Laura Smyth (La Trobe, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This debate is about change. It is the next stage in a long line of important policy changes relating to marriage and the status of married people in Australian society. So far as women are concerned, it was only in 1883 that the South Australian Married Women's Property Act began to allow married women to own and dispose of property in Australia. Despite most women gaining the right to vote in 1902, women could still lose their Australian nationality when they married a non-Australian national, even up until the late 1940s. Before 1966, many women had to resign from Public Service positions upon getting married. After campaigns for change, Australian society and its parliaments have changed their views on the status of women, once regarded as mere subjects in the institution of marriage.

As late as 1959, Indigenous Australians did not necessarily have the right to marry a person of their own choosing. The case of Gladys Namagu and Mick Daly in that year demonstrated the arbitrary nature of marriage arrangements in relation to Indigenous Australians. Gladys, an Indigenous woman, and Mick, a white man, were denied the opportunity to marry at first instance. This kind of discriminatory treatment in marriage was to change after much struggle, including the 1967 referendum campaign. Before 1975, we still had a system of fault based divorce in this country. Some would prefer that system to still be in place. I strongly, strongly disagree. Fortunately, so did others, with the effect that in 1975 we saw a more humane approach to the already difficult decision to end a marriage.

To all of those who campaigned and struggled for change in relation to each of these important issues, I say thanks, because those changes have reflected broader societal change. They have corrected injustices and they have made us a better society. Campaigns for racial and gender equality have been hard fought and are ongoing. They have rightly reached into all aspects of law making, including laws relating to marriage. This campaign and this debate will be the same. It is a historic debate which reflects a shift in social expectations. Australia agreed to be bound by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1980, and in so doing it recognised the importance of equality before the law and principles of nondiscrimination. There has been a lengthy campaign for law reform to reflect these basic premises in the ensuing decades and it continues today. After winning the 2007 election Labor pushed on with reforms which saw around 85 Commonwealth laws changed to remove discrimination on the basis of sexual preference. I am proud that we did. Last year Labor's national policy platform was changed to support amendments to the Marriage Act which would ensure equal access to marriage under statute for all adult couples, irrespective of sex, who have a mutual commitment to a shared life. I am speaking in support of marriage equality today to give effect to those statements. I will be voting in favour of marriage equality in the bill before us and I hope that other members of my party will do the same. I simply believe that voting for marriage equality is the right thing to do.

There will be those who disagree with me. I am a member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs and I have listened to the witnesses who have come before the inquiry into the bill. Strong views have been put against the bill. I have found them, in the final analysis, to be unconvincing. On this occasion votes against marriage equality may prevail, but I know that this debate will not end merely because debate on one piece of legislation ends. It will continue in society until equality, including equality in marriage, is achieved regardless of sexual preference.

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