Comments on: Equality without punishment or penalty

By: D

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 08:23:04 +0000

In your example, you have set the scenario in 2014 (hence the 5yrs backpayments from 2014 back to July 2009 when the couple payments can begin).
Well, who knows what the aged care industry will be like in 2014… by then we could have a bill of rights that gives us equal protection both in aged care, and in private superannuation post-retirement superannuation pensions.
Also, in 2014 maybe poeple might be more comfortable coming out.
Your article also mentions the horror of the choice of “coming out” to Centrelink… well Centrelink keep all information you disclose to them confidential. Nursing homes should also keep thier patients’ information confidential. The couple could disclose, and still remain in the closet to family & friends. Any other suggestion is over-dramatising.
Anyway- defacto recognition should never have been what we got first… for the very reason of the issue of “coming out”. We should have gone after Marriage FIRST, then de-facto recognition MUCH later down the track. That way those who are comfortable coming out could get married, and no de-facto would be forced into recognition.
What we have now is first-class de-facto recognition, and second class (zero) civil marriage recognition.

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:59:10 +0000

The (General Law Reform) Bill, 2008 did not include SSCs in the definition of marital status in section (f) under the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, which says de facto spouse (de facto spouse means a member of the opposite sex. This should include SSCs as well – All jurisdictions include SSCs in marital status in section (f) de facto partner or domestic partner (except for South Australia which also says opposite sex as well).

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 12:22:26 +0000

Certainly makes a lot of sense to me. I have always said, ‘No way I’m ever going into a nursing home. I’ll die in my own home thanks.” Come to think of it, how can I be so certain? I have no family in the traditional sense, they disowned me years ago. My mother went to the trouble of declaring in her will that I was “unfit for any for any further consideration”, thus cutting me right down to size.
So, my family is my partner’s family who have for nearly 30 years accepted me as I am warts and all. What if my partner dies before I do and I am unable to care for myself? Sounds like a nursing home scenario to me.
My partner and I made our life decisions all those years ago on the basis of the law as it then stood. That is, our relationship did not exist in law. Now the law has changed, but our circumstances have not. I am not asking for special consideration. All I am asking is to be left alone to live out what years I have left they way we planned.

By: Jo

Jo — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 10:45:30 +0000

Well the Equal Treatment (General Law Reform) Bill, 2008 got passed and the government ignored everything conveyed to them about elderly gay and lesbian couples, and for the first time in 15 years they did not protect a vulnerable group from new DSS arrangments by grandfathering those already on the age pension, no they brought in a system that forces gay old people out of the closet – and imposes DSS guidelines about what constitutes a couple, to be assessed by an individual centrelink officer who could be as homophobic as anything, and who gets to decide – and don’t forget sexual relationship is on their list.

Unacceptable, mean and not in the xmas spirit.

Do not OUT gay age pensions, it is reprehensible and breaches human rights charters and privacy regulations.
Tell the Attorney General and Kevin Rudd what you think.