The Senate Goes Pink

Local News, By jackie87, 16th November, 2007

This upcoming election is a turning point for Australia’s future in recognising LGBT rights for better or worse. Both major parties have made several promises pandering to the pink vote, but conservative forces in each camp have ruled out full equality antime soon. Nevertheless, this year’s elections have added quite a few new hopefuls to the ranks, especially in the Senate.

Fresh from winning the coveted first position of the Labor Party’s Senate ticket in WA is openly lesbian Louise Pratt (top picture). Pratt is a former Labor member of the Western Australian Legislative council who has been preselected for the safe first Senate ticket in Western Australia. Pratt has previously worked for former Premiers Carmen Lawrence and Geoff Gallop. She also has worked closely with lobby group Gay and Lesbian Equality being a strong activist for gay and lesbian rights since her university days, often clashing with the conservative government of Richard Court.

She was finally elected to the Western Australian parliament against all expectations in 2001 and soon after, she contributed strongly with Greens MP Giz Watson to a committee which has removed various pieces of discriminative legislation, such as lowering the age of consent from 21 to 16, inheritance rights for LGBT couples to claim benefit from a deceased partner and removing Western Australia’s own version of Section 28, making it a crime to promote homosexuality in schools.

Also up for re-election is Australia’s only openly gay party leader, Dr Bob Brown. He is expected to retain his seat in this election from his high profile in breaking the me-tooism as promoted by both the major parties and being the only voice of opposition to the proposed Bell Bay Pulp Mill in northern Tasmania.

With the demise of the Democrats, the Greens are hoping to achieve the balance of power in the Senate, with the Coalition in control of both houses and with its majority it has rushed legislation such as WorkChoices through the Senate with relative ease.

The Greens need to pick up two seats from the Liberals to achieve this and candidates such as Kerry Nettle (bottom picture) (NSW), Kerrie Tucker (ACT), Richard di Natale (Victoria) and Sarah Hanson-Young (SA) are the front runners.

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