EIGHT YEARS LEAD-IN TIME FOR HETEROS, EIGHT MONTHS LEAD-IN TIME FOR HOMOS, AND THE GOVERNMENT ISN'T HOMOPHOBIC?????

EIGHT YEARS LEAD-IN TIME FOR HETEROS, EIGHT MONTHS LEAD-IN TIME FOR HOMOS, AND THE GOVERNMENT ISN’T HOMOPHOBIC?????

18 May 2009

It seems Lesbian and Gay Solidarity, Melbourne is not the only group showing concerns about the proposed budget 2009 measure which will see the pension age rise from 65 to 67 but only commence in 8 years time – in 2017, according to the government’s figures.

Changes to same-sex relationship legislation, passed through parliament in December 2008 will commence in July 2009, allowing 8 months for people who have been discriminated against all their lives for being gay, lesbian, transgender, HIV/AIDS (GLTH) members of the community.

This is not just a case of double standards – the Treasurer and the Prime Minister have uttered all sorts of justifications for the pension age changes to occur later rather than sooner – to allow people to adjust – but have refused to grandfather the legislation concerning elderly and disabled GLTH people, because it will make differentiations in those receiving benefits.

Do you hear the hypocrisy ringing in your ears??

Be sure of one thing – GLTH pensioners still have the vote and know how to mark their papers when they go into the polling booths around the country and many have long memories too!

And to add further to the contempt in which the current government holds GLTH people, the latest Centrelink advertisements for telling us that couples are couples – the blatant lie continues! – now show two sets of towels in place of the toothbrushes!

It is not only crass, it is downright insulting!

We always knew that the ALP was homophobic, but we didn’t know how bad they were until this whole episode started in 2008 – and the Rudd government is doing us favours?

We want equality, and equality only has one meaning, unlike in Dr Verwoerd’s South Africa where the Bantustans were “separate but equal”! Rudd’s Australia perpetuates the Verwoerd myth of “separate but equal”.

RUDD GOVERNMENT’S DOUBLE STANDARDS

17 May 2009

The Rudd Government’s 2009 budget put forward the proposal to change retirement age from 65 to 67. What follows is an analysis of condescension, discrimination, homophobia, double standards and hypocrisy, to name some of the issues, from this government and its responses to the introduction of same-sex legislation in December 2008.

Dishonesty in the advertisement stating that couples are couples whether they are gay or straight is not only dishonest, it is an outright lie, and the government knows it too. It reflects the fact that the Advertising Standards organization, as operated in Australia, is a toothless tiger. The lie is that straight couples are able to register their relationships while gay couples are not – this is discrimination and homophobia!


The first item to examine in this litany of deceit is the matter of how the government has approached the proposed change of retirement age from 65 to 67.

An article in The Age newspaper on Wednesday 13 May 2009 reports that “. . . the Government will lift the pension age from 65 to 67 within 15 years and claw back more money faster from future pensioners who earn other income.” “Pension age to be lifted from 65 from 2017, rising by six months every two years, until 67 in 2023.”

“To start in September (2009), the increase will be worth $32.49 a week for singles (pensioners) and $10.14 per couple.”

The pension age increase is, in effect, grandfathered, meaning that between now and 2017, a period of 8 years, people who will become pensioners at that time will have been given 8 years’ notice of changes to occur.

Contrast this with the situation for the gay, lesbian, transgender and HIV/AIDS (GLTH) communities who have not only been given only 8 MONTHS’ notice of dramatic changes to financial circumstances in their lives after a lifetime of having known they were discriminated against but were subject to ongoing governmental homophobia, by virtue of the fact that many, now in their 70s, 80s and older, will be “outed” by an irresponsible and reckless government who care nothing for these communities. The laws were promulgated in December 2008, and are due to come into effect on 1 July 2009, with the government agency Centrelink being able to pry into the private lives of some of the most vulnerable members of our society in order to find out whether they are singles or couples

The most dishonest part of the government’s “couples are couples” advertisement is the fact that straight couples are able to register their relationships with civil or religious marriage rites, whereas GLTH couples are denied this basic human right and therefore show the government’s hypocrisy and lies by stating that “couples are couples”.

