Queer Penguin: Clouds across the sunshine

What’s really behind the surprise push by the Bligh government for civil partnerships in Queensland?

I say surprise, because Labor’s been in power up in the Sunshine State now for more than 13 years. If a civil partnership scheme really is, as Anna Bligh puts it, a “precious human right”, why didn’t her government introduce one years ago when other state and territory Labor governments were? And, why is it being introduced as a private member’s conscience bill rather than a binding government bill?

The member championing civil partnerships is Deputy Premier Andrew Fraser, whose seat contains a high percentage of Greens voters and whose preferences he needs to hold onto it. The Liberal/National Opposition are already decrying the bill as a sweetener for Greens preferences; in return, Labor are accusing LNP leader Campbell Newman, who personally supports marriage equality, of pandering to the anti-equality right in his party by denying a conscience vote for his MPs.

This is probably Labor’s true motivation – to wedge the Opposition and make Newman look weak. Fraser is bemoaning the “death of liberalism” in the LNP, and Julia Gillard and federal Labor will surely do likewise should they allow, as anticipated, a conscience vote on federal marriage equality while Tony Abbott locks his MPs into a binding “no” vote.

Strange days indeed when the traditionally collectivist party is allowing conscience votes while the party of individualism refuses any freedom of expression for those members who support marriage equality!

The proposed Queensland scheme also takes some heat off Gillard and federal Labor, no doubt another motivating factor for the Bligh government. With all states and territories having relationship registration schemes in place by the time Labor’s national conference finally rolls around (except NT, Liberal WA and SA, which is likely to move soon given its new progressive Premier), Gillard and other anti-equality advocates in the party can argue against the need for or urgency of marriage equality, even if as expected a conscience vote is granted.

While state-based partnership schemes are no substitute for marriage, they’re arguably a more legitimate and serious mechanism for formalising relationships. The statutory requirement for participants to declare or prove they are already a couple means that, unlike marriage, two people seeking registration can’t get a quickie Vegas wedding on the same night they drunkenly meet. Conservatives who claim to believe in the sanctity of marriage should be arguing for this proof-of-existing-relationship requirement to be part of marriage laws rather than bleating about the alleged threat same-sex couples pose to that sanctity.

This argument probably won’t be aired, however, by Bligh, Fraser or other civil partnership advocates in Queensland Labor, as their true motivation seems to be cynical political point-scoring rather than genuine law reform.