 Not everyone welcomes
the Federal government’s long-awaited recognition of same-sex couples, argues Mark Pendleton.
Buried in last week’s Federal Budget was an interesting $66
million item.
Despite previous claims that same-sex relationship
recognition could cost upwards of $1 billion dollars over a decade, Treasury is
now forecasting a saving of $66 million over four years. With relationships
recognised at no cost to government, everyone’s a winner, right?
Unfortunately, the savings from our push for equality don’t
come out of nowhere. Relationship recognition will see already inadequate
welfare payments to poorer queers redirected to wealthier folk via
superannuation and tax benefits, with a nice slice of profit to the Federal
government. That’s right: the Budget savings come straight from the wallets of
unemployed queers, students, people with disabilities and pensioners. What a
great victory for equality!
That this could occur is not entirely the fault of our lobby
groups’ uncritical demands for equality. The problem lies mostly with
governments of all stripes that focus on the family as the core constituent of
society, rather than on individuals or groups in society. In case you missed
it, the Rudd government’s major priority is ‘working families’; a category that
has just been expanded to include queer working families.
As a result of this, couples and families are propped up
financially by tax concessions and the like. The flipside comes in terms of
welfare, when the expectation is that people will be provided for by their
partners or, if they don’t have one, parents and extended family.
For young people, government assistance is denied unless you
are officially independent of your parents. According to Centrelink,
independence comes in a range of ways including being over 25 years old (a full
seven years after being considered an independent adult by other government
agencies), having a child, or being in an opposite-sex de facto relationship.
This last category will now be open to queers, opening up welfare to some young
people.
Of course, there’s a downside.
Once classified as independent in this way, your partner’s
income factors in to how much you are entitled to receive in welfare payments.
A forced dependence on parents until you’re 25, or a forced dependence on a
partner? Neither is a great option.
The change is also potentially disastrous for people with
disabilities and the elderly. Again, partner income now comes into play, and
those in relationships who may rely on pensions as their sole source of income
will see their payments reduced, along with their independence.
Even single people on welfare will see a shift in their
interactions with Centrelink. Anyone who has received Centrelink payments knows
about the regular intrusive letters and phone calls demanding to know whether
you’re in a relationship with your opposite sex housemates. That will now
presumably also include people you live with of the same sex. While it might be
amusing to imagine hetero footy jocks having to sign statements that they’re
not secretly bonking their blokey best mates, it will increase the intrusive
surveillance of welfare recipients’ sexualities and living arrangements.
The additional announcement that Centrelink will have access
to welfare recipients’ private bank accounts only increases the victimisation
and surveillance of the most vulnerable in our communities.
Rodney Croome has argued that the government should channel
the Budget savings ‘back into tackling some of the severe disadvantages faced
by same-sex attracted Australians’, recognising that the people affected will
likely be ‘low-income lesbian mothers and gay men with HIV, people who are
already struggling.’
But is that enough? Now that same-sex relationships are
recognised in most areas of state and federal law, maybe it’s time for us to
put aside our unhealthy obsession with comparing our relationships to
mainstream norms, and look at the broader inequalities that are perpetuated by
the government’s attempts to push the burden of welfare back into the ‘private’
realm of relationships and families.
We could ask what kind of support our governments should be
providing to the disadvantaged, and how much is reasonable to live a decent
life. We could advocate that individuals are automatically treated as
independent at 18 and assessed on their own income and assets, rather than being
forced to rely on parents or partners to survive. We could consider the impact
of relationship recognition on those who aren’t conventional couples, such as
singles or those in multi-person relationships.
For starters, though, we should ask whether promoting
‘equality’ is the best thing for our communities. When equality means that poor
people are penalised to subsidise the lifestyles of those better off, the cost
is too high.
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The cost of equality
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