Dear Committee Secretary

Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2010

Although the Committee is seeking submissions regarding Senator Hanson-Young’s Bill, I will also take this opportunity to comment on the two Private Members’ Bills introduced by Stephen Jones, and Adam Bandt and Andrew Wilkie, as they cover the same subject.
I strongly welcome the intent behind the Bills, and the Committee will no doubt appreciate that this submission is being made on a day dedicated to the celebration of love.

Marriage is widely regarded as one of the foundations of a strong and stable society. We encourage it because it creates bonds of fidelity and matrimony. It has social and economic benefits not only for the spouses in the marriage but also their families and communities. Indeed, the fact that marriage is widely regarded as beneficial is a compelling reason to make it available to more couples.

David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, recognises this simple fact. In a speech to his party in 2011 he said: “I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I’m a Conservative.”

I understand that the thought of a same-sex couple marrying may seem peculiar, perhaps even confronting to some Australians. However, I categorically reject the notion that a lifelong commitment between two people can detriment the marriages of others, or in some nebulous way “diminish the institution of marriage”.

Australia has traditionally been a world leader in its respect for peoples’ dignity and human rights. The late H.V. Evatt, an eminent Australian, was instrumental in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which sets out the right to marriage between consenting spouses in article 16. It is in this vein that I implore members of the Committee to support extending the rights of marriage to all couples, and cement Australia’s ongoing commitment to upholding universal human rights.

Many countries around the world have marched towards marriage equality, including those we consider peers, without any apparent damage to their social fabric. Same-sex marriage is legal in Canada, and much of Western Europe. Even in the United States, where it is such a hot-button issue, same-sex marriage is legal in Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and the District of Columbia. It is about to be legalised in Washington state, and pending further court challenges, in the largest state of California.

Opinion polls consistently demonstrate a clear majority of Australians are in favour of marriage equality, and that an even greater majority believe that it is inevitable. This support transcends party and state lines, and age-groups. It is grossly offensive to disregard this as not a “top-order issue”—it is important to those of us it affects, and our families. It falls upon parliamentarians to govern for all Australians, not simply those who fully enjoy their rights.

I understand that the Bills introduced by Senator Hanson-Young and by Adam Bandt and Andrew Wilkie are identical. The difference between those Bills and that introduced by Stephen Jones is that the latter does not propose language on gender identity and sexuality in the content of the Marriage Act 1961.

I believe that the latter approach is preferable. This recognises that discrimination on the basis of one’s gender identity and sexuality is already being considered in the Government’s consolidation of anti-discrimination laws. Furthermore, discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexuality, and same-sex marriage are important issues that should not be conflated. They merit their own debates and separate consideration by this Committee.

Thank you for considering my submission on this matter. I make this submission in my personal capacity.

Yours sincerely

Daniel Nguyen

I’ve been tinkering around the edges with this site in an effort to better manage my online presence.

I haven’t posted anything of substance for a long while. There’s 2 main reasons for that:

1. I’m in a “real job” now and no longer have the time
2. I’m a public servant and am obligated to abide by rules governing public comments

I can’t believe my archives stretch back to 2003, as I was trudging through the HSC. It’s a scary thought that next year marks 10 years since I graduated from high school. I’ve toyed with the idea of deleting the archives. Looking back, my old posts are poorly written and have all the hallmarks of intemperate youth. What I’ve posted in the past is probably inconsistent with what I believe now, blessed with a bit of life experience. However, they’re a part of my history and I should embrace it, warts and all.

I’m not sure if I’ll make any more substantive posts. I use up my analytical power at work, and blast my heat-of-the-moment thoughts via Twitter.

We’ll see.

This is due in part to the difficulties associated with defining homelessness. The ABS uses the “cultural” definition, where homelessness is divided into three categories: primary, secondary and tertiary.

• Primary homelessness covers the traditional stereotype of rough sleepers and those in makeshift accommodation. They account for about 16% of homelessness in Australia.
• Secondary homelessness includes people who frequently move from one temporary form of accommodation to another, and those in transitional/emergency accommodation provided under the Government’s Supported Accommodation Assistance Program. This is the biggest cohort, and accounts for 64% of homelessness.
• Tertiary homelessness includes people who live in boarding houses on a medium/long-term basis but do not have the security of tenure considered necessary to meet the community standard of a self-contained flat. This includes “couch surfers” and accounts for about 20% of homelessness in Australia.

