It's Australia's loudest, proudest celebration.
I'm feeling completely path look at all these people, happy Marnygra everyone.
But two weeks out from this year's Marti Gras, there are claims a rebel group has hijacked the event. From inside the community, we hear from the two groups at war over the future of the parade. I'm Nicole Johnston and you're listening to seven AM today Peter Murphy from Protect Marti Gras and Charlie Murphy from Pride in Protest on the battle threatening to tear Marti Gras apart. It's Thursday,
February twelve. Peter, you're a seventy eight, which means that you're one of the original participants who was at that very first Marti Gras march in nineteen seventy eight. You're now part of a group. It's called Protect Marty Gras. It was set up last year. Why was it set up and why do you think the Marti Gras needs protecting and who from?
Well, unfortunately Marti Gras needs protecting from a group of people in our own community. The reason I helped set up Protect Marti Gras was because the report at the annual general meeting that year was about the losses that have been incurred and how dire really the finances were. And at the same time we heard that news, we had a group of people really assaulting the rest of the membership about their attitude to transgender people or about
Palestine prisons the military. So I could see that if we didn't really stabilize Marti Gras as a community project, we were going to lose it. Because once the people who help us, you know, put it on such a very, very big event, the sponsors see trouble and then they find themselves being accused of being on one side or the other of a fight that they don't quite understand.
They'll just withdraw. And really, I think without the broader support we get from organizations and the wider community and the government, we couldn't put on the parade. And the parade is the best thing we've ever done as far as I know. You know, way back in seventy eight, I never imagined seventy five demonstrators have been arrested and the latest clash between police and gay liberation protesters in Sydney.
But by nine ninety eight I knew that this was a brilliant achievement of our community.
Oh well, look at this.
It started as a political demonstration and now it's a very different kind of arresting site.
Hi, swing as the time, bob.
Down and welcome to the twentieth anniversary Sydney Gay and Lesbian Marigo Operate. It's one of the best ways that we as a group of people in society can communicate with the rest of the society. And it's very very positive, inclusive and inspiring. And now we've got a group of people in our own community who want to tear that apart.
That's why it's so important that we do get together and realize the value of the Marti Gras and the parade itself especially, and to make sure it really blossoms again and we get past this.
You've described the other group, Pride in Protest, as warlike, what do you mean by that?
Well, you know, I've been in a lot of politics over the decades and I know the tactics. So this is sort of a let's take no prisoner's attitude. It's all verbal, it's all maneuvers with rules. It's not in a physical violence or anything like that. But Pride and Protests is better organized than anybody else, I can assure
you with that. So at the recent age in December, for instance, they came along with I think seven resolutions that they wanted carried, and they already had all their speakers prepared, they had their notes on their phones, and the votes were very close. But we're still seeing this fight going on, for instance, about the idea of transphobia
being a prominent feature of all Marti graph floats. And of course it's ridiculous to tell people in a parade like this that they have to change their message depending whatever organization they come from. So you know, that's the sort of I think insincerity and the sort of tricky maneuvering that we have to deal with all the time.
Like I'm so shocked that people like me can be defined by Pride in Protest as transphobic, supporter of genocide, things that are totally ridiculous, And we only have to think for half a second, and you know that, how could anyone say that the Sydney gay and there's been Mardi Gras transphobic.
Could you tell us a bit more about some of these motions though, because they say that they just want to support trans rights. Doesn't that sound reasonable?
Yeah, we all support trans rights. But if you're wanting to undermine the organization or just sort of make life hard for the committee or the board, then you'll put a twist in it, like a demand that everybody says the you know, their message is transphobia. That's it. Well, no one I'm sure on the Mardi Gras board would try to dictate to people what they should say, what they should wear, and so on. So why would we
let Pride in Protests tell everyone what to do? Pride and Protests have a float, they are in the parade and they can say everything they want to say without restriction. But they're trying to say what other people should say, and they're also trying to restrict other people from even being in the parade.
Peter, we have all of these tensions in the Mardi Gras community, and at the same time it is struggling financially. We've seen the cancelation of the After Party. Are you worried about the future of Mardi Gras?
We are in a very volatile world. Even though we've come a long way. In Australia and New South Wales was the leader in that and the Marti Gras was one of the really important elements of that. We still have violence happening to LGBTQI people in schools, at parties, on the streets. We've had people using grinder to go and find people and bash them badly and rob them.
So we have got a continuing problem in the society, in our culture, but we need to deal with it by getting more and more agreement in the community about why that's wrong and what we have to do to help people move beyond that. All of the gains we've got in the last twenty years, especially the marriage equality, it was carried by by people in Mardi Gras, as well as by other direct measures and rallies and all of that.
The overriding theme you get the feeling is safe sex marriage and marriage the quality sixteen of the one hundred and thirty four floats that are lined up behind me and divided to the issue of gay marriage, there is.
But the basic message was this community is about love, it's about respect, it's about embracing people who are different and celebrating our difference. And we are now being hit in a mistaken way by people who say that somehow we are the problem.
And Peter, do you have a message directly for the Pride in Protest group.
Yes, I think that Pride in Protests has got a lot of basically good instincts and they do understand that there are real dangers for our community and that we're part of a bigger problem in the world about fairness, equality and democracy. But Martin Gras is a cultural event and it's not to be just transformed into some kind of narrow march down the street with megaphones and banners and chanting, and it will really destroy Martin Graus that idea.
