Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker Vasta. It is good to see you in the chair, as well. In speaking on the Plebiscite (Same-Sex Marriage) Bill I do want to acknowledge the previous speaker for his courage on this issue over the years, but I have to say that, acknowledging his voice as a stakeholder, it is not representative of the majority of stakeholder voices that I hear in my own electorate. I am here to represent those voices. We have to be frank about this. This is not an exercise on behalf of the government to deliver the rational, reasonable outcome here. This is an exercise in neutralising internal political dynamics within the parliamentary coalition. In that sense, it is irresponsible. I will come to the details of why I feel that way.

I am entirely on a unity ticket with just about the rest of the nation at the moment in being disappointed with this Prime Minister. There is pretty much no principle or cause that we felt this Prime Minister believed in that he has not betrayed up until this point. His transition into a carbon copy of the previous Prime Minister has been completed and we have been watching it unfold this week. It is a great shame, because we all felt that he would come to that office seeking to advance causes that he had previously advocated and that he would come to this parliament with an agenda. He simply has not and he has betrayed the faith of so many in our community.

This is not about the best way to get consensus on this issue, as the government claims. This is about a vehicle for the opponents of marriage equality trying to delay the inevitable defeat of this reform by the use of emotive, disingenuous and misleading campaigns. When we hear about claims by the Prime Minister that the plebiscite will be a reasonable exercise in democracy and it will be a civil discourse—we have already seen material that has been out there even before any process of a plebiscite has begun. Who can forget the meme with the rainbow-coloured nooses around a woman's neck? This is only a foretaste of what we could expect in the context of such a campaign. That meme was retweeted by the Marriage Alliance, as well, though they later withdrew it.

So there are a number of key reasons why this is a bad way to go. In particular, if the Prime Minister was serious about this, if the coalition was serious about it, then why not make this a binding commitment? Why not nail to this plebiscite the legislative outcome? In effect, that is not happening and it demonstrates the lack of seriousness. The PM could have ensured that outcome in this process and chose not do so, thus belling the cat on the fact that this is not a plebiscite as such, but an expensive opinion poll, as we have been describing it—and a very expensive one at that. So no matter what will happen in this plebiscite, if it ever took place, which now looks unlikely, the outcome would be that many members of the coalition would consider themselves not bound by that plebiscite and would continue to vote in accordance with their consciences. So we will get back to the situation that we could have in this House tomorrow—have a vote, allowing people to vote their consciences, having a free vote—we could get that result tomorrow without spending $200 billion.

That waste of money particularly grates with me. We hear a lot of talk about budget responsibility and budget repair. We have seen the government proposing $50 billion tax giveaways to multinational corporations and big banks, but $200 million is not an insignificant amount either when we are talking about budget repair. I think in terms of the Southeast Regional Hospital that Labor was able to achieve in Bega in my electorate, based on the Health and Hospitals Fund, which was torn up and destroyed by the government. That hospital was about the same amount as what this plebiscite would cost. So we are talking about a regional hospital's worth of pointless exercise. In addition to that, the experience we are now having with that regional hospital is that the services that we had hoped to establish there are not being fleshed out because the coalition's cuts to health have forced the state to triage its services. So much is being done in cities to try to keep services going there, at the expense of rural and regional hospitals. Now we are seeing the New South Wales government exploring the possibilities of privatising some of our rural hospitals to try to tackle this problem. When I see that sort of thing going on, it really upsets me when we talk about wasting $200 million on this exercise. What we are talking about here is a powerplay within the coalition playing out through an unnecessary imposition and impact on people.

This is an issue that brings many strands together and this country of ours and our society have evolved over many years on this issue. People did ask me, after I voted in favour of marriage equality in 2012, coming from a rural-regional seat like mine, why I did it. There were a number of reasons, but one particularly simple and poignant reason was that I served with many gay and lesbian men and women in the Australian Defence Force, and my view was: if they were willing to die for you, then this was the least thing we could agree to do for them. I think that is a fairly powerful point to get across.

