Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

This issue is undoubtedly a contentious issue for a variety of reasons and for many people. There is nothing more iconic or symbolic than the institution of marriage. It means many things to many people and it has associated with it yet for many people a sacramentalisation by religion. Some people associate marriage with that sense of the spiritual, the religious or the sacramental, depending on their theology and beliefs. Some of those people associate marriage with a spiritual dimension. And it means a great deal to them. I do not deny that for a moment. I recognise that both in my own background and in my own socialisation as a Catholic, until I stopped being a practising Catholic. Indeed, I trained as a priest for a number of years as well and I have an abiding interest in the studies of religion. I have been a chief examiner and a teacher of studies in religion for many, many years in the college system. So I have a great appreciation of the significance of marriage for people of a religious persuasion or belief. Many of those people live in my electorate and have contacted me. In the main, those people have asked that the law not change in its definition and its extent in our community. I fully acknowledge and respect their viewpoints.

On the other hand , of course, for many other people marriage is a secular institution. It is viewed and valued in different ways, but it is for many of those people a formal recognition of their relationship, a formal state of recognition in the eyes of the community about the nature of their relationship. For many people it is also associated with the creation of a family and, in the main, is viewed as a relationship between a man and a woman. That, indeed, is the current definition as we understand the Marriage Act at the moment.

However, the institution itself is fundamentally, for me, a statement about relationships. There are many marriages that exist today very happily and that, of course, is a great testament to marriage as an institution and that formal recognition. There are many marriages that do not, for a variety of reasons, involve having children. The nature of that marriage is no less significant because they do not have children. So the institution itself is not necessarily for the creation of what we deem to be a family of mum, dad and children. Marriage is a formal recognition of the relationship between those two people. To me, marriage in our community has had an extraordinary history over time, as do most major social institutions. It has had a variety of meanings and functions, and they have been more traditionally different from how we understand it today.

Within marriage today and as it has evolved we talk about equality, partnerships and so forth. In other words, the individual has rights and their human rights are valued inside the institution which we call marriage. In our community it is, irrespective of how people may view it in terms of their personal values and beliefs, a secular, government recognised status. At the moment, that recognition is based on a gender relationship, and to me—and this is not easily arrived at—it is based on discriminating on gender. I believe that we as a community are evolving and working through our values system. I believe that the individual human rights of a person should not be discriminated against on the basis of their religious belief, on the basis of their gender, on the basis of their ethnicity or on the basis of their sexual preference. I do not believe that, if we change the act itself to allow people in same-sex relationships to adopt this iconic institution, it will affect the rights or status of opposite-sex couples in any sense. What it will do is include others who have been discriminated against in terms of being able to choose that institution, to be able to have formally recognised their relationship. I do not believe it affects one single religious belief in terms of those who regard a particular relationship as being unacceptable for whatever theological reason they may have. Those people will continue to hold those beliefs. This has nothing to do with that. People who find the relationships of same-sex couples to be unacceptable for a variety of reasons will continue to do so. No-one is forcing them to attend or be part of a marriage ceremony if two people decide they want to formally recognise their relationship. Nor will it require people who are of religious orders or have religious recognition and status to perform ceremonies or to perform marriages for same-sex couples, as it exists now for opposite-sex couples. So I do not believe the rights of other people and the values of other people are going to be affected at all by this decision to allow people who may wish to recognise their same-sex relationship to have it formally recognised in what is a secular, government recognised status.

I do appreciate that, like any major debate in our community, there are a variety of views on this. We move through these things; that is why we discuss, debate and, ultimately, legislate. The important thing about our legislation is that it is not so much that we have to grant a human right in this sense; we need to recognise and protect the human rights of everyone, and I believe that, at the moment, the Marriage Act discriminates against individuals and couples based on gender and sexual preference. I believe the law should change, and that is why I support this, but I do of course recognise the difficulty this presents for people who are opposed to it—I will be exercising my conscience vote in this—and the difficulty that is presented currently with the legislation for those people who want to formally recognise their relationship with their same-sex partner and their families. At the same time, I know all sides of the parliament were supportive of removing a lot of the discrimination and unfairness that was associated with same-sex relationships in terms of legal proceedings and other matters. I think it was something like 80 pieces of legislation in 2008 that were supported by the parliament. It was very significant. Indeed, that led to what some would regard as a reinstatement of fairness in recognising these relationships, but it is not a reinstatement and is certainly not an acceptance of equality. I believe that is what we need to recognise now and uphold, and that is why I will be supporting the legislation. Thank you very much.

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