And there's plenty of people who want to work on all of the issues they're raising in a better framework, and I just really want people to get involved as much as possible in the festival, especially in the parade and the fair day, and really show that we want to continue with this inclusive, positive embracing attitude.
Peter, thank you very much for joining us, Thanks very much for having us on coming up, we hear from the other side Pride in Protest Charlie, why did you form Pride in Protest and what did you want it to achieve?
Well, Broughton Project was formed in two thousand an eighteen out of a group of activists who had been marching in the Mantiograph parade for a number of years called No Pride in Detention. What we had looked to when we started was to pursue LGBT rights and the advancements
of LGBT rights. One way in which we did that was participating in Marti Gras because of what I think is a commonly shared community feeling that Mardi Gras has been less about the advancements of those rights and more about centering those people that actually restrict those rights from us.
If they asked me not to participate, I'll respect that, But the police force, I think that's this conversation we'll have to have because, as I said, I think it's an important symbolic event for the community and my organization, and after twenty years, to stop now would be I think a travesty.
Since we have been a part of the Marti grad membership in the organization, we've also grown larger as an organization. We hold regular rallies for LGBT rights, specifically for trans rights. We put in submissions to the new type of Parliament or when they have reviews on things like anti discrimination laws, We've run campaigns to have trans women who have been in detention in male facilities here in this country be released.
So we take on a number of issues that concern LGBT people and other oppressed groups and try to advance their rights.
So what do you say to the claims from some people that your group Pride in Protest has hijacked the Marti graph.
Well, I think those comments are a bit rich, especially when it comes from someone like the New South Wales Liberals Shadow Minister for the Arts Chris Wrath. You know, we are LGBT people. We have a right to express what we want Mardi Gras to be because the community are ultimately the owners of that. Now me on a personal level, I have been involved in Mardi Gras as an organization twenty thirteen, I was a staff member for
five years, I was a board member for two. For most of my adult life, I have been someone who has been invested with the planning, the EXECUSM and the
politics of Mardi Gras. I think it's very unfair that, for one, there are political leaders who think that they have the ability to say who is allowed and who isn't allowed, who express themselves within Marti Gras, and I also think that it's disappointing that there are some sections of the membership that think that they have the right to say that as well.
But there have been some criticisms from even inside your community. I mean, Peter Murphy has said there's been warlike behavior. Do you think there has been any aggressive actional behavior towards some of the members or the membership.
Well, I hear a lot of these claims that have been made about it, but I don't actually hear a lot of discussions about the actual issues that are brought up there. With the motion that had been passed, that motion had said that we want to stay to politicians. If they are not going to act on anty discrimination legislation and reform for the LGBT community in a timely manner, then we don't expect that those politicians should be able to march in the parade if those commitments are not met.
Many people in the community find out a very reasonable thing to ask and to expect of politicians that if they are going to have their media moment in the parade, that they need to actually be protecting the people who are marching alongside them. I don't think that it's fair to say that because people have those contents, that those concerns should be treated as a form of aggression.
Charlie. Aside from the politicians, though, what about excluding police and some sponsors. Could that actually go against the Marti Grams message of being open minded, accepting, inclusive.
Well, the question when it comes to inclusion and exclusion is what is the actual thing that's been included and excluded? And I think when people talk about this, and especially when people weaponize this term inclusion, what they are actually describing is the inclusion of particular institutions. The list of reasons adds to why the police have not been friends to our community but rather have been active in oppressing
the community are numerous. Now, I think that we actually have to stay that we are not going to permit these types of institutions to pink wash these kinds of crimes that they commit by being in the Mardi Gras parade. There has to be some set of standards, and I think that this weaponization of the words of inclusion and exclusion totally miss the actual politics that's going on.
So the Marti Gras community is divided right now, how do you make sure that it has a future.
Marti Gras had always been about the activism of our community, standing up for and saying that the power of our community belongs in the community itself. Now, when you say that there is the vision in the community, I don't think it's fair to say that to act like the LGBT community is a monolith. It never has been and it never will. But there is a reason why we have these processes and the organization of institutions where we are allowed to debate the ideas, and certain ideas win.
That is the process that we go through to determine what we are going to be and that's what the protest will be continuing going forward.
Charlie, thanks for speaking with us today.
Thank you, Nicole.
Also in the news, hundreds of people gathered on the lawns in front of Parliament House in Camberra yesterday to protest the visit of Israeli President Isaac Hertzog. The protesters were joined by several federal politicians, including ACT Senator David Polcock and Green's leader Larissa Waters. Prime Minister Anthony Alberesi
met President Herzog and said it was very constructive. In response to cross bench questions Albernese that he raised the twenty twenty four Israeli strike that killed Australian aid worker Zombie Francom and six World Central Kitchen colleagues in Gaza, saying Australia is pressing for full accountability, including any appropriate
criminal charges. And Rental affordability in Australia has worsened at a rapid pace, with new data showing rents have increased more than two and a half times faster than wages over the past five years. The figures from property data analysis company Totality says national rents climbed forty three point nine percent from twenty twenty to twenty twenty five, compared with wage growth of seventeen and a half percent over
the same period. The data also finds that tenants are now paying on an average a third of their pre tax income on rent, which it says is the highest on record. I'm Nicole Johnston. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.