Queer at home, and queer abroad: studying the experiences of LGBTIQ+ diplomats and politicians in Australia

At home and abroad, Australians are represented by more LGBTIQ+ people in public service than ever before. In 2022, the country elected its most diverse cohort of parliamentarians into public office, and with the nation’s first queer woman of colour as Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is almost unrecognisable from the workplace that once marked reports of alleged gay men as “Evidence of Gross Indecency” (Piggott 2023). As more openly queer people serve fulfilling careers in public office, deeper questions may be posed as to the intersections of the personal and professional: how their sexuality and diverse gender expression influence and shape their professional lives, and how the contexts of their occupation (elected Member of Parliament versus career public servant) encourage them to self-conceptualise and express their sexuality and gender. Pulling from unique qualitative interviews with ten Australian LGBTIQ+ politicians and ten LGBTIQ+ career diplomats, this paper employs a feminist institutionalist lens to explore the nuance of queer experience in domestic and international institutions, the connection between queer representation and community, and the institutionalisation of LGBTIQ+ rights as human rights into electoral campaigning and foreign policy, respectively. In canvassing the experiences of queer politicians and diplomats as they break new ground in their work, this paper seeks to expand into new ontologies, expanding our understanding of how to be a diplomat or a politician, and a queer person.