The next part of this behaviour is the statement by government that the same-sex legislative changes will be promoted through the media on a regular basis from December 2008 to July 2009. So far the straight media have been very silent on the issue other than the false and misleading advertisement with “gay and straight toothbrushes” which is also as demeaning as it is false.

In a letter written on 11 May 2009 from the office of the Hon. Jenny Macklin MP, Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, the following is the second paragraph:

“During the 2007 election campaign the Prime Minister, the Hon Kevin Rudd MP, announced that legal discrimination against same-sex couples should be removed, including from social security law. The Government announced its intention to remove same-sex discrimination, including in the area of social security, on 30 April 2008. The Same-Sex Relationships (Equal Treatment in Commonwealth Laws – General Law Reform) Bill 2008 was subsequently tabled on 4 September 2008. The Government has staggered the commencement dates for the reforms to provide a period for individuals and couples to adjust to their new financial circumstances”.

So, 8 months is considered a “period for individuals and couples to adjust to their new financial circumstances” after a lifetime of discrimination and restrictions on financial arrangements for people in same-sex relationships, but 8 years is considered a reasonable time for working people to make arrangements for their retirement years in 2017.

This is homophobia writ large – not surprising considering other actions by this government to prevent equality by every means available by stating in the strongest possible terms that there will be no registration of same-sex couples federally, thus ensuring inequality remains entrenched, thus contradicting Rudd’s statement that “legal discrimination against same-sex couples should be removed, including from social security law.”

Considering that the government has no idea whatever of the numbers of GLTH couples there are in the community, how are they able to assess the costs to government of the changes about to take place in 6 weeks’ time? This is their method of ruining the lives of countless old and vulnerable people who know very little of what is happening with legislative changes and who will be in great difficulties when Centrelink starts prying into their lives.

No members of this government have publicly addressed this issue in any way and have refused to consider the grandfathering that has been requested of them.

Homophobia and hypocrisy will continue to dog the elderly, frail, disabled and impoverished in the GLTH communities in the days, weeks, months and years to come.

This government should be ashamed of the way it has handled these legislative changes.

Many community organisations were not consulted and it is dishonest to say that there were consultations across the board, and the most vulnerable were not consulted at all!

Mannie De Saxe, Lesbian and Gay Solidarity, Melbourne.

SCOTTISH TRADE UNION CONGRESS JOINS CAMPAIGN AGAINST ISRAEL WITH BDS

Received by email on 27 April 2009:


Breaking news....

Scotland today joined Ireland and South Africa when the Scottish Trade Union Congress, representing every Scottish trade union, voted overwhelmingly to commit to boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. This is the third example of a national trade union federation committing to BDS and is a clear indication that, while Israel can kill Palestinians with impunity and Western support, it has lost the battle for world public opinion. It is now seen to be a state born out of ethnic cleansing and still expanding through the violent dispossession of the Palestinian people.

Speaker after speaker expressed intense anger at Israel’s butchery of 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza over the New Year, as well as the much longer history of Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The vote followed a visit to Israel/Palestine by an STUC Delegation in March which heard from a wide range of trade union and other bodies and returned with a unanimous recommendation that the parent body adopt BDS.

The STUC move to a position of BDS followed debate on the Delegation report with affiliated unions as well as consultations across Scotland. There were written and oral submissions from Zionist as well as human rights bodies.

The commitment to BDS was made despite aggressive lobbying by Zionist groups, including an absurd warning that a commitment to active support for Palestinian human rights would lead to attacks on Scottish Jews, and the parachuting into Scotland of the Histadrut’s Head of Communications from Israel.

The STUC’s new position is a dramatic breakthrough which has the potential to greatly accelerate the boycott campaign already underway in Scotland against, for example, Israeli companies and sporting or cultural visits. The Scottish Government earlier in the year yielded to public concerns and cancelled a trade delegation to Israel.

It will also make easier the task of building a mass boycott campaign across the land surface of Scotland, in every town and small community, in every supermarket and every sporting and cultural event.

Israel’s New Year mountain of corpses in Gaza, together with its frequent murder of unarmed civilians across Palestine was only the latest in a long series of Israeli massacres. We may be unable to stop the next one, but our job of building the sort of mass BDS campaign that can confront Israeli violence with a countervailing force has just become easier. An aroused world opinion is increasingly ready to ensure that all don’t die in vain.

