Gay marriage campaigners were celebrating last night after Tasmania's lower house became the first chamber of an Australian parliament to pass a bill to legalise same-sex marriage.

The bill, co-sponsored by Labor Premier Lara Giddings and Greens leader Nick McKim, passed by 13 votes to 11.

Labor MPs had a free vote on the bill. All but one, Michael Polley, voted with Green MPs in support of the bill.

The house's 10 Liberal members were bound by the party's position to vote against the bill.

Tasmania was the last Australian state to decriminalise homosexuality. Until 1997, it was a criminal offence punishable by up to 25 years' jail.

Veteran gay activist Rodney Croome, who spearheaded the campaign for gay law reform in the state in the 1990s, said the passage of the bill would ''banish forever Tasmania's reputation for homophobia''.

But the bill's passage through the state's upper house is far from certain. Of its 15 members, 13 are independent. The upper house will consider the bill when Parliament returns in three weeks.

Priests will have to pay and nuns will have to get in the habit, too, if they want to remain members of their local Southern Cross Club.

The Canberra Southern Cross Club is outraged it is being forced to charge its so-called ''religious members'' an annual membership fee, even though ministers have been exempted from coughing up since the club's establishment in the 1970s. The Southern Cross Club has six branches across the ACT, including the Yacht Club in Yarralumla, and has long given nuns and priests honorary memberships.

All up, the club has about 85,000 members, with about 80 of them being religious members.

Its membership guidelines stipulate that religious members are free from the $5 annual fee and to qualify they must be ''any priest, brother, nun, minister or spouse or full-time student of a recognised religion''.

The rules further state that: ''A person who qualifies for and elects to be in this category is not eligible to be an officer or director of the club and is not entitled to vote.'' Those might be the club's rules, but the law of the land has a different view.

ACT legislation requires that every member of a club that is licensed for gaming must pay a membership fee unless they have been given a life membership.

The Southern Cross Club hasn't been adhering to this requirement.

The Uniting Church wants to train its leaders to identify and treat members with pornography addiction amid fears it is a growing problem among young people.

It has invited interstate psychologist, the Rev Dr Peter Powell, to speak to church leaders at an inaugural two-day seminar next month.

Regional and rural SA pastoral relations officer, the Rev Ashley Davis, says the church is "disappointed" that using pornography has become normal, particularly among high school students.

"We often get to see the broken relationships that using pornography brings about and so we want to do something that will help in prevention of addiction to porn and all the brokenness that that brings," he said.

Mr Davis said the Uniting Church also was concerned that the age of addicts was decreasing.

"It is not uncommon for young people to be ostracised because they don't use porn," he said.

A young mum, a former cohort of Frank Sartor, a technologist, a small-business owner, an affordable-housing advocate and a feminist stripper - these are the contenders trying to oust Clover Moore as the next Lord Mayor of Sydney.

Ms Moore will come up against seven new candidates next month after being forced to stand down from her MP role.

Living Sydney mayoral candidate and small-business owner Angela Vithoulkas was drawn on top of the ballot paper yesterday, saying it could be a good omen for the month ahead.

"I couldn't be happier that I get this opportunity for the community," she said.

She will be followed by Zahra Stardust, a "feminist stripper", trapeze artist, pole dancer and exotic dancer who has posed for adult magazines and websites who first stood for the Australian Sex Party at the 2010 federal election.

Ms Moore, who has been mayor since 2004 and a councillor since 1980 will be third on the ballot.

NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione had "no idea what he was talking about" when he blamed a rise in teen knife crime to violent video games, according to a leading video game psychologist.

"In fact, in most countries youth violence has reached 40 year lows during the video game epoch," said Dr Christopher Ferguson, associate professor of psychology and communication at the University of Texas.

Mr Scipione told The Daily Telegraph that young people were being desensitised to violence by playing out deadly scenarios on their computer screens. He said teenagers were being rewarded for killing and raping people, stealing money from prostitutes and crashing cars.

"The thing that's concerning me is the prevalence of people who are at this stage not just prepared to carry a knife, but prepared to use it," Mr Scipione said.

"That has increased significantly."

Dr Ferguson told news.com.au that Mr Scipione's claims were "irresponsible" and "based on no good research data as an emotional reaction to a 'recent spate' of knifings that could simply be due to a random fluctuation in crime rates".

The video game expert said Mr Scipione ignored longer trends that showed no increases in youth violence.

A report by the Australian Institute of Criminology released in March showed crime rates had fallen across most major categories. It showed that car theft had dropped over 60 per cent over the past decade and homicides had dropped by 27 per cent between 1996 and 2010.

A sex worker has won an anti-discrimination case against motel owners in a Queensland mining town who refused to rent her a room.

The ruling could have wider implications in Queensland, where the mining boom is also fuelling a boom in the sex trade.

The Queensland Civil and Administration Tribunal has ruled the owners of Moranbah's Drovers Rest Motel, southwest of Mackay, contravened the Anti-Discrimination Act.

The Gold Coast-based sex worker, who can only be identified as GK, had stayed at the motel 17 times in two years until owners Evan and Joan Hartley discovered in 2010 she was bringing clients to her room.

They then banned her from staying at the motel.

GK lost her anti-discrimination case last year but appealed last month.

A hearing date is yet to be set to decide on compensation for GK, who sought $30,000 last year.

The owners' barrister, David Edwards, told AAP his clients were considering an appeal.

During the tribunal hearing, GK's lawyer argued many people used the telephone or internet at the motel for business, and a bed was no different.

Source: The Australian