Oscar Wilde would be very disappointed with our current State Attorney-General, Mr. Michael Atkinson.

For reasons that are now lost in the mists of time, separating de facto couples in South Australia face appearances in two different court systems to achieve an amicable separation – the financial separation is dealt with in one of various State courts, but parenting and custody problems are dealt with in the Federal Family Court.

Apart from being unwieldy and unnecessarily expensive, this is also inequitable for de facto couples, as separating married couples are able to have their cases heard solely in the Federal system. Currently, LGBT couples fall into the de facto category, so this issue is of especial significance to them.

This anomaly has been recognised interstate, and now all the other States, and the Federal Government acting on behalf of the Territories, have passed legislation to reform this inequality by referring their powers to the Commonwealth. The only State that has not enacted legislation to abolish this anomaly is South Australia.  

The Rann Government’s Attorney-General, Michael Atkinson has ignored numerous invitations from the Law Society and family law practitioners to introduce legislation into the South Australian parliament which would align us with the other States and Territories.  In doing so he has made us something of a laughing stock around the nation. Whatever the Attorney General’s personal beliefs – and I am the first to declare that a lawyer’s values and belief system must inform his or her professional decisions – Mr Atkinson does not have the right to hold back South Australia from this nationwide reform. All de facto couples, whether heterosexual or LGBT, deserve to be treated equally before the law, and for Mr. Atkinson not to recognise this is a failure of the first order from the State’s senior law officer.

Given the Attorney General’s intransigence, I have introduced a Private Member’s Bill into the South Australian Parliament which will correct this legal anomaly, and allow separating de facto couples, whether heterosexual or LGBT, to have their cases heard in a single court system. This Bill had its second reading last week, but to be voted into law, we must convince sufficient members from the Labor benches to vote to support it. I therefore urge you to contact your local MP and insist that he or she votes in favour of this Bill.

South Australia was once famous for being the most reformist State in the Commonwealth, but given our current Attorney General’s views, we are in danger of reverting to positively Victorian attitudes that would be depressingly familiar to Oscar Wilde.

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