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GLBT issues and human rights are on top of the agenda for the queer and queer-friendly Australians attending the 2020 Summit. Rachel Cook reports.
The countries ‘best and brightest brains’ are set to gather this weekend in Canberra for the Australia 2020 Summit.
The Kevin Rudd initiative will see 1112 representatives tackle the challenges confronting Australia’s future and attempt to offer solutions.
The participants have been chosen by the Summit’s Steering Committee, which, after some initial controversy over what was seen to be a gender imbalance (two female members compared with eight male panel members), has now been rectified with 50.6% of the summits participants made up of women, which is comparable to the Australian female population (50.3%).
Approximately twenty (2% of the population) of the delegates are openly gay and lesbian identified. However, two percent representation falls short of the generally accepted statistic that ten percent of the population is homosexual.
At this stage there is still no confirmation of any transgendered representatives.
Among the key areas under discussion at the summit will be preventative health strategies, strengthening communities and social inclusion, the rights and responsibilities of citizens, and the future of the arts, film and design.
Two prominent openly gay and lesbian participants are journalist David Marr and Kristy Edmunds, the Artistic Director of the Melbourne International Arts Festival.
“Something like this in such a public way actually stimulates an active cross section because it is engaging a whole society whether they are in the room next weekend or not,” Edmunds, who is participating in the ‘Towards a Creative Australia’ area, told SX. “Already it is stimulating dialogue and debate, information sharing and dinner conversation.”
Marr’s critical area, ‘The Future of Australian Governance’, will provide a platform for his ongoing passion for the introduction of an Australian Bill of Rights:
“It’s important that we look at the fundamental issues that are important to gay and lesbian Australia,” Marr told SX. “A Bills of Rights [a constitutional guarantee of rights and freedoms] may not be particularly sexy and very difficult to do, but my thrust will be that we’ve got hard work to do to get the fundamentals in this country right, and a Bill of Rights is one way of ensuring this.
“The US Bill of Rights has made it impossible to pass laws to criminalize homosexual sex, even though it’s impossible to imagine the criminalisation of homosexual sex in this country happening now, what if in 50 years time some other moral crusader comes along, a Bill of Rights would guarantee justice for gays, lesbians, women and aboriginals.”
PFLAG national spokesperson, Shelley Argent, has been chosen to specifically talk on GLBT issues. Argent who was awarded an OAM for her work in the gay and lesbian community, told SX she will be talking as a parent of a gay person and speaking for parents of gay, lesbian and transgender people.
“What I plan to do at the summit at every opportunity is to highlight the need for inclusion and equality,” Argent said. “The GLBTI community is the one group that still does not get economy equality … The government has to talk about this group positively, and address discrimination on all levels.”
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