Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science, Technology and Personnel) Share this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to lend some comment on the debate on the member for Melbourne's motion on seeking feedback from electorates with respect to the concept of same-sex marriage.

In terms of consistency, I am on the public record, indeed from the time of my maiden speech, of supporting the time-honoured institution of marriage between a man and a woman as the basis—the bedrock—of family values on which children are raised and nurtured. I will continue that degree of consistency in supporting the family; indeed, backing that up having had an enormous volume of calls, emails and petitions through to my electorate. As it stands, it is four to one in favour of traditional marriage for a man and a woman. As to the last minute Get Up campaign, a flood of emails that actually had no names and addresses attached to them, making it a little difficult to verify when they said, 'I'm from your electorate', but with a Gmail account, if I were to exclude those it would take those in my electorate in favour of traditional marriage to 16 to one. I intentionally did not want to skew results by going to my own local church, the churches in my electorate or indeed the very large Arundel Mosque in my electorate. If I were to do that, it would rise from 16 to one to over 30 to one.

In terms of reporting back to the parliament what my electorate is saying with respect to marriage, it is overwhelmingly saying that marriage should remain between a male and a female, which coincidentally aligns with the view that I have held all the time in the parliament. I thank you for the opportunity to share the feedback from the hardworking men and women of Fadden on the Gold Coast.

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