Realpolitik

There are rumblings in the gay community from people who should know better about the Victorian Government's commitment to gay rights. Because the ACT government is now considering legislation to legalise civil unions and because it is not allowing, in an election year, a private member's bill to move forward for debate in the Victorian Parliament, apparently the government is now not sufficiently supportive of the gay community.

Bad government, horrible homophobic government. Yeah right! Despite the bleatings of the the usual wannabee community leaders in the gay community this current Victorian Government has advanced the civil rights for gays and lesbians to an extraodinary degree. In its first term, without the advantage of a majority in the Legislative Council, the government changed nearly thirty pieces of legislation to provide same-sex couples all the rights that heterosexual unmarried couples enjoy under state legislation, which basically means that every right that a married couple gets under state law, same-sex couples get (Except for adoption, which I will get to later). Civil Union legislation would not make one bit of difference to this situation.


This government set up a special advisory commitee to the Minister for Health to enquire into the health needs of gays and lesbians. In response to the report from this committee the government established and funded Gay and Lesbian Health Victoria, the first government body in the world to promote, research and educate the health sector in the particular health needs gays and lesbians in this state.


This government set up an advisory committee to the Attorney-General on gay, lesbian and transgender issues. I have attended some of these meetings. The agenda that committee resulted in legislation to enable transgender people to change their birth certificate once their re-assignment surgery was complete. It resulted in the ability of lesbians and single women's ability to access IVF treatments to be referred to the Law Reform Commission for review of the legislation. The same for adoption laws.

While one may argue that in many ways this government is chronically cautious and slow to move, one cannot maintain that because of this that it is anti-gay or somehow not committed to gay and lesiban rights. Yet that is the bullshit that is being bruted about on the internets.

One could argue that this cautious approach is an advantage. By referring legislation to the Law Reform Commission, the government is assured that a much broader range of opinion and positions are canvassed on prospective legislation. It is an effective measure to defuse potential community objections. Also, by the slow drip of information that flows from this process, it becomes far less of a hot political potato.

As for the proposed private member's legislation, why would a government bring forward legislation with no practical application but the potential to be a distracting and divisive political issue in an election year. The ALP learnt that lesson years ago when a candidate in the seat of Prahran dropped a bombshell that he would support euthanasia legislation three weeks before the election. It was not even ALP policy, it caused a distraction and cost him any chance of winning the seat. The time for civil union's legislation (which I am not against, by the way) is at the beginning of a government's term, not 7 months before an election. What's a few months wait, gang, after waiting all these years?