We can only offer hope to the hard-pressed Palestinians that their freedom is coming, however long Israel and its allies work to delay it.


Speaking prior to the debate, STUC General Secretary, Grahame Smith, said: “The STUC General Council is recommending support for boycott and calls for sanctions against Israel because of its attacks on the human rights of Palestinian people and its breaches of international laws.
Mr Smith continued: “On our recent visit to Israel and Palestine we witnessed the human rights violations experienced by ordinary Palestinians on a daily basis. We saw how restrictions on movement and checkpoints prevent people from going to work, to school and to visit their families – even when they are sick and dying.”
“We heard powerful arguments from the Palestinian Human Rights Organisation, Al-Haq, outlining how Israel is in breach of the Geneva Conventions, and the need for other signatories to international laws to hold Israel to account.”
“Our delegation also met with the leadership of Israeli trade union centre, Histadrut, and the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions. The STUC has carefully considered the complex issues involved, and we believe that we have a moral obligation to show solidarity to Palestinian people.” Read full STUC Press Release


View the STUC General Council Recommendation on BDS passed at Congress today in Perth. The significant paragraphs are:


6.1 The General Council is recommending that Congress should take a position of:

*
supporting boycotts and disinvestments against lsrael,
*
calling for sanctions against lsrael,
*
encouraging positive investments in the occupied territories.

6.6 The STUC acknowledges its relationship with both PGFTU and Histadrut and supports the development of a constructive dialogue between them. The STUC will explain its position on BDS to Histadrut, and will, over the next 12 months, raise with them Histadrut positions in relation to Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The STUC will review its relationship with Histadrut in this context.

Join the discussion - join the campaign!

Executive Member of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade
Unions: Manawel Abdelall speaking in Scotland this week.

Thursday 23 April, 7.30pm: Glasgow
with Keith Hammond, BRICUP
STUC building, 333 Woodlands Road

Friday 24 April, 6pm: Edinburgh
Augustine Church Centre, George IV Bridge







Join Scottish PSC- we are all volunteers with no paid staff - or make a financial donation to help us continue campaigning work:
Send a cheque to:

Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign

c/o Peace & Justice Centre
2 Princes Street
Edinburgh EH2 4BJ



secretary@scottishpsc.org.uk
www.scottishpsc.org.uk
SPSC is affiliated to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (UK) www.palestinecampaign.org

ANTI-SEMITISM AND SELF-HATING JEWS

ANTI-SEMITISM AND SELF-HATING JEWS

22 April 2009

The second United Nations conference on racism, generally known as Durban II because the first one in Durban some years ago created an international storm about anti-semitism, and will probably be known as Durban I, has had some fairly predictable outcomes.

Two of the fall-guys for this conference are, of course, predictably in one case, the president of Iran, Ahmadinejad, and in the second case Ban Ki Moon, United Nations secretary general, who is being attacked for hosting such a conference in the first place!

Now holocaust deniers such as Ahmadinejad lose their credibility when they attack such countries as Israel, because Iran is a racist, sexist, homophobic intolerant society, and a dictatorship of the mullahs, by the mullahs for the mullahs. Oppression, imprisonment, murder of homosexuals and other opponents of the state hardly make for a credible, tolerant society, and Iran is very low on the scale of countries which command respect in world forums because of their human rights abuses

When it comes to Israel, one is hard put to restrain oneself from accusations of a similar nature. It must be admitted at this stage that Israel dos not incarcerate its homosexual communities, nor does it yet murder them, but with the government it has recently elected to power, including the fascist Boris Lieberman, the future looks bleak indeed, unless some moderation can be achieved by other members of Israel’s parliament.

Certainly in the occupied territories such as the West Bank and Gaza, those who are potentially the governing politicians, Fatah and Hamas, are dangerously homophobic and those who live in those territories who are homosexuals probably have to live largely closeted existences in order to survive, much as in many other fanatical Islamic countries.

That, though, is a diversion from racism, which is at the core of this discussion.

