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Australian politics discrimination elections - Rainbow Reporter

Pre-election pollie-shopping

March 7th 2010 05:52

Eat your Greens

As we get into election season, I’m shopping for pollies. Here’s what I want from mine.

EQUAL MARRIAGE

The ‘nationally consistent system of state-based registers’ the government wants remains a joke.

The NSW proposal is the feeblest effort yet, and not consistent with any existing scheme.

The Victorian Register is fraying, with the VCAT decision – currently being appealed to the Supreme Court – that its residency restrictions are distinctly elastic.

Because the state-based schemes are all different, they are and will likely remain non-transferable from state to state. Marriage is the only sensible solution to this farce.

NEW ENFORCEABLE EQUALITY LEGISLATION

Unequal pay’s been illegal for 40 years. Women are still only paid 82.5 per cent of what men earn - less than in 1985. A law that does the opposite of what it intends, clearly isn’t working.

That’s just one example. Equality and anti-discrimination laws are ineffective, because they make the victim – the person with the least resources – do all the work. The law should assume that an act which has the effect of discriminating IS discrimination – unless the alleged discriminator can prove otherwise.

The Equal Opportunity Commissioners must be given the power to use its resources to investigate and prosecute on behalf of a victim. A toothless law is a worthless law.

We need a comprehensive law, backed by a Human Rights Charter, run from a one-stop shop, covering discrimination on any grounds: age, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender expression and identity.

Public funding and government contracts must be conditional on compliance, with regular audits by the Commission. Audit recommendations must be legally enforceable.

Government departments, city councils, aged care providers, school boards, sporting bodies, hospital s, even the companies contracted to clean council offices, will have to enforce proper diversity training, policies and procedures.

IMMIGRATION

Under current policy, gay asylum seekers are sent back to countries with homophobic regimes, even the death penalty, and told to hide their sexuality. That must stop.

Even the leader of British Conservatives has said this is wrong, that they should be allowed to stay if they would be in danger at home.

Neo-fascists accused him of pledging “to flood Britain with homosexual African “asylum seekers” . . . . . ten times more likely to have AIDS than the heterosexual African population.” He took no notice. Can we please have similarly principled action from an Australian politican?

Of course, there’s more – but that’ll do for a start. What’s on your wishlist, and why?

P.S. A list of Senators who voted against equal marriage is here: Really Long Link

[Doug presents ‘Freshly Doug’ on Joy 94.9 every Thursday 9am-12noon – and he’s now also a ‘Grumpy Old Pouf’ on Joy alternate Tuesdays 9pm – listen online http://www.joy.org.au/listenlive]

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Posted By: Doug Pollard - Category: Australian politics, discrimination, elections, equality, gay lesbian politics, equal marriage, equal rights

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Eighty-five and counting

January 31st 2010 05:37

Yaaay! 85 and finally - equality!!

Here it comes, a great tsunami of lerve rolling out of Canberra (via LGBT Health & ACON).

85 laws reformed. Wow! Kewl T-shirts! A Natalie Bassingthwaite single (wonder how much they paid her for that?). Let’s all shout “Hoorah” for the 85 reforms . . . . . .

Except I could swear Attorney General Robert McClelland mentioned ‘about 100’ laws. Yes, there it is in Hansard: Senator Hanson-Young , congratulating him on reforming ‘more than 100’ laws. So what’s this 85?

Oh, never mind, who cares, it’s time to express our heartfelt gratitude to those wonderful pollies who ~~are standing for re-election~~ gave us . . . . oh yes, right, I get it now . . . who gave us 85% Australian citizenship!

Hang on a minute though, that can’t be right. How can we be 85% equal, if we’re still substandard goods when it comes to: counting us in the census; recognising our relationships nationally; marriage; recognising our overseas marriages and civil partnerships; recognising our partners interstate; meeting our specific needs in social inclusion policy, aged-care, education, homelesssness, depression and youth suicide; passing a federal anti-discrimination law - and a few other trivial matters?

Does that really add up to 85%?

But what the hell!! Let’s not carp. OK, they still have a bit of tidying up to do. So what? We’ve got t-shirts! We’ve got a not exactly gay song (‘cos that way it’ll be more commercial)! We’ve a micro-diva in a happy gay vid with lots of buff boys.

Of course it’s true they could have spent the money on doing something useful, like anti-homophobia training for schools or nursing homes, but let’s not quibble. Let’s not be mean.

So what if “some lifelong relationships have disintegrated under new pressures”, like one partner becoming financially dependent for the first time, because the government wouldn’t grandfather benefit changes (Maree O’Halloran, Welfare Rights Centre). So what if the gay youth suicide rate is still stratospheric?

