Canberra beats up on Canberra

The Federal Government has used its powers over territories to disallow the ACT Government’s civil unions laws. Civil unions, under this legislation, were a marriage-like legal recognition of the status of same-sex couples, also referred to as “gay marriage”.

Now, I’m fairly ambivalent about civil unions, gay marriage, whatever you want to call it. I fail to see how giving this sort of legal recognition of gay relationships in any way undermines the institution of marriage or really, is anybody’s business except those in the relationship. What really shits me about the Federal government’s actions here is the moralistic approach they’ve taken to block the actions of a properly elected ACT local government, and then used their powers over the territories to achieve this. At the end of the day, we voters in Canberra elected our local government, and they are answerable to us. If the voters here don’t agree with the government’s policies, its up to us to ditch them. It should not be up to John Howard, Philip Ruddock and co to come in over the top and say “we don’t like what you’re doing, so we’re stopping it”. They can’t do this with a State Government, but can via the Commonwealth’s constitutional power over territories. In my view, disallowance of laws the Federal government just happens not to like is nothing but an abuse of its powers.

Update (14/6/2006): I might add that I’m no great fan of the ACT Government - they’re a pack of wankers, but at least they’re our wankers.

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