Sex-based issues causing friction before looming election

Sex has reared its head in the Australian election, putting a lesbian senior minister into conflict with the gay community and pitting Opposition Leader Tony Abbott against a celebrated comedian running for the Australian Sex Party.

It has also brought into focus the role minor parties and independent candidates will play in the narrowing race for victory on August 21.

First up is the uncomfortable position openly gay Climate Change Minister Penny Wong found herself in after Prime Minister Julia Gillard - an atheist who, if she wins, will become the first leader to occupy The Lodge with a de facto partner - declared herself opposed to same-sex marriage.

Questioned about her stand on the issue, Wong first said that she had decided to be open about her sexuality when she entered politics because it was "very important to show that you should never be ashamed of who you are".

Wong also told ABC TV: "By virtue of who I am [Asian and gay], prejudice and discrimination are things I have first-hand knowledge of."

Even so, she supported Labor's policy against gays marrying, citing respect for the reality of a cultural, religious and historical view that regarded marriage as an institution between a man and a woman.

Greens leader Bob Brown, also gay, declared himself horrified by her position and her defence of discrimination on the basis of culture or heritage: "Are we going to bring back hanging?"

Gay activists joined the clamour, using the headlines to push a broader agenda.

And the timing of Wong's statement could not have suited the Sex Party better, coming just as it was about to launch its campaign. The party is led by veteran campaigner Fiona Patten, a one-time fashion designer who is also a co-founder and president of the national sex industry lobby group, the Eros Foundation.

Last December Patten contested the by-election for former Treasurer Peter Costello's Melbourne seat of Higgins, finishing fourth with 3.2 per cent of the vote, ahead of the Democrats, One Nation and three independents.

This election Patten is standing for the Senate on a platform that includes advocacy of a national classification scheme for explicit, non-violent erotica.

The party also opposes mandatory internet filtering and wants a national sex education curriculum for schools, and broader anti-discrimination legislation - including rules to ensure equal representation of women in Parliament, and gay marriage.

Comedian Austen Tayshus, real name Alexander Gutman, will run for the Sex Party in Abbott's Sydney seat of Warringah, advocating personal freedoms and campaigning in Speedos - "Unlike Marathon Man [Abbott] I've got a cockatoo to put in them."

The party is one of 18 minor parties - excluding the Greens - listed by the Australian Electoral Commission for the coming election, representing interests ranging from carers and communists to shooters and fishers.

They are riding a wave that peaked at the beginning of the decade as their numbers and support reached such a level that analysts feared for some time that major parties would be so eroded that politics would be dominated by minority governments.

The wave has since receded, taking with it such players as the Democrats and One Nation, and reducing the influence of independents: the present Parliament has four independents in the Lower House, and one independent, a single Family First Senator, and five Greens in the Senate.

The Greens are expected to win outright balance of power in the Upper House, giving them an influence not experienced since the now-defunct Democrats were at the peak.

None of the tiny players such as the Sex Party will feature in the results: between them, 17 minnows won 1.2 million votes for the House of Representatives, or about 7 per cent of the total - less than the Greens' primary votes. The 26 that contested Senate seats did better, collectively, with Family First's Steve Fielding and South Australian independent Nick Xenophon winning enough support to take their seats in Canberra.

For big parties this is the threat of the minnows. They can push issues that the majors would prefer to let lie, influence outcomes through the allocation of preferences and, in the case of the Greens, eventually become a real power in their own right.