And it's good that he's taken this on too, because recognition of bisexuality is a genuine and legitimate issue. Even as the vast majority of Australians have accepted same-sex attraction as being so normal and unremarkable as to barely warrant mentioning outside of asking why the hell progress on marriage equality is being deliberately and pointlessly stalled, bisexuality doesn't enjoy the same level of acceptance. There are not that many bisexual characters in the media, for one thing, and those who are tend to be portrayed as ravenous sexual omnivores rather than people who just, you know, fancy people of both genders. And the bisexual stereotypes are universally offensive: if they're female, they're reduced to a titillating porn trope; if they're male, they're mocked as being gay people without the courage of their convictions. But the man who most of Australia remembers as the guy who announced jobseekers would be obliged to apply for 40 jobs a week if they wanted to receive unemployment benefits has made a bold step towards righting the wrongs meted out to Australia's bisexual community.

"The reality is, and evidence has been given to Senate Committees, where people that have been in gay relationships have gone into heterosexual relationships and I believe that can happen courtesy of the evidence," he proudly told Samatha Maiden on Sky News on Tuesday. "My complaint has been that when people say that they have moved from a gay relationship to a heterosexual relationship, they are never reported… yet when people say they were in a straight relationship going into a gay relationship then that is all that's reported." "All I seek, and I don't think it's too much to ask, is for a bit of balance in the reporting by Australia's journalists of the actual evidence, the real evidence… I think we all know people that have been, if I can call it that, a straight relationship who have gone on to be in a gay relationship and people then doing the opposite and the fact that both occur in society is an established fact and why we can't report on the two way traffic." Now, there are those who unfairly interpreted Abetz's statements as the gibbering of a scared man who hates and fears the threat of natural human sexuality. However, such assessments miss the sincere beauty at the heart of his words. Let us instead recognise his statement for what it clearly is: a message of solidarity with a segment of our population who have been sidelined in the public discourse for too long.