ALP: We will make you equal

Labor has given the gay community an iron-clad guarantee it will abolish all instances of same-sex discrimination in federal legislation if it is elected to power later this year.

The Labor candidates in Sydney’s three gay ghetto seats -“ Anthony Albanese, Tanya Plibersek and George Newhouse -“ said the Human Rights Commissioner’s recent recommendations to remove discrimination would be implemented early in Labor’s first term in office.

Grayndler MP Anthony Albanese, who is likely to go straight into a Labor cabinet, said the HREOC recommendations were within existing Labor commitments and he would seek early implementation.

The states and territories have already removed this discrimination; action federally is long overdue, he said.

Sydney MP Tanya Plibersek said the first step of Labor’s commitment -“ an audit of legislation -“ could virtually be skipped thanks to the Commissioner’s research.

It means reforms could be implemented as soon as possible. Certainly in the first term of a Labor government, she said.

We still have to draft legislation -“ that doesn’t happen overnight -“ but it certainly speeds up and solidifies the process because [the Commissioner] has done all the work.

Even if another party introduced legislation for some of the Commissioner’s recommendations, Plibersek said she would support progressive reforms.

All of the ones that accord with Labor Party policy, sure. But I can’t commit to legislation I haven’t seen, she said.

Wentworth Labor candidate George Newhouse said he would vote for the reforms regardless of which party introduced them.

As a human rights lawyer, I would have great difficulty in not supporting legislation that removed discrimination against same-sex couples, he said.

There’s a groundswell of support in Labor’s ranks for immediate action on this issue.

Community activists had expressed concern at Labor’s commitment to same-sex relationship reform after Shadow Attorney-General Senator Joe Ludwig would only say the reforms would be a matter of priority when the HREOC report was released three weeks ago.

However former Democrats senator and gay activist Brian Greig said he had heard such promises before.

Many times I heard federal Labor say they -˜fully supported same-sex super’, but I also watched them vote it down 11 times, he said.