Gay equality too costly: Ruddock

Activists are concerned that comments from attorney-general Philip Ruddock show the government is unwilling to fix federal discrimination because the cost of equality is too high.

Speaking on PM last week, Ruddock cited budget concerns as the reason for the government’s lack of action on remaining discrimination, including same-sex war widow pensions.

If you change the eligibility criteria to include same-sex partners, it adds to the money that has to be found to pay the pension -“ and the proposition is a very simple one, he said.

Issues that can be readily addressed that don’t involve significant budgetary outlays which do bring different considerations to bear will be examined by the government.

Rod Swift, spokesperson for the Australian Coalition for Equality, told Sydney Star Observer the comments were a calculated move to turn middle Australia before next week’s budget.

Rights become a convenient thing to support only when they don’t cost money, he said.

The financial argument that is coming out now is deliberately designed to divide on this policy so the Howard government can fudge and do nothing until the next federal election.

With the May budget the last before the next federal election, the government has yet to fulfil its 2004 promise to remove remaining discrimination from federal superannuation laws.

Ironically super is one of the biggest priced things to fix, with federal public service super being a huge unfunded promise at the moment, Swift said.

But Swift rejected the idea that the money can’t be found, with a current surplus estimated at $16 billion.

With the Australian economy going the way it is, it isn’t like we can’t afford to fix these problems. It’s at this place in the economic cycle that we should be looking at things with a bigger impact, he said.

The Department of Finance and Administration refused to release the cost assessment requested by the opposition under Freedom of Information laws.

But based on a conservative estimate of the number of gay couples in Australia, the cost for Medicare and superannuation could be at least a billion over a 20-year period, Swift said.

The Commonwealth Future Fund was established in part to secure heterosexual public sector superannuation, which Swift says could easily accommodate same-sex couples as well.

What the federal government doesn’t remember is that all of these monies that they claim they can’t afford to pay now are monies they should have been setting aside all along.

It’s not our fault it’s going to cost money, it’s their fault for not budgeting responsibly, he said.

This is a government that hands out huge buckets of money to small percentages of the population, like the baby bonus and the first home owner’s grant.

It’s a huge problem if they can dump money to interest groups to buy votes but it can’t own up to its responsibilities to tax-paying members of the community.

The HREOC report into financial discrimination against same-sex couples is due to be provided to Ruddock later in May, and tabled well after the budget announcement.