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2009/22: Should single-sex clubs such as the Melbourne Club and the Lyceum continue to exist?





Introduction to the media issue

Video clip at right: An ABC 7.30 Report segment on the Melbourne Club. The segment includes an interview with a long-standing member. .
If you cannot see this clip, it will be because video is blocked by your network. To view the clip, access from home or from a public library, or from another network which allows viewing of video clips.

What they said ...
'There are a lot of entrenched views about these clubs that aren't really appropriate... They are just places where people can meet socially; really they are like second homes'
Annie James, immediate past president of the Lyceum

'Discrimination laws currently don't apply to private clubs, which can ban women, or people of a certain religious faith, without any recourse'
Rob Hulls, Victoria's Attorney General

The issue at a glance
On November 24, 2009, a Victorian Parliamentary Committee issued a report recommending that single-sex venues, including the exclusive Melbourne and Athenaeum clubs on Collins St, should be able to continue to operate on a one gender basis.
Earlier this year, the Victorian Attorney-General Rob Hulls, had suggested they were relics of the past which should lose their automatic exemptions from the Equal Opportunity Act and other anti-discrimination laws.
The report by the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee recommended that freedom of association was a 'fundamental human right' that should be balanced against the right to non-discrimination.  On this basis the Committee recommended that ' private clubs should be permitted to discriminate in relation to selection of members'.
Some have argued that the decision is a victory for both freedom of association and commonsense. Others have suggested that these single sex clubs are unrepresentative anachronisms which entrench social and gender-based discrimination, giving those groups which are admitted the opportunity to network and entrench their advantage.
Mr Hulls has said the Government would consider the recommendations.