The ABC’s Clare Armstrong rejoices in the title of ‘chief digital political correspondent’. Which means she lurks around the corridors of Parliament House in Canberra and then gets to write opinion pieces (‘analysis’) for ABC on-line. She’s a relative newcomer to the ABC, arriving from News Corp late last year and posting her first piece, as far as I can tell, on 30 October 2025.
As a News Corp journo for nearly a decade, she must surely have come into contact with the critiques of gender identitarianism regularly published in The Australian and/or broadcast on Sky News. But on transition to Aunty’s august realm, she has – like her fellow Murdoch escapee Patricia Karvelas – obviously decided to comply with the established cultural norms of her new workplace. From our observations over several years now, we have detected that there are three basic stances ABC journos are allowed to adopt in relation to gender identitarianism:
- Ignore the issue as unworthy of the attention of a serious professional
- Produce puff pieces that laud the successes of men-who-say-they’re-women in, for example, women’s sport; and/or commiserate with them about any curtailment of their so-called ‘rights’ in this regard
- Go for the jugular of any critics of gender identitarianism, especially if they’re women
For quite a while, Armstrong went for Category A. Her posts from 30 October last year to the end of May were all tax, polls, tax, gas, tax, NDIS, tax, gambling, tax, etc. That changed with her post of 31 May. Now she’s more in the C camp, with a hint of B. What prompted the change was Angus Taylor’s 16 May announcement that in government, the Coalition would amend the Sex Discrimination Act to include a definition of biological sex and protect single-sex spaces.
That sent Armstrong off to fire up her computer to tell Taylor how wrong he is.
That’s not the way to beat One Nation, she (indirectly) tells him. As if that were the only reason for Taylor’s pivot, ignoring the merits of the case against gender identitarianism that are becoming more glaringly obvious with every passing day, and the years of work put in by Claire Chandler and others within his own party.
Don’t return to the ‘culture wars’, Armstrong (surreptitiously) advises. Her argument at this point is breathtaking. She brings Peter Dutton, of all people, into it. Praising him as ‘astute’ for seeking to ‘avoid these debates’. Readers might remember that Dutton led the Libs to a disastrous election defeat in 2025; but Armstrong ignores that entirely, instead referencing the results of the 2024 Queensland state election, in which, she intimates, the Libs would’ve done better if they’d followed Dutton’s ‘instinct’. Again, readers might remember that the LNP actually won that election (which Armstrong does mention, though it’s easy to miss). More importantly, readers might also remember that the issue that supposedly dented the LNP vote wasn’t gender identity but abortion.
Armstrong seeks to disguise this sleight-of-hand from her readers with some cunning phraseology, gliding from ‘issues like abortion’ to ‘things like gender identity’ and then to ‘issues like abortion and gender identity’. As if they all blend in together. Which of course they don’t. Especially not in Australia, where evangelical Christianity isn’t such a ‘culture war’ factor as in the USA. Armstrong, like many others in what Barry Humphries memorably described as the ‘they’ brigade, wrongly assumes that opposition to gender identitarianism has been imported holus-bolus from the USA along with opposition to abortion; at the same time – curiously – ignoring that gender identity ideology itself is something of an American invention.
Reopening debates ‘around issues like abortion and gender identity’, Armstrong warns, ‘offers Labor another opportunity to portray the Liberals as culturally out of step with the political centre’: That’s true, I’d agree, as regards abortion: but gender identitarianism isn’t part of the political centre: it’s wildly unpopular, it doesn’t pass the pub test, One Nation’s opposition to it is actually one source of that party’s new-found popularity (which Armstrong comes close to admitting), and it hasn’t ever been properly debated due to media gags and other coercive tactics, not to mention the strength of patriarchal culture that dictates that what women want or need isn’t really very important.
And speaking of patriarchal culture, Armstrong really hits her stride when she gets to have a go at Sall Grover, who Taylor has recently had as a guest on a video on Twitter or somewhere. Wrong move, Angus, she (covertly) assesses: you’ve ‘alarmed equality advocates’ (aka the gender-identitarian lobby), tut tut.
Grover says, in the video, that ‘there are currently girls in school who aren’t drinking water during the day so they don’t have to go to the bathroom because there’s boys in the bathroom and they don’t want that, they’re so uncomfortable’. Armstrong really goes to town on that – or thinks she does. There’s ‘no widely cited Australian data’, she informs us, that shows a pattern of transgender women [sic] assaulting others in public bathrooms. Readers might note that neither Grover, nor Taylor, made such a claim. Likewise, we learn there’s no ‘widely cited Australian data’ showing a pattern of ‘men systematically pretending to be transgender to access those spaces’: So what? Has Armstrong never heard of gender-neutral toilets, which men (or boys) don’t need to pretend to be transgender in order to access? Oh Clare, you need to get out more! Or stick to tax, you’re on safer ground there!
Armstrong goes on to cite a couple of academic papers, neither of which are studies of how women or girls feel about gender-neutral bathrooms or males-who-say-they’re-females having access to women’s toilets. In other words, they do nothing to refute the point Grover raised. Still, unwary readers may be led to believe Armstrong’s managed to smother her under a mound of contrary evidence. Category C in action.
It doesn’t stop there. Armstrong goes on to claim that ‘some’ Liberal MPs (names, Clare? Names?) are ‘dismayed’ by Taylor’s plans for the Sex Discrimination Act, and she makes the extraordinary suggestion that, in order to ‘make an alternate case’, these distressed pollies might direct their leader ‘to the observations and first-hand experience’ of Sarah McBride, a man-who-says-he’s-a-woman who’s a Democrat member of the US Congress. It’s beyond me why anybody would suggest going to any member of the woebegone US Democrats for advice on anything, let alone gender identitarianism – everybody from veteran pundit James Carville to Martina Navratilova have been telling them for years they should ditch it.
The introduction of McBride looks totally gratuitous, but maybe there’s method in Aunty’s madness, apart from adding to Armstrong’s cachet in Category B. The ABC is currently lacking a transgender pin-up, now previous holders of the position have fallen by the wayside: Catherine McGregor, who featured prominently round ten years ago, turned out to be a fan of Tony Abbott; Deni Todorovic turned out to be a bit prone to destroying and graffitiing things; female impersonator Shane Jenek (aka Courtney Act) has been largely poached by SBS, etc. Even kidtranser extraordinaire Michelle Telfer has lost her shine.
McBride’s already featured on Planet America, being lavishly praised by co-host John Barron (a devout Category Ber) as ‘incredibly dignified’ for (eventually) accepting not to use the women’s toilets at Capitol Hill.
There may be a big future for him at the ABC.
Makes sense, huh. First you import the American ideology, then you import the American.
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PS: Just so we’re clear: One Nation’s on the right track opposing gender identitarianism, but that’s probably the only thing we agree with Pauline about. We support public broadcasters, maternity leave, current abortion legislation, affordable childcare, support for victims of domestic violence, unionism, and climate action. All of which One Nation does not.