The countries which either boycotted the conference or walked out during Ahmadinejad’s speech are countries in which racism has long been a feature of their politics. Germany and South Africa have been held up as examples of pariah states for much of the 20th century, but a proper analysis of the racist history of that century will show that before, during and after the second world war, the Jews were not wanted in those countries now throwing up their hypocritical arms in horror, and mostly were not allowed into them, even when their positions became so dire because of Nazi Germany’s assaults on Europe’s Jewish communities.

Countries such as the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa and most of the European countries such as France, were not prepared to take in Jewish refugees from Hitler’s Germany. However, Zionists working behind the scenes with many of these governments managed to make deals in some cases to let Jews escape – provided they went to Palestine to help setting up a Zionist state on Arab land.

So, anti-semitism was rife, and the Zionists who worked to subvert the refugee problem were in effect self-hating Jews – ready to sacrifice those Jews such as the Bundists in eastern Europe who were anti-zionist, and not prepared to submit to being shipped off to a country such as Palestine which didn’t want them and which they didn’t want!
Now we have the situation around the world that some of those countries thought they could overcome their feelings of guilt due to their allowing the holocaust to occur by ensuring that the Jews have a “homeland” where Jews from around the world can go and live. The Israeli law of return means that Jews from anywhere, even possibly those with criminal convictions, such as some of the Russian post-USSR era Jewish mafia businessmen who made crooked fortunes in the collapse of the Soviet Union, can enter Israel because they are Jews.

Now we come to the real self-hating Jews. Israel, the country which is now guilty of war crimes, genocide, and every human rights abuse known to man – white phosphorus, cluster bombs, carpet bombing, closing borders to starve into submission those whose land they are anxious to steal – is supported by all those countries whose racism and human rights abuses are not any less than those of the Israelis.

Living in these countries are half the world’s Jewish population of about 13 million, and they wield disproportionate power on the governments of the countries in which they live. Many of these Jews hate vehemently those Jews who have seen through the whole Zionist enterprise and believe it should be stopped now.
They accuse those Jews of being self-hating, but they are the ones themselves who are hypocrites and liars – they are the ones who live safe and secure and comfortable lives in the USA, UK, Australia and other countries, but don’t have the courage of their convictions to go and live in Israel and fight for what they supposedly believe in – the Zionist Jewish state of Israel – the racist non-democratic state in the middle of the middle east!

The United States of America, the state that is terrorism personified, is the country that invaded Afghanistan and Iraq without provocation, which sponsors Rendition, Water-boarding, Torture of people held in its custody in defiance of the Geneva Convention which it has ignored, has covered up and protected its president and other members of his circle from the war crimes prosecutions which should have come from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, the concentration camp in Cuba (what is the USA doing in Cuba anyway?).

The United States of America, with a population nearing 300 million contains about 6 million Jews who are US citizens. This tiny percentage of Jews controls much of the US foreign policy, much of it dictated by the US oil interests and therefore control in the Middle East, and is therefore the protector of Israel under all circumstances.
These are the Jews who help Israel propagate anti-semitism in the idle hope that it will drive Jews out of their countries of residence to migrate to Israel and thus strengthen the Zionist Jewish population in the hope that they will be able to outnumber the Palestinians. The reverse is actually what has happened as many Israeli citizens have fled the country to seek peace and quiet in other countries around the world.

The USA sees that Israel is armed to the teeth, that everybody denies its nuclear capability – Vanunu and the joint South African-Israeli nuclear device exploded during the South African apartheid years in the South Atlantic, and is determined to continue the holocaust propaganda endlessly to drive home to the world that Israeli Jews must be able to protect themselves from those terrorists armed by Iran – Hezbollah and Hamas and any others of their ilk (organizations originally supported by the USA in order to split the Arab/Muslim forces in the middle east and ending in the reversal of their plans.

The Jews in the USA who belong to the propaganda arms of Israeli policy are determined to silence any and all opposition to Israel’s human rights abuses by ensuring that these vocal anti-zionists are driven out of their positions in US universities and academic institutions.

Somehow Noam Chomsky still seems to have maintained tenure, but two of the main opponents of the state of Israel and its Zionist propaganda and expansionist policies who have been sacked because of what they have said and written are (http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/) Norman Finkelstein and (http://joelkovel.org) Joel Kovel. They have stated that Israel is a failed state and that there is no possibility of a two-state solution, only a one-state secular state in Palestine. This ‘heresy’ is unacceptable, so removing them from their employment will send a message to others of their ilk to toe the Zionist party line.

