Christopher Pyne recently outraged dairy producers across the country by claiming Labor was "more focused on the goat's-cheese set of the voting public" than average Australians. There may be a "Che" in "Chevre", they protested, but it doesn't make you a commie elitist to enjoy it.
The goat's cheese jibe belied something more interesting that has been happening over recent months: the blossoming, in plain sight, of Pyne the moderate. Not just a parliamentary attack dog, but a tribal Liberal with a bleeding heart.
In a discussion about his memoir, A Letter to My Children, at the National Press Club on Thursday, Pyne's progressive plumage was on full display. Much of what the Education Minister had to say would go down a treat at a dinner party in Fitzroy or Glebe.
First, there was his passionate support for an Australian Republic. It is "bizarre" and "untenable", Pyne said, for Australia's head of state to be restricted to the members of one foreign-born family. And not for him the minimalist model favoured by the new head of the Republican movement, Peter FitzSimons. Pyne says the public will only accept a directly elected head of state.
Then there's same-sex marriage. In his strongest statements yet on the issue, Pyne said he supports marriage equality because of the thousands of Australian children with gay parents. "I feel that the children in those households deserve some legal certainty about the households in which they live," he said. He spoke movingly about gay foster parents who had taken in disadvantaged children and given them a stable home.
Pyne also detailed his interest in Indigenous Australia - a surprise, perhaps, to those who have heard him protest the "black armband" teaching of Australian history. Pyne has led a campaign to locate and, if possible, repatriate the remains of the Indigenous warrior Pemulwuy from Great Britain. This has included writing letters to Prince William and lobbying him when they met in person. Pyne believes Pemulwuy's military resistance to white settlement is something all Australians should know and celebrate.
Veteran political observers will tell you much of this is not new. Pyne was a leading Coalition advocate for a republic in 1999 and his strong support for the High Court's Mabo decision put him closer to Paul Keating than many of his colleagues.
His stance on gay marriage, however, represents a break with the past. When John Howard was campaigning for the Liberal leadership in 1993, he lobbied Pyne for his support by noting they shared "conservative" positions on many social issues. Pyne, a proud Catholic, voted against stem-cell research and the abortion drug RU486. Now he is on the opposite side to the Church.
"This is a democracy," Pyne said on Thursday. "We have to get away from this idea that just because someone has a different view it requires a totally over-the-top response."
