By Rod McGuirk
Prime Minister Julia Gillard will host a dinner for two lesbian couples and a pair of gay men at her official residence today after an activist group won a charity auction.
The couples will use the dinner in the national capital Canberra to lobby the prime minister to allow gay marriage.
"The main premise of the dinner really is to put a human face to the issue and just to discuss our own personal circumstances, our own lives with the prime minister," Melbourne butcher John Dini told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Dini will attend the dinner with his partner of nine years, Steve Russell; a pair of lesbian university professors from Brisbane, and a lesbian couple with two children from Sydney.
The activist group GetUp! paid AU$31,000 for the dinner at the Press Gallery of Australia annual charity ball in June last year.
Gillard's Labor Party in December lifted its long-standing opposition to gay marriage, and three separate bills have been introduced to Parliament that would change the law which states that only a man and woman can marry.
But Gillard remains opposed to gay marriage, and it is unclear whether any bill would attract sufficient support to enable same-sex couples to marry. No date has been set for a vote in Parliament on gay marriage.
Polls show that most Australians support gay marriage but the conservative opposition coalition and many government lawmakers remain opposed.
AP