Send those old couples a t-shirt! No, let’s not be mean – send them one each. That’ll keep them warm this winter. Send those depressed kids a DVD – cheer them up! Enjoy the distraction! Celebrate – even though the job is far from done. Dance! Sing ! Cut the government some slack. Be a bit grateful. Say, 85% grateful ?
. . . . . . . . .
[Doug presents Freshly Doug, GLBTI News & Current Affairs, every Thursday 9am-Noon on Joy 94.9 Melbourne, streaming at http://www.joy.org.au/listenlive.]

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Posted By: Doug Pollard - Category: Australian politics, discrimination, elections, gay lesbian politics, equal marriage, equal rights

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A Right Royal New Years Message

January 2nd 2010 02:28

Getting Priorities Right in 2010

With state and federal elections on the way, like it or not, politics is going to be important this year. We need to be clear about what we want from our politicians.

There are some law reforms that are a waste of time and energy. Not every ‘pro-gay’ law actually helps, much. Some are not much more than window-dressing. So let’s not waste our scant resources on them.

Hate Speech

Let’s start with so-called ‘hate speech’ laws – making it a crime to say nasty things about us. In the first place, it’s a restriction on free speech, and anything that makes it OK to police what people say about us, paves the way for laws that make it OK to police what we say about others. Bad idea.

There’s no problem with laws that criminalise incitement to violence – that’s why we have those already. But I want the freedom to tell you that the “Catch The Clap Ministries” are a bunch of dangerous loonies – and that means I have to put up with them calling us a bunch of monster raving paedophile perverts. No problem.

That doesn’t make it OK for them to call for burning lesbians at the stake, or for me to call for them to be forcibly lobotomised (not that there’d be much point, it would only be gilding the lily).

The other problem with criminalising hate speech is that "The attempt to gag people plays into the very hands of those we wish to defeat. It allows them to play at being victims, to claim that we are policing what they think," as Simon Fanshawe wrote recently in Attitude magazine Really Long Link . Another very bad idea. This sort of thing is at best, no more than a ‘nice to have’. It can hardly be
described as essential, or even particularly important.

Hate Crimes

Ditto so-called ‘hate crime’ laws – the idea that a crime deserves to be punished more harshly if it’s motivated by prejudice or hatred of a specific class, race or other minority. Like hate speech laws, it allows the people we wish to defeat to claim that we are setting ourselves above them, as though bashing a homosexual were somehow worse than bashing a woman, or a child. This is rubbish.

A murder is a murder, a rape is a rape, a bashing is a bashing, and the motives are irrelevant. The crime’s the same no matter why it was done, and the punishment should be the same too.

Hate-speech and hate-crime laws are little more than gesture politics that don’t improve our position more than a micron or two, and even feed ammunition to those who oppose us. They divert time, effort and attention away from things that are really worth doing.

Anti-Discrimination

Another vampire sucking the life-blood out of our efforts towards equality is anti-discrimination legislation. But the problem here is not the principle of the thing, but the practice. Practically all existing anti-discrimination is so hamstrung by the compromises that were necessary to get it passed in the first place that it is next to useless.

Yes, we need legal protection from discrimination. But we need legal protection that works – and the anti-discrimination law we’ve got to date is too weak, too compromised, too expensive, time-consuming and difficult to use to be of much value. It’s heavily weighted in favour of the discriminators – who have the time, the money and the lawyers to easily out-gun a sole complainant. It looks good on paper, but, as anyone who has tried to use the system knows, in practice, it’s a road to despair. Besides which, it’s tackling the wrong end of the process.

It’s too late, once you’ve lost your job, been refused a reference, had your reputation trashed, and are reduced to trying to survive on benefits. You haven’t the time, the energy or the money to put up an effective fight – and the system doesn’t provide you with the matching resources with which to do it.

We need an anti-discrimination system that works to prevent discrimination occurring in the first place. We need anti-discrimination to be part of the national curriculum in every classroom. We need a permanent ongoing government-funded program of workplace education in diversity. We need public service ads on TV and radio.

Without these and similar measures, another layer of anti-discrimination law is likely to be little more than yet another feel-good gesture that allows pollies to point at something they’ve achieved, while hiding the fact that they have yet again avoided doing anything practical that makes a real difference.

Worse, it throws the onus back on us, the people least able to effect change, because we don’t have the moolah. It’s a cheap get-out.

Mental Health, Homelessness & Aged Care

This propensity to get hold of the wrong end of the stick is a hallmark of allegedly ‘progressive’ politics. Take GLBTI mental health.

