EQUALITY IS WHAT WE WANT - ALL OTHER "EQUALITIES" WILL COME WITH IT, INCLUDING MARRIAGE EQUALITY.

This barrage of noise about marriage equality is a side issue and a smoke screen.

What we want is EQUALITY - with EQUALITY comes every other equality, including "marriage equality".

This ongoing argument and the demand for parliamentary votes and referenda and similar parliamentary nonsense is just that - nonsense.

Parliament would never agree to give gay, lesbian, transgender, HIV/AIDS and other "different" population groups equality because it would mean there would be more people around demanding other rights - although once we had equality, we would presumably have all the rights we legally need.

The country is wasting billions of dollars and resources over this whole nonsense - money which could be put to greater use for groups needing assistance with health, education, employment and other issues, and the more we spend on nonsense the more we take out of the common pool, and the more time people spend on this nonsense the more human resources are spent on issues which are really only side issues.

Marriage is not an institution we should be encouraging - if people want to live together but don't want to get married - they are doing it anyway, all the time, every day, not just heterosexuals, but homosexuals and everybody else who wants to - why waste time and energy on an irrelevance?

What we want is Equality and we want it NOW!