Yay!

[lederhosen]

Rudd honeymoon not yet over, as far as I'm concerned:

The long battle by gay and lesbian partners for the same legal and financial rights as de facto heterosexual couples is about to end, with the Rudd Government planning to remove inequalities in 100 areas of the law.

The federal Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, will announce today that the necessary legislation will be introduced when Parliament resumes next month for the winter sittings.

(And yes, no doubt there will be teething problems - you can't change a hundred laws in a hurry without introducing a few glitches - but this is LONG overdue.)

Comments

[saluqi.livejournal.com]

Now is the time to write to Liberal senators and ask them to back it. Without the Liberal party backing it, it won't get up because Family First is certainly not going to vote for it. Nelson looks like he's pro it, but he'll have to get agreement from the party room.

I know it's a good thing and it will make a big difference to our life planning if it goes through, but I'm still cringing a bit at going through the public debate again particularly:

a) headlines portraying it as "extra" rights for gays; and
b) the usual palaver about "we won't let them mimic marriage".

*puts paper bag over head*

[velvetink.livejournal.com]

Lateline tonight said something about it being effective within 2 weeks?

Teething problems

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

One obvious possible problem area is divorce laws. Canada's turned out to be specific to one male/one female marriages so until we amended the divorce act there was no legal mechanism for same-sex couples to divorce.

Re: Teething problems

[saluqi.livejournal.com]

Unlikely to be an issue in this case as they are specifically ruling out marriage as an option. They're planning on a register, in much the same way as I might register my dog.

Some territories and states already include gay people in the de facto property settlement laws.

Re: Teething problems

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

USA also had some hiccups that way. IIRC, in the case I read about went something along these lines: couple from state without gay marriage took a trip to MA to get married, went back home, broke up, and then discovered that MA only offered divorce to state residents.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

the usual palaver about "we won't let them mimic marriage"

Yeah, that was disappointing. Still, maybe this will help show that equal treatment won't actually make the sky fall in, and make that next step easier.

(Actually, my real preference would be for the state to get out of the marriage business altogether, but I don't see that happening any time soon.)

Re: Teething problems

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

If I remember the Canadian situation correctly and I probably don't, it happened because the original formulation of marriage assumed that divorce would be extremely rare. I think it used to require an act of Parliament until surprisingly recently.