Australians celebrate gay unions victory but fear override by PM Kevin Rudd

November 12, 3:35 AMInternational LGBT Issues ExaminerKelvin Lynch

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Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd
Reuters

The Australian Capital Territory (ACT), the nation's seat of government, celebrated a legislative victory yesterday as the first region in the country to give gay and lesbian Australian families the right to a legal civil partnership ceremony. The new law is the most progressive yet in Australia, but LGBT activists fear Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will override it.

According to EdgeBoston.com, an ACT assembly-approved law from 2006 provided marriage equality in the ACT, but was overturned by Australia’s federal government. Another measure in 2008 to allow ACT couples engaging in a civil union to have an officially recognized ceremony was dropped when it appeared that the federal government would once again turn the legislation back. The current law may be subjected to the same fate.

However, The Australian reports that the Rudd government "faces fallout" over the new ACT same-sex law, and a "showdown" over same-gender civil unions.  ACT Attorney General Simon Corbell cited legal precedent that the new laws were not at odds with any existing marriage act.

"Unless they are able to come up with an argument that says why this impinges on the constitutional powers available to them - and they haven't been able to do that to date - I simply have to conclude that this is a form of discrimination, it's a form of bigotry," said Corbell.

The Age calls the civil union debate in Australia "a long-running case of legal leap frog" that "once again appeared to put the territory on another collision course with the Federal Government."

ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope said he was quietly confident the reform would succeed this time. Senior Federal Government legal figures have had little time to focus on the move, given a separate asylum-seeker controversy currently embroiling Rudd.

But Australian Christian Lobby chief Jim Wallace was confident the laws would not stand.  ''It looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, it is a duck. I expect the Government to respond the same way,'' he said.

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