EACH election has its glamour constituency — a relatively small group of people whose opinions influence others, and who, in turn, party strategists try to influence.

Doctors’ wives were the electoral rage a couple of polls ago. Pentecostal Pastors had their day in October 2004 (but are finding it harder than most to accept the honour doesn’t last forever).

In the 2006 Tasmanian election, smart party strategists will be seeking out those constituents who typify and are guiding the immense changes which have occurred on their island since the turn of the century — changes like the strong if uneven economic growth and the cultural shifts that have been that growth’s cause and effect.

The smartest of all will land their gaze on Tasmania’s new class of immigrant gay entrepreneurs.

An electoral earthquake

The most significant demographic change in Tasmania since the last state election has been an unprecedented influx of sea and tree changers drawn by a mix of cheap land, blossoming business opportunities, particularly in tourism, and a perception that Tasmania is shedding its insularity (or at least the negative features thereof).

Nowhere is the trend more obvious than in the Huon and Channel. Since the last election there have been over 2000 new voter enrolments in the Huon municipality. I assume the story’s much the same next door in Kingborough.

In the same time period a new gay social group has emerged that covers the Huon and the far south, the Channel and Bruny Island, and is made up largely of post-gay law reform blow-ins from Sydney and Melbourne, many of whom are small business owner-operaters.

It’s ironic name? — the League of Gentlemen. It’s membership? — 400.

Stats like these might not matter too much elsewhere. But under a voting system as sensitive to demographic shifts as Hare Clark, this is a minor earthquake.

Running Rotary

Numbers alone make this new constituency important. But what makes it crucial is its place in the rapidly changing landscape of Tasmanian society.

Consider its spread.

Entrepreneurial gay immigrants aren’t isolated to Dover and Cygnet.

From Ross to Strahan, every town tourism has transformed has its share.

Now they’re beginning to spill over to towns on the cusp of that transformation like Derby and Kempton.

We could go so far as to say the presence of gay immigrants has become a ready-reckoner of which Tasmanian towns have abandoned old industries and old ways for new ones.

It’s no coincidence that Stanley, Swansea and Sheffield can boast immigrant gay entrepreneurs while Smithton, Triabunna and Railton can’t.

But what’s important for this election is not which towns gay immigrants have moved to.

What matters is that they overwhelmingly favour small, interconnected communities.

In such locales new-comers tend to clump together. A common experience of being “outsiders” overcomes sexual barriers and brings heterosexual sea-changers into close contact with their gay peers and gay issues.

At the same time gay immigrants are more likely than other new-comers to reach out to the established community they have made their new home in.

They know they have to make an extra effort to be accepted, and that the attitudinal change such acceptance requires will only come if they actively engage with those around them.

I’m never surprised to find gay immigrants chairing Rotary meetings, tidying the town history room or running the local SES.

A fierce inclusion

For their part, many life-long residents of the towns gay immigrant settle in can be quick to embrace what, just ten years ago, may have been anathema to them.

The pragmatic part of this transformation is that immigrant gay entrepreneurs often bring a lot of investment capital with them.

You’d be amazed how rapidly “sick poof” becomes “that lovely gay couple down the road” when the poof gives your kids a job.

But it’s not all about money.

Again and again in rural Tasmania I find young gay business owners who have been “adopted” by older straight couples, often just-retired real estate agents or big landowners.

This is the generation of rural, middle class Tasmanians whose children left the island in the 70s and 80s, only ever to return at Xmas.

Their adoption of “the boys” or “the girls” fill a longing to have someone to nurture, to counsel and to take their place. It fills
their need to have back the children stolen by an unsentimental world.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting the end of prejudice. There are still some horrid examples of it.

My point is simply that the intense interconnection which has blocked gay people out of Tasmanian life in the past is now integrating us, sometimes with the same typically-Tasmanian ferocity with which we were once excluded.

And when this ferocious inclusion occurs, through all the linkages of money, jobs, community life and family-like ties I’ve mentioned, many gay immigrants suddenly find themselves at the very centre of community opinion-making.

Once they are accepted, their wealth, dynamism and fresh outlook make it almost inevitable that they will quickly become the leaven in their district’s financial and cultural bread, and, in turn, begin to influence what shape the loaf will eventually take.

It goes without saying that, as part of this process, the district’s understanding of gay issues, particularly the understanding of other key local opinion-makers, will increase exponentially.

Ticking the Green box

“That’s all fine and good”, my hypothetical smart party strategist might interject at this point.

“But don’t all gays vote Green?”

I’m always amazed by this major-party assumption.

It’s a kind of prejudice to assume that we all tick the Green box because Bob Brown’s a gay role-model, or because the Greens have the best gay policies.

The generalisation is particularly weak when it comes to my entrepreneurial gay new-comers.

Arguably their economic interests are Liberal, their social concerns Labor-like. But they are picky, discriminating voters, who are driven away from the former when it is theocratic and the latter when it is thuggish (and, for that matter, from the Greens when they are dour and preachy).

Most of all, what drives them away is homophobia.

The current Tasmanian Parliamentary Liberal and Labor Parties have the best policies, and the best records, on gay human rights of any of their state and federal counterparts now or in the past, without exception or qualification.

This is a tribute to the hard work of many people both within and beyond both parties, and a great achievement of which all Tasmanians should be proud given that both parties were on the ladder’s bottom wrung just 15 years ago.

Kicking the can

But there’s still a chance that in an overheated and histrionic election campaign a major party or high profile candidate will be
tempted to kick the homosexual can.

Tasmania’s electoral history is too soiled with gay fear and smear campaigns for this not to be a temptation to those strategists out to emulate what they believe were John Howard and George Bush’s gay-baiting victories.

What these strategists forget at their peril is that this is a different time, and Tasmania a different place.

Every time the Liberals turn their opposition to same-sex marriage into a crusade Will Hodgman will lose another couple of hundred votes in Franklin.

Every time Labor moves to match the conservatives Paula Wriedt vote will drop by the same amount.

The League of Gentlemen, their counterparts across the state, and all those Tasmanians old and new who have come to trust the views of their favourite local gay business-couple, will be quick to note if the parties put a foot wrong.

If they do, you can be sure the judgement of all these people will be anything but gentlemanly.

This is an updated version of an article first published on Monday. Picture: Red Velvet Lounge, Cygnet.