Australia – that toady of the USA - has recently been host to an Israeli academic Professor Jeff Halper who is outspoken about Israel’s brutal behaviour in Gaza and Lebanon and his tour of Australia was marred by certain Jewish (Zionist) organizations to refuse to give him a platform. He was hosted in Australia by organisations such as Independent Australian Jewish Voices – Antony Loewenstein and others, and the Australian Jewish News (aka Israel Zionist times) refused to countenance announcements about meetings and talks at which the visiting professor would utter sounds anathema to the local 100,000 (not so) strong Jewish community which is supposed to be a united front but is anything but that!

Now all of this leads to the same conclusion – these Zionists are their own worst enemies, are anti-semites – they hate other Jews who don’t agree with them, and these Zionist self-hating Jews continue to call Toorak and Rushcutters Bay home, and not Tel Aviv and Rechovot. These are the heroes who are destroying the Zionist dream by their own actions and are not aware of the damage they are doing because they are so besotted by Israel – right or wrong!

ELDER ABUSE - FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ATTACKS SOME OF THE MOST VULNERABLE MEMBERS OF THE COMMUNITY

Mannie De Saxe
PO Box 1675
Preston South
Vic 3072
Phone: 03 9471 4878
Web: http://home.zipworld.com.au/~josken/inters8.htm

7 April 2009

ELDER ABUSE
Federal Government attacks some of the most vulnerable members of the community

Elder abuse has been well documented in recent years, covering areas such as abuse in nursing homes, abuse by carers, abuse by partners such as domestic violence, abuse by institutions and abuse by those responsible for management of care for the elderly, frail, sick, disabled.

Elder abuse of the gay, lesbian, transgender and HIV/AIDS (GLTH) communities has also started to be documented in recent years, and horror reports by researchers such as Dr Jo Harrison, researcher of gay and lesbian gerontology, have uncovered instances of abuse to which those in local government and other governmental levels have turned blind eyes in many instances, or in fact have been guilty of inflicting themselves.

Now, in 2009, the Federal Government is about to inflict a new method of elder abuse on the GLTH communities, particularly those least able to defend themselves against this new form of discrimination, homophobia and other forms of abuse by targeting same-sex aged, disabled and other disadvantaged most vulnerable people.

This new abuse inflicts outing, public declarations, income reduction and other disadvantages on these groups because the Government refuses to provide a grandfather clause in the legislation which provides improvements in conditions for same-sex partnerships with changes to nearly 100 pieces of legislation.

In effect, this elder abuse means inflicting hardship on people who have lived their lives with the hardships imposed by the homophobic world in which they have lived, a world which has denied them the same human rights which heterosexual members of the community have taken for granted as their right in our society.

Because so many have remained living as homosexuals in secret, the psychological and physical impacts as well as the other impacts of outing them are too numerous to contemplate. These are people who have had to try to finance their plans for old age in ways which would be foreign to heterosexuals, and who in many instances will now have their support structures torn away from them because of the new legislation.

This is elder abuse writ large and for which the government will be held responsible for the awful situations inflicted on those least able to protect themselves, all this at a time of financial crisis in local and global economies which will affect us all.

All these hardships will be avoided by the inclusion of a grandfather clause to assist some of the most disadvantaged of our elderly GLTH population – those already in their 70s, 80s and older.

You wouldn’t do this to your own families, would you?

Mannie De Saxe

COPIES SENT TO:

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd – contact form
Attorney General Robert McClelland – R.McClelland.MP@aph.gov.au
Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services & Indigenous Affairs Jenny Macklin – contact form
Minister for Resources and Energy, Minister for Tourism Martin Ferguson – Martin.Ferguson.MP@aph.gov.au
Minister for Human Services Senator Joe Ludwig – contact form

Leader of the Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown - senator.bob.brown@aph.gov.au
Leader of the Opposition Malcolm Turnbull – Malcolm.Turnbull.MP@aph.gov.au

Australian Senior (Victoria) - smiceli@thesenior.com.au
Fifty~Plus News – contact@fiftyplusnews.com