It’s a well-known fact, and has been for years, that our community suffers higher rates of mental ill-health, self-medication (with drugs and alcohol), self-harm and suicide. Politicians baulk at the huge cost of treating the problem, but ignore the far cheaper option of preventing it arising in the first place.

The root cause is discrimination and homophobia and the resultant isolation, bullying, and lack of support, especially for our young and our senior GLBTI people. And the answer lies not in treating people who are already damaged (although that is needed too), but in preventing the damage from occurring in the first place. It lies in mandating the provision of safe spaces, gay-straight alliances, support programs, education and training, and the like.

The same principle applies to homelessness. Everywhere studies have been done – and, shamefully, not enough of them have been done here in Australia – the stats show a high percentage of young homeless people are same-sex attracted or gender-variant.

The same disproportionately high rates of depression, self-harm and suicide are mirrored at the other end of life. Senior GLBTI people are also unremarked, neglected and underserved.

The right end of the stick

Which takes us neatly back to those nationally mandated and funded programs promoting diversity in every classroom and workplace, those big Health & Safety posters saying “It’s OK To Be Gay” and “Some People Are Gay – Get Over it”, which should be plastered on every canteen and classroom wall, every bus-stop and train station. Until people get the point.

This deals with the source of the problem – lack of understanding and respect for GLBTI people - instead of trying to deal with the consequences. The present approach is, ironically, ass-backwards.

Equal Marriage

I haven’t said anything about marriage. That’s not because I think it’s unimportant – in fact I think it is THE most important issue.

For as long as the state says we cannot marry on exactly the same terms and conditions as heterosexuals, it is saying that we are less than our heterosexual counterparts. That our relationships are inherently less important, less valuable. And that, more than anything else, fuels hatred, discrimination and homophobia. Removing that stigma is vital, and until we do, we will always remain second-class and second-rate in the eyes of the majority.

Remember G A Y = Good As You. Not better, not worse, Just the same. Never forget that.
For as long as politicians go on offering registration schemes, civil unions or partnerships, with or without ceremonies, they are telling us we are not good enough to be full citizens of this country. Worse, they are writing our second-class status into the law of the land. We should throw these insulting patronising pieces of paper back in their faces.

Make no mistake – any politician who refuses to publicly support gay marriage is promoting a degree of apartheid and therefore by definition a homophobe. He or she is saying that we are different, lesser, undeserving, untrustworthy – no matter how much they claim the contrary.

It is no good protesting that they support us in private, that if they buck party discipline and support us publicly they would lose their power and influence, and would not be in a position to help us. What’s the point of keeping them in post, if they persist in being part of the problem instead of part of the solution?

I recently came across a piece of relationship advice which said, “There is no point in wasting time on someone who is not making you a priority, when all you are to them is an option.”

Apply the same test when deciding who to vote for. Unless the candidate is prepared to make gay rights a number one priority – and to say so publicly – they are not worthy of your vote.

Before the election, make sure your sitting member - and his or her opponents – knows of your stance, and why you are taking it. Explain your stance to your parents, children, uncles, aunts, workmates, classmates, employers and employees, and ask them to do likewise.

For them it may just be an add-on, but for us, it’s a priority. Make sure everyone knows it.

Putting Religion In Its Place

And what of the churches? What of their opposition – or at best, ambivalence – on equal marriage?

Let us get something clear. Churches, mosques, temples, synagogues, whatever you got – organised religion has no standing in the marriage debate. The state and the state alone controls, defines and manages marriage, not religious institutions. What they do is weddings, which is a different matter.

It’s been a long time since I went to a wedding, but I have attended dozens down the years, mostly in Anglican churches. And they all follow the same pattern. The bride powers down the aisle, she’s given away, the vows and rings are exchanged etc etc – and then the whole thing comes to a shuddering halt. The principal actors – bride, groom, clergyman, witnesses disappear, and a hitherto unsuspected soprano steps up to sing “Oh Perfect Love”, or the organist indulges himself with a frenzy of Bach, and everyone twiddles their thumbs for a while.

After this curious coitus interruptus the actors troop back on stage and the ceremony proceeds.

If you watch closely you will probably see the priest remove his stole as he exits to the vestry, only to resume it when he returns. This little bit of ecclesiastical strip-tease is intended to symbolise that what he is about to do with the bride and groom in the back room is the state’s business, not God’s. That’s why it takes place offstage, so to speak.

And what are they doing back there? They are signing the register. And that is when the actual marriage takes place. Backstage, with the priest in his official capacity as a representative of the state. Not in Gods house, with the priest acting as God’s representative.

What happens out front is a wedding, and is religion’s business. It has absolutely no legal significance whatsoever. What happens out back is marriage, and that is purely state business. Therefore organised religions are not stakeholders in the marriage debate.

