Hickey to challenge Plibersek
The Greens are hoping to mobilise voter dissatisfaction over the Government’s policy on same-sex marriage at the next federal election in their campaign for the seat of Sydney.
Local gay man and teacher Tony Hickey will stand against current Rudd frontbencher Tanya Plibersek for the seat at the next federal election.
“Most people in Sydney, if they’re not part of a same-sex couple themselves, have neighbours or close friends who are,” Hickey said.
“They expect their local member to be working strongly for the rights of same-sex couples, and the current member for Sydney has disappointed a lot of people in that respect as a member of the Labor Party.
“We want full equality for the LGBTI community in any area we can identify, but the big issue that people are talking about is marriage equality. We’ll be campaigning on that because people feel really strongly about it — not just in the LGBTI but in the wider community as well.”
Hickey said federal anti-discrimination legislation covering sexuality was also a priority for the party.
“We’re definitely in favour of a federal act which would give greater protection to people from discrimination on the basis of sexuality or gender identity,” he told Sydney Star Observer.
“Anti-discrimination is something we’re working on federally and it’s been a big issue for many years with the Greens state parties, especially in New South Wales, campaigning to remove the exemptions in state anti-discrimination acts.”
Currently people are only protected from discrimination on grounds of sexuality in the area of employment at a federal level.
Hickey said climate change was another big priority.
“Under the current Government we have seen a shameful lack of initiative at the Copenhagen conference and continuing support for the coal industry,” he said.
“We have Greens senators ready to genuinely negotiate with the Government on the urgent task of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, the Government insists on promoting an emissions trading scheme that pays off the polluters.”
Hickey said public transport, affordable housing, homelessness and disadvantage among Indigenous Australians were other issues he would look to tackle in the Parliament if elected.
At the 2007 federal election the Greens took more than 20 percent of the vote in the seat of Sydney.
re: Paul Mitchell’s comments. There was an attempt many years ago when Keating’s Labor government was in power to add ‘gender identity’ to the Sex Discrimination Act. The Act’s original author Senator Susan Ryan objected, and so did many feminists within the ALP, objecting on the grounds it would “dilute” the original aims of the Act. I was part of a lobby group that acted on behalf of transgendered people to try and get the Act modified but the feminists wouldn’t have a bar of it. We originally had the support of the Federal Attorney General at the time Duncan Kerr, and Member for Sydney Peter Baldwin, but they did not want to take the feminists on, split the factions and lose the female vote, so the changes never happened. Good luck on changing that Act – believe me you’ll need it.
Good luck Tony.
I agree the current government has let our community down. I like Tanya but she has toed the party line and we have not seen marriage equality yet.
You have my support.
You do not need another Act just based on sexuality discrimination – what you truly need is a model exactly like the UK one called the EQUALITY ACT 2010!!!!!
We here in Australia have the sex discrimination act, race discrimination act, age discrimination acts – they all need to be consolidated into one (which the UK has done).
Also in the mean time “sexuality”, ‘gender idenity”, and “relationship or marital status” needs to be added into the Sex Discrimination Act 1984.