Ausqueer – AusQueer@yahoogroups.com
glbti_ageing – glbti_ageing@yahoogroups.com.au
ozhomohist – ozhomohist@yahoogroups.com

MCV – editormcv@eevolution.com.au
Sydney Star Observer – editor@starobserver.com.au

Dr Jo Harrison – GLTH Gerontologist – jamms@ozemail.com.au

EUTHANASIA

Palliative care delays inevitable

March 27, 2009

A SIGNIFICANT proportion of deaths under palliative care are actually a form of extended euthanasia involving the escalating use of increasing levels of painkillers that are fatal above a certain dose. Doctors do this gradually to avoid prosecution. The dying patient then suffers an extended period of incapacity, needlessly delaying the inevitable. Alternatively, the patient is kept in a drugged state without sustenance while their body starves to death.

The real problem is the unholy alliance between religious fundamentalists and well-meaning do-gooders who wish to deny rational people the right to end their lives with dignity when faced with a debilitating death. The gutlessness of politicians in not giving people a choice is another obstacle. Rational individuals must be allowed a choice without resorting to subterfuge.

Greg Angelo, Balwyn North

Cruel way to find dignity

IT IS cruel to make brave people such as Angie Belecciu ("Angie's choice", 25/3) jump through such hoops to achieve a dignified death. A person is as much their spirit as their body and surely it is wrong to keep the body alive at such emotional and financial cost when the spirit longs for death. Are we not upsetting the rhythm and joy of life by trying to endlessly defer death?

The gift of being able to choose the time and manner of our death would be as much a gift to future generations as to ourselves.

Roz McNaught, Tonimbuk

Do I own my body?

THE Belecciu affair raises a fundamental philosophical question: if I do not own, have responsibility for and control of my body, who does? I would be interested in an answer to this question.

Geoff Sheldon, Watsonia

Path cannot be taken

KEITH McEwan and Evert de Graauw (Letters, 26/3) ignore the consistent experience in other countries and throughout history that diminishing the value of life with euthanasia (even when "voluntary") opens the door to abuse. It is impossible to make laws that prevent this because anyone who gets abused will not be around to complain. Painful death is certainly not good, but giving evil people the means to kill others — and get away with it — is much worse and would be unavoidable. A civilised society will not — indeed, cannot — take this road.

Mark Rabich, Heathmont

Risk worth taking

THE comment by Keith McEwan (Letters, 26/3) that the "penalty for importation of Nembutal without a permit is up to 25 years' imprisonment or $550,000 fine" is misleading. Angie drank one bottle of the drug (concentration: 100 millilitres, 60 milligrams/millilitres, 6 grams). The indictable amount for importing this drug is 10 grams. Exit International legal advisers tell us that the penalty, had she been prosecuted, would likely have been a fine of a few hundred dollars. Exit knows of more than 400 elderly Australians who have decided to take this risk.

Philip Nitschke, director, Exit International, Doncaster

Take look at law reform

PERHAPS the most notable aspect of Angie's choice was that she declined the other choice — palliative care — and she an experienced palliative care nurse. Her experience would have confirmed Professor Michael Ashby's observation that "bone pain and psychological pain" are particularly difficult to control. Angie's comments make it clear that her psychological pain was relieved by obtaining "the knowledge". It is such a pity that Angie was forced to die alone, and that her death had to be so public in her effort to bring Parliament to reality. The least it could do is refer this issue to the Law Reform Commission for an unbiased report on options for dying with dignity. Its report on abortion law reform was a model for responsible law reform.

Dr Rodney Syme, Toorak

ELDER ABUSE BY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Mannie De Saxe, Member of Lesbian and Gay Solidarity, Melbourne

PO Box 1675,

Preston South,

Vic 3072

Email: josken1_at_pacific_net_au

29 March 2009

Minister for Human Services

Senator Joe Ludwig

Re: Media Release: Government launches ‘Couples are Couples’ same sex information campaign

There are certain matters which need to be addressed by the Federal Government’s same-sex legislation in relation to Centrelink’s new guidelines:

1) Same-sex relationships have no legal recognition by the Federal government, which means discrimination, inequality, homophobia and other abuses in an ongoing pattern.

