In Queensland politics, pragmatics and expediency rule.
During his election campaign, newly elected Premier, Campbell Newman, announced that, if the LNP won Government, he would look at repealing the Labor legislation on same-sex civil unions. However, in Office, Mr Newman announced that Queensland's law would not be "repealed", but "amended". Despite the fact that this is an issue of civil marriage in a secular State, Newman indicated that the amendment was because the State-sanctioned marriage ceremony offended Christian groups such as The Australian Christian Lobby. "The gay community already had all the rights they needed to not be discriminated against," he said, "... They have nothing to fear from this change." Is that so?
Surrogacy lawyer, Stephen Page, warns that proposed changes to the Queensland Surrogacy Act aim to ban single people, people in de facto relationships of less than two years and same-sex couples having children through "altruistic surrogacy". This move is at odds with the Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Act. The proposed Queensland legislation would deny the right of surrogacy to same-sex couples. Violation of that law would be an offence punishable by up to three years imprisonment.
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Stop prevaricating. Just do it!
The last word goes to Liz Ann Macgregor, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney). After lengthy discussion of marriage equality on Q and A (9/7/12), she drew much applause from the diverse audience when she summed up with an endgame scenario:
I just don't think the politicians are reflecting what the people want. Survey after survey says so [support for marriage equality]. For goodness sake let's just get on with it. It's another of these issues where we see the politicians bickering about it. It will go away. They should just pass it.
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