Just to dampen down the gay pride celebrations from this RA story about Stanhope wanting to legally recognise gay civil unions, the Federal AG Phil Ruddock has come out in this ABC report saying the Government will intervene unless the bill is changed as the ACT legislation elevates civil unions to the same status as marriage, contrary to Commonwealth legislation.
“For a territory to say ‘well that’s fine for the Commonwealth Parliament to have resolved in that way, we’re still going to assert that a civil union is a marriage in all but title, and we’re going to use marriage celebrants to demonstrate that’, let me make it very clear: that will not satisfy the Commonwealth,”
UPDATE: The CT has got this article up about the issue and Stanhope has issued this media release about how the nobbling of the proposal is SAD.