket in Queensland in 2019, where he won 5533 votes. The anti-fluoride party was more popular.

When the Australian Conservatives were deregistered, he switched his allegiance to the Christian Democratic Party. Fred Nile promised to make him leader but betrayed him after he moved to Sydney. This is a little like being tricked by a slow-growing mole.

The gay-hating 90-year-old said: “I had high hopes for Mr Shelton and am sorry it has come to this.”

Shelton is now leading Family First. He is running for the party in the Senate in New South Wales. He is still obsessed with sex and death. He describes himself as an advocate for life who “opposes abortion-on-demand and euthanasia”. He wants people to freely practise their faith and promises to “combat harmful gender ideologies and protect children from radical indoctrination in schools”.

Ordinarily, this wouldn’t matter. The only talent Shelton has shown is for losing. He runs as a husband and a failure. The difference this time is Liberal preferences. Peter Dutton’s Coalition is listing Family First and One Nation at the top of its how-to-vote cards.

For decades, the Liberal Party has avoided preferencing One Nation. When Pauline Hanson emerged as a racist force in the 1990s, senior Liberals worked hard to deprive her party of oxygen. There was a principled stand against her.

In the years since, the Liberal Party has changed. Rhetoric that appalled the country in 1996 is now commonplace. There is nothing Hanson said in her first speech that hasn’t since been repeated by a Liberal leader. She is the definition of the Overton window.

Dutton’s Liberal Party is not embarrassed to swap preferences with One Nation or Family First. They all live on the same fringe. There are differences on abortion and a few other policies, but the fundamentals are the same.

The Liberals who fought Hanson struggle to recognise the party now. Its values have been surrendered to its rightmost wing. It has forfeited its economic conservatism, giving in to reactionary policies. It is no longer conflicted over racism. It has no affection for institutions or plans to protect them.

When Lyle Shelton looks back at his life, squinting at all the failure and fantasy, it is this that will likely stand as his solitary achievement.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on April 26, 2025 as "Sexual preferences".

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