2) The Attorney General and you have persisted in stating, ad nauseam, that the gay, lesbian, transgender and HIV/AIDS (GLTH) communities have had 15 months to adjust to the new legislation and grandfather clauses are therefore not warranted. This is patently not the case.

3) A minimum of publicity in the media has meant that there are probably hundreds, if not thousands of these communities who are unaware of the changes and/or the effects they will have on them, because the Federal government has failed to publicise the changes in the media.

4) From 30 March 2009 to 1 July 2009 is three months, not 15 months as you are all claiming, and Centrelink has even now, by 29 March 2009, not sent News for Seniors to Seniors informing of the changes – and in fact from 15 months ago to the present, there has not been one word uttered in that paper about GLTH communities and possible changes mooted by federal legislation.

5) It should be pointed out that the Australian community is an ageing community, and that includes members of the GLTH communities as well. You will be aware of the inequities in pensions to couples where a couple receives pension benefits which are NOT equal to two single pensions. We now live in the 21^st century, and it is many years since women are supposed to have achieved wage equality with men (which of course in practice is very often still not the case.) It is therefore ludicrous that two pensioners in a couple, whether they be heterosexual or homosexual – or whatever the genders of the partners - do not each receive single pensions, considering how costs and expenditures have risen over the years to the extent that many, if not most, households need two incomes in order to survive in the modern world.

6) To then refuse a grandfather clause to same-sex couples who have very often been forced to remain closeted, who have been abused, and treated with homophobia and discrimination merely perpetuates this discrimination. Your laws of the past forced us to hide our relationships and now you think equating us with de factos will suddenly get rid of religious bigotry and hate!

7) As your government has failed to investigate the numbers who will be affected by the legislative changes, costs to government will be minimal – all pensioners pay tax – the gst ensures that – but those who will be most affected by the changes will be people in their 70s, 80s and older, who are amongst the most vulnerable members of the community. The intrinsic homophobia in the federal parliament ensures that these people will be so seriously affected that same-sex partners – when outed by your government by whatever means you and Centrelink employ – will stand to lose up to $100 each per fortnight, reducing their spending ability and for those who have to pay rent for accommodation will now become the new poor below the breadline. This is what you are setting out to achieve.

8) Until such time as there is legal recognition in the form of some sort of federal registration of partnerships, it is unclear whether your legislative changes are, in fact legal, and may well be able to be challenged. Who defines what is a “couple” and in fact what actually is the meaning of “couple” in the context of the government’s legislative changes?

9) Finally, it is worth noting that, although many of us are already in our 80s and are therefore able to be defined as geriatrics, we are not all suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, are not demented and still have the ability to vote. A federal election is due in approximately 18 months time, and we will vote.

The proposed changes have been mishandled from the start, consultations with the GLTH communities have been limited and restricted, and many voices have gone unheard. In fact, Lesbian and Gay Solidarity was never consulted about the de facto status and when we phoned the number in your media release for the community information kit, the staffer didn’t know what we wanted. So how good is your staff education for telephone operators? The GLTH communities have suffered from state and federal governments and their homophobia for the last 100 years, and the forthcoming changes will not bring equality. When we attain equality in every aspect of the law, we will no longer have grounds for complaint.

In the mean time, homophobic comments and actions by federal parliamentarians such as Gillard and Roxon go unchallenged by the prime minister and his government which has staunch allies in the Coalition.

It would be a good idea for all parliamentarians to see a new US documentary on the sorts of discriminations which will shortly be entrenched. The documentary is called simply “For my wife."

A letter in the Sunday Age on 29 March 2009 about Centerlink concludes “. . . . . . never mentioned the humiliating experience of dealing with Centrelink. Even the design of Centrelink offices, where everyone in the long queues can hear about your personal life, only seems to shame the unemployed.” Imagine the situation of 70, 80, 90-year-old age and/or disability pensioners, possibly also hard of hearing and possibly also closeted for a lifetime, standing in such a queue at a Centrelink office and having to disclose the most intimate details of their lives. Is there no end to the humiliations to be heaped upon some of the most vulnerable people in the country?

Mannie De Saxe, member of Lesbian and Gay Solidarity, Melbourne