Disillusionment
Jan 6th, 2008 by Rebecca
We’ve gotten to a point in Australia where we’re starting to fall behind even the United States in terms of giving recognition to gay and lesbian relationships. We’ve had zero progress on civil unions, and now we have the incoming Rudd government promising to introduce a national relationship register scheme that would in all probability, block any moves towards either civil unions or gay marriage in this country for the next twenty years.
We have one chance to blow this move out of the water before it happens - the ACT’s Civil Partnerships Bill, currently before the Legislative Assembly - which, if passed, would finally bring civil unions to somewhere in this country. This is the most significant gay rights battle we’ve had in Australia since decriminalisation. The Stanhope government has always been strongly supportive of the LGBT community, but it’s no secret, however, that Rudd - and useless new federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland - are putting vast amounts of pressure on the ACT government to cave in and submit to the national scheme, in an attempt to fulfill the promises Rudd made to the religious right during the election campaign. And - as seen in the comments of ACT Attorney-General Simon Corbell before Christmas - there’s some sign the ACT government may be starting to waver.
Yet, in spite of all of this, the inaction from the gay and lesbian community, both in the ACT and nationally, has been deafening. The ACT government is nine months out from an election, and the current bill has pretty strong popular support in the ACT community. We need to be leaning on the government to ensure that bill stays as currently drafted, and isn’t watered down to something that makes a mockery of gay and lesbian relationships. Good Process, the excellent lobby group who ran the 2005 campaign, appear to be effectively dead. We have no other ACT-based LGBT lobby group, and Australia has no national group that can step in and take their place. The state-based lobby groups elsewhere appear to have done nothing, despite the ramifications for their jurisdictions.
So, with Christmas out of the way, a couple of activist types called a meeting for today to try and form some sort of response from the ACT gay community. It was about as widely advertised within the community as could possibly be. And the response? About eight people showed up, none of them over 25. Being generally the type with more enthusiasm than sense or organising skills, there was a lot of support for an angry rally in the city, but no real energy for mounting any sort of campaign that might actually help. I did manage to convince the Trotskyist folks to actually focus the protest on the damned bill, and not to have a general protest ranting about anything and everything to do with queers. This said, I failed to even convince them to at least form some sort of ad-hoc group to run a campaign, as we can’t put out press releases from “some random queers”. We’re screwed with this before we’ve even begun.
We stand to potentially lose the best opportunity we’ve ever had to set a strong precedent for civil unions, and allow the horse to bolt before Rudd’s awful registration scheme can be set up. We have a great bill before parliament and a supportive government. But with no community campaign whatsoever to encourage the ACT government to hold the line against federal pressure, I’m increasingly worried that they’re going to back down.
Polls over the last few years have repeatedly shown that the ACT queer community strongly supports civil unions over all other alternatives. If, as I grimly suspect, the bill gets watered down, many people here will complain about how they were sold out. And it will be their own damned fault. The best opportunity we’ve ever had for real relationship recognition reform in this country is slipping away because no one in the community can be bothered doing the slightest bit to help it along.
I’m a heretic when it comes to “recognizing relationships”. I’m one of those weird types who reckons the whole idea of having the state recognize or not recognize a relationship is just demeaning, bugger civil unions, repeal the marriage act!
But I agree, in terms of achieving the same legal rights as straight Australians, the ACT Queer community has never had a better opportunity. We finally have a federal government that probably wont get away with overruling the territories legislation in the senate, we just need the territory to pass the act once more.
I think the apathy comes from complacency. People just expect it to happen, Stanhope fought Howard tooth and nail over this bill, how could he not again propose it now that Rudd is in?
Sorry I missed the meeting, if we do end up with a rally I hope to be there.
The GLB mafia here in Canberra has far more invested in being ALP fans than agitating for GLB rights. When the Civil Unions bill could be used to embarrass the Howard Govt, they were all for it. Now it’s an embarrassment to Rudd, not so much.
As for Ts.. GLBT here is GLB only in effect, with T’s working separately - and to some good effect - to their own ends. IMHO of course.
And no-one mentions IS rights at all.
It’s good to see you dropping by, Zoe - not sure if you remember me, but we met once last year.
I think it’s a bit of a stretch to suggest that there’s a “GLB mafia” in Canberra - there’s barely anyone interested in LGBT activism at all. The Good Process folks did a good job on the first campaign, but then they got burnt out, and once they were gone, there was pretty much no one left. It’s the real problem we have in this city: Labor or Liberal government, people are too apathetic to stand up and be heard when it matters.
It’s a bit the same with transfolk. As we have no active LGBT organisations at all, there’s no organisations actually there to speak up on trans issues when they arrive. We also don’t have any particularly prominent ACT-specific trans issues going on at the moment, as our legal state here is really good compared to most other jurisdictions. This said, the trans community nationwide really needs to get its act together and get a decent lobby group happening. It’s a disgrace that it’s fallen to you to have to do much of the work to try and change the disgusting passport laws.
[…] everything for this rally just seemed to fall into place. I blogged about one of the early meetings a few weeks ago, when things seemed pretty hopeless. I was worried few people would show, and I certainly […]