Make Of Our Voices One Voice

Politicians are apt to say that they can’t do what we want, because they don’t know what we want. We don’t put up one national body, one voice to speak for us. We don’t work like that. But government does.

Numerous attempts have been made to create such a dominant voice. The various state-based rights lobbies tried co-ordinating their efforts without much success. The various AIDS Councils and GLBTI health bodies have also tried to do the same. Not much happening there, either, and besides, who wants to be defined in the eyes of the government as a health problem?

Most of the effective politicking these days is done by dedicated individuals with a passion for the work, people like Rodney Croome, Jo Harrison, Gary Burns, Felicity Marlowe, John Kloprogge, Corey Irlam, Shelley Argent and Rob Mitchell, to name a few.

Most of the momentum is with niche groups like Equal Love, Parents & Friends of Lesbians & Gays, and Love Makes a Family. Big umbrella organisations like rights lobbies, AIDS councils and various foundations tend to collapse into self-serving bureaucracies and/or get captured by the governments who fund them. They make fine career paths for homobureaucrats and administrators.

We are not a political party and we will never have a single voice – we are far too diverse. The government doesn’t demand that all religious groups speak with one voice – they acknowledge and deal with Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jewish etc. voices. This is just an excuse to avoid dealing with us seriously at all.

One Port Of Call

The onus is on the government to create a single GLBTI voice, not on us. To create a one-stop shop to which we can take our concerns and which will represent us to each of the ministries within government. With a whole-of-government remit to monitor, audit and intervene to ensure that our concerns are taken into account and incorporated into all legislation. And to publish their findings every year, showing what has been achieved and what has still to be done.

I do not know whether this could best be achieved though a ministry, a specialist commission and commissioner (I’m suspicious of those as they too tend to become bloated bureaucratic gravy trains), a permanent GLBTI Ombudsman, or what. I’m open to creative suggestion.

New Year Wishes

Finally, may I make a wish or two? I wish Labor would stop telling me I ought to be grateful for everything they’ve done for me. You have made a start, that’s all. You still have a lot to do. Telling me to be grateful makes me want to bite you. Hard. Don’t think I won’t.

I wish the Greens would stop paying us lip service and use their clout to start obstructing Labor legislation to force them to deal with GLBTI issues, like equal marriage. It’s time to put your money where your mouth is, Senator Brown.

We have a lot of work to do in an election year. Make the pollies work, hard and publicly, for our votes. Vote tactically, and/or vote informally to get our message across. Engage with politicians from all parties, not just the ones who make nicey noises at us.

And above all, to all of you who claim to be uninterested in politics, bored with politics, ‘unrepresented’ by your GLBTI advocates, don’t expect a few people to do all the heavy lifting for you. I wish you to get off your butts and do some of it yourselves.

And I wish everyone a Happy New Year.

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Posted By: Doug Pollard - Category: Australian politics, Melbourne, discrimination, elections, gay lesbian politics, equal marriage, equal rights, religion

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Face Down the God Squad & Win Votes!

December 20th 2009 02:08

What do you mean, I'm a fraud?

Labor supporters continue to propagate the myth that the party can’t embrace marriage equality because they would lose the Christian vote and hence their grip on power. GLBTI advocates have long held that this was hogwash, and now we have the proof

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Posted By: Doug Pollard - Category: Australian politics, discrimination, elections, equality, gay lesbian politics, equal marriage, equal rights, religion

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Go Straight to Marriage, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect Civil Unions

November 29th 2009 02:05

Ex-SAS Brigadier Jim Wallace, leader of the Australian Christian Lobby

So the Senate enquiry has said no, the ACT ceremonies have been castrated, the Equal Love rallies are over for the time being. But that doesn’t mean equal marriage is off the agenda

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Posted By: Doug Pollard - Category: Australian politics, discrimination, elections, gay lesbian politics, equal marriage, equal rights, religion, same-sex

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The mob at the back of the bus

May 31st 2009 04:11

St Trinians - Ronald Searle

Listening to ‘our spokespeople’ arguing about marriage versus registers versus unions is like being a teacher with a busload of bitchy schoolgirls

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Posted By: Doug Pollard - Category: Australian politics, discrimination, elections, equality, gay lesbian politics, equal marriage, equal rights

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Kennett now equates bisexual footy trainers with pedophile priests

August 2nd 2008 21:00

Dark Night Priest

Well, I was going to lay off Jeff Kennett, but the man just keeps chewing on that foot in his mouth. In the Herald Sun today he continues to make a link between bisexuality and pedophilia. Such a link does not exist, and such a slur is incredibly damaging

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