Issues

The Lobby works in many different ways to further the rights of gay and lesbian people in New South Wales. There are a number of key initiatives that the Lobby will focus on for 2002- 2003.

These are:

The New South Wales State Election
With the New South Wales State Election being held in March 2003, the Lobby will be working hard to ensure that gay and lesbian rights issues are firmly on the agenda for all the political parties. The Lobby is committed to showing that there are more votes in human rights and equality than in homophobia.

Age of Consent
New South Wales currently has the most draconian laws of any Australian state or territory with regard to the legal age of consent for gay men, which currently stands at 18 compared with 16 for heterosexuals and lesbians. The Lobby has been, and will continue to work very hard behind the scenes to assist in supporting the conditions that will best facilitate reform. This includes: demonstrating that an unequal age of consent is harmful to young men, improving the community's understanding of the issue, building networks with other organizations, and direct lobbying of parliamentarians and opinion leaders.

Parenting
New South Wales has only recently recognised lesbian and gay de facto relationships and this recognition has not flowed through to other family relationships - particularly those with children. In 2001 the Lobby commissioned a report on the research around gay and lesbian families to comprehensively debunk the myths. The report, produced by Jenni Millbank in January 2002, concluded that all reputable social science and psychological literature reviewed demonstrated that patenting style is not connected to sexuality. The Lobby has more recently been working on a project to develop a plain language document which explores parent-child relationships within the gay and lesbian community. It is expected that "And Then The Bride Changed Nappies" will, similarly to the 1993 document "The Bride Wore Pink", become the basis of the Lobby's relationship campaign.

Relationships
On 1 June 1999, relationships law reform finally become a reality in NSW when the Property (Relationships) Legislation Amendment Bill 1999 passed through the Lower House to become an Act of Parliament. With it NSW took the biggest step towards equality for gay men and lesbians for at least 15 years, becoming the first State in Australia to confer broad recognition on same sex couples. However there are still inequalities in areas such as superannuation and for couples who don't live together and because of the exemption of religious bodies and schools from the Anti-Discrimination Act. Given recent progress in other states, New South Wales now risks becoming 'the last state'.

Superannuation
Federal superannuation laws do not recognise same sex partners as dependants which results in unequal treatment with regard to access to benefits when a partner of a lesbian or gay man dies.