The Government’s 2008 Homelessness White Paper, The Road Home, set an ambitious target of halving homelessness by 2020, with an interim target of a 20% reduction by 2013. Between the 2001 and 2006 Censuses, the number of people experiencing homelessness increased from about 100,000 to 105,000. However, the overall steadiness of this figure masks the big changes that occurred among age groups. Although there was a 16% decrease in the number of 12–18 year olds experiencing homelessness, there were large increases in the number of under 12s and over 55s. This kind of data – disaggregated and rigorous – is essential in any kind of homelessness policy development, and assessing the effectiveness of that policy.

Although the most recent Census was held on 9 August this year, most of its results will not become available until late 2012. This lag in data collection will be problematic when it comes time to track the progress of interim goals in the Homelessness White Paper.

Long-term, it might be useful to provide basic statistics training for NGOs and community groups. If the standard of their data collection rises to a level acceptable to the ABS, the job could be effectively outsourced, providing widespread geographical coverage and a rolling stock of raw data so we don’t get surprises every 5 years.

There is no easy way to measure inflation, and the best tools we have are proxies in the form of various price indexes. The most well-known is the consumer price index (CPI) which tracks a ‘basket’ of goods and services representing commonly bought things.

Inflation can be an insidious thing, eroding the value of people’s cash savings, and reducing their purchasing power. It also has a tendency to accelerate out of control if it is not contained. The most famous example is the hyperinflation in Germany in the 1920s, which got so bad people had to push around wheelbarrows of cash to buy loaves of bread.

Australia’s Reserve Bank (RBA) has an explicit policy of “inflation targeting”, where it tries to keep the annual rate of inflation (CPI) between 2 and 3 percent over the course of the business cycle. The RBA achieves this through changes in the ‘cash rate’, which is the market interest rate on overnight funds lent to banks and financial institutions. The cash rate is used as a baseline that affects most other interest rates, including mortgages and business loans. Increases in the cash rate have a tendency to reduce levels of business investment and consumer spending and vice-versa. Changes in the cash rate therefore have reverberations across the entire economy, affecting overall spending and borrowing.

Inflation targeting was introduced in 1993 and has been singularly successful in anchoring inflation expectations, keeping CPI increases stable, and underpinning Australia’s economic growth. You can see in the graph below that CPI increases oscillated wildly before 1993, but have since mostly stayed in the RBA’s 2–3 percent target band.

The CPI starts to wobble again towards the end of the graph as the income surge from Australia’s mining boom starts creating price pressures across the economy. The uptick at the very end is attributable to the hangover caused by the RBA dramatically cutting the cash rate from 7.25 to 3.25 percent over the course of 2008-09 in the face of the global financial crisis.

The most recent statistics have the CPI running at 3.6 percent, fuelled by increases in the cost of fruit (up 26.9% in the three months to June), petrol (+4.0%) and health services (+3.4%). This was offset by decreases in the cost of vegetables (–10.3%), computer equipment (–6.3%) and electricity (–1.5%). Although some of this is attributable to natural disasters and external events, the CPI is still at the upper bounds of the RBA’s target.

Through agreement between the RBA Governor and the Treasurer, and the Statement on the Conduct of Monetary Policy, the RBA’s mandate is to address this breach of its inflation target. If the RBA were a purely inflation targetting central bank, it would have raised rates on Tuesday. The RBA’s staff economists pushed for an increase. Reading between the lines of its statement, elements of the RBA Board would also have preferred to raise rates. The tension lies squarely on the Board itself, which is populated by industry figures whose business interests, particularly in retail, are crying out for rate cuts.

Against the backgrop of ongoing debt and economic troubles in the US and Europe, the next 12 months will be fascinating.

I shall simple repost my comment on Enoch’s blog, who also does not think very highly of the retrograde changes.

It is god damned atrocious. It’s increasingly apparent we went to a third-??rate institution, and it shows up in everything they do: the quality of education, the quality of facilities, the relationship between the governing bodies of the uni and the students, and now the barely-??tepid effort they put into their website.
Who the hell thought it was a good idea to have the logo jut ting out to the left? What is this meant to represent? That if you want to achieve some thing, Sydney Uni will jump out of left field to block you?
Why is there is logical grid or spacing to effectively man age the masses of informa­tion? Why is it so boxy? Why is the typography so bad? All-??in-??all it looks like some “designer” spent a couple of hours trawling the 1990s inter net for some “cool scripts” and hacked together a Frankstein’s monster.

And this is after a very promising brand ing pitch book that actually looked like it was going to unify the hitherto haphazard brand ing strategies. I’m really disgusted. I fully expect Sydney Uni to have slipped down the rankings in the next decade, all the while funnel ling massive amounts of corporate money into its coffers.