Bread and cake
By Rodney Croome
The Government’s elimination of financial discrimination against same-sex partners is the most broad-ranging and important gay law reform since Federation.
Yet there has there been very little interest in this reform in the broader community, or enthusiasm for it among gays and lesbians.
Several metropolitan newspapers forgot to include it in the Rudd Government’s list of first year achievements.
The gay street press seems more interested in what’s missing from the current reform than what’s included.
.The Federal Government made the grave strategic error of putting forward the recognition of same-sex de facto couples as a kind of substitute or compensation for not allowing those same partners to marry.
The Government’s spruiking of same-sex de facto reform always has a rider that it will not countenance same-sex marriage.
The same political games are played with state civil partnership registries.
Such registries were designed as a way for couples who can’t or don’t wish to marry to formalise their unions.
Yet the Rudd Government has inappropriately positioned them as a response to the demand for same-sex marriage.
While we watch everyone else eat their slice of wedding cake, we are told to settle for the bread of financial equity and relationship certificates.
The Rudd Government has one last chance to redeem itself and its reform agenda in the eyes of the gay and lesbian community.
It must disentangle the recognition of de facto couples and the establishment of civil partnership registries from the debate on same-sex marriage.
Rodney Croome is a spokesman for the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby and the Australian Coalition for Equality.
