What is it about Daniel Andrews, quasi-dictator of Victoria? He runs what Tony Abbott last week called ‘the worst government in Australia’ with the worst pandemic deaths record, yet he remains so firmly entrenched in power as to have made the forthcoming state election almost redundant. Victorians seem to love him, and none more so than the powerful gay lobby.

Actually, that should be LGBTQIA lobby, but does anyone beside me have trouble with that protean set of initials? It’s hard to keep up when the letters are forever expanding to admit new categories – although I note that romantically inclined pet-lovers, even after ethical endorsement from no less an authority than Professor Peter Singer, have not yet been included.

For utility of reference instead of initials I shall write ‘rainbow people’, a locution I owe to the Roman Catholic Church’s current ‘plenary council’ and its desperate efforts to be ‘inclusive’.

Rainbow people adore Dan and well they might. Not only has he appointed the only ‘LGBTIQ+ commissioner’ in Australia, he’s laying on a huge festival for them to last two months next summer. You’d think the most tireless gay militant would be sick of it before then, but Dan believes the more rainbow rejoicing the better, and the extra time is required so that the whole of regional Victoria can be saturated with ‘celebration’.

Lucky country folk, their rural quiet shattered by float-loads of Ugly Sister lookalikes, talentlessly gyrating in sequins and lurex and screeching their impressions of Beyoncé. Run and hide in the cowshed would be my advice. ‘Celebration’ or not, this isn’t all just for fun. There is a serious social purpose. According to Dan, rainbow people are subject to ‘stigma’ and this must be removed. How two months of undiluted drag queenery will achieve this he doesn’t say.

It seems that nothing will ever convince leftist deadheads like Andrews that if ever there was an anti-rainbow stigma it has long since been dispelled, and that it is the heterosexual majority, if anyone, that now bears the stigma – a stigma of ‘homophobia’ and intolerance, supported less by evidence than by repeated assertion. In fact, objective evidence is anathema to the Left and the notion of persecuted homosexuals lingers on as a cherished urban myth. But where are these alleged sufferers?

They certainly don’t exist in Australia, where the rainbow establishment is rich and influential. Just look at the ‘Pride Centre’, their sumptuous headquarters in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda, newly built at a cost of $50 million, courtesy of the taxpayer. True, in unfortunate juxtaposition this shining monument to self-importance soars above a panorama of homelessness in the street below, where – and how’s this for a little vignette of ‘intersectionality’ in action? – most of the homeless are from our honoured ‘first nations’. One wonders, when the rainbow folk in their palatial fortress declare their ‘acknowledgment of country’, as they no doubt do umpteen times a day, do they include an expression of respect for the ‘elders’ sleeping in filthy blankets in the street outside or peeing in the gutter?

But I digress. Persecuted stigmatised gays aren’t evident in Australia, but there are hundreds of thousands in countries in a part of the world we tend to regard only as a place for a stopover on the flight to Europe, though we take many immigrants from some of them. Those countries also have a different religion from the one we used to have here. Gay persecution there isn’t limited to some vague ‘stigma’. It’s more on the lines of hurling you to death from a tall building. Putting up with the ‘stigma’ would be preferable to that.

Perhaps, then, in his zeal to improve the lot of the rainbow community, Andrews could encourage his supporters to do something about the terrible treatment of gays in these countries. To try anyway. Why doesn’t the Victorian government sponsor volunteer delegations of local rainbows to travel to Islamic countries – the way Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons do? Their mission would be to persuade the persecutors of the error of their ways. They could be issued with copies of the Alinsky handbook for revolutionaries, already so successfully applied to schools and universities in Victoria and beyond, to show the volunteers how to establish underground rainbow cells for infiltration and to disseminate pro-rainbow propaganda.

‘Concerned’ rainbow folk who wanted to help but weren’t quite brave enough to join the crusade abroad could carry the word into Aussie suburbs of Islamic majority. How many rainbows are being silently stigmatised in Sydney Road or Bankstown?

For the ‘missionaries’ going abroad there’d be a huge risk of torture or death but if the cause is worth it, surely there must be young leftists idealistic enough not to be put off by that. Look how many of them during the lockdowns ignored the danger to their health to turn out courageously for the Black Lives Matter rallies. Think how many will scorn the consequences to turn out in protest if the referendum on the Voice isn’t carried.

And why, talking of that, are we to be content with only one Voice? What about a rainbow voice as well as an Aboriginal one? Victoria’s LGBT, etc commissioner, Todd Fernando, is in the happy position of being able to speak for both points of view, he being one of those Australians who includes a boutique aboriginality in his identity package.

But no one has ever heard of him and you really need voices that people can recognise. Let’s have nominations for a voice to represent Australia’s rainbow people. A pity Judy Garland is no longer with us.