But I also came to appreciate that denying marriage equality is the last hook that those who seek to demonise, to diminish and to discriminate against gay and lesbian men and women have in their armoury. That is why they are hanging onto it so hard—because it enables them to turn to gay and lesbian men and women and say, 'Look, you are different.' This is the last point of difference. When we were in government, we removed, I think, 87 different legislative impediments to equalising that situation, and this really is the last thing left to do. Therefore, we need to remove it to prevent people being able to rely on it as their last hook to discriminate against and to demonise gay and lesbian men and women.

Also, I bring to this discussion the perspective of an MP from regional Australia. I have concerns about the stress that this proposed plebiscite would cause to people in our regions. We know that it can be difficult being a gay or lesbian person in small rural communities. We had the example of young Eddie Blewett, from Tathra in my electorate, being mentioned by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in question time. She put the question to the Prime Minister on behalf of Eddie: 'Why should people who barely know us make an assumption on our families and vote on how we can live?' That is Eddie and his family from my electorate in a rural and regional area. What was interesting about that, of course, was that the Prime Minister did not directly answer that question. Afterwards, the media approached Eddie and his family, and Eddie said: 'It upset me that the PM did not answer me in parliament. I thought that was pretty hurtful, not just to me but to those families that were waiting for an answer.' This is a constituent of mine, a rural and regional person, who is not satisfied with the approach that the government is taking and is concerned about the judgements that are being made about his family.

I also had young women and transgender people visit me from the local Queanbeyan headspace facility. They were people using that facility from all around our region and, to a person, they requested that I take up the position of opposing this plebiscite option. They feel very vulnerable and very sensitive to the sorts of issues and debates that would be raised in the context of a plebiscite. We have seen too many suicides in rural and regional communities when adolescent gay and lesbian citizens of this country feel the pressure of being isolated, alone, victimised, marginalised and treated differently. I do not want to see that situation amplified in this context. We obviously have issues around how that situation needs to be continuously managed, and we know that this is not going to aid that cause.

From a personal perspective, I have to say that I had a strict Christian upbringing—stricter than probably anybody else in this chamber, I would imagine. I pretty much know, back to front, what is in the book. I know pretty much every line of the teachings, and I will say they have formed a big part of the values that have guided me in my professional life and involvement in politics, but I am aware, from having been brought up in that tradition, of the various evolutions of relationships and marriage that exist, even as spelt out in the Bible. To me, it defies belief that people can get up and say that marriage has always been the way it is now and between a man and a woman. If we look back at the Good Book and the children of Adam and Eve, the brother and sister unions that must have existed are one evolution of the relationships that are spelt out in that book. Also, as it unfolds, the book goes into detail about many polygamous relationships. King David had many wives and also had many concubines. There were no moral judgements passed on King David for those relationships and those arrangements. We have seen, in more recent times, the 19th century common-law types of marriage that were not subject to ceremonies but acquired status in the law. We have seen traditions of arranged marriages—some in our own society, of course, but in other ethnic communities as well. And we have seen, of course, throughout the centuries, until very recently, the fact that women had very little choice in these arrangements and almost no rights. It was only in the seventies in this country that we saw reform to the marriage relationship that created the rights that women needed and had been seeking for so many centuries, in fact. So we have seen quite a degree of diversity and evolution in the history of relationships, and certainly same-sex relationships have been around right from the very beginning. So let's not get tied up in ridiculous claims about confining ourselves to one particular type of relationship as being legitimate.

The other thing that disturbs me about this discussion has been the focusing on children. The truth of the matter is—as I mentioned, legislative changes were made by our Labor government and other previous governments—same-sex couples having children is not illegal now. It is not beyond the ability of the system to accommodate at this point in time. For those who are opposed to the same-sex marriage ceremonies, and believe that that will prevent same-sex couples from having children, then it is too late. This debate is not about that. Forget that issue; it is dead. So we are talking now simply about a ceremony, not about the issues of children or the issues of the legitimacy of those relationships.

The other thing that I would like to mention, too, is the issue of local representation that I am required to make in this House. I think it was put very succinctly and eloquently by Mr Iain Dawson, the director of the Bega Valley Regional Gallery, who wrote a great piece in the paper. He is a local boy—locally born and raised. In his letter, he said:

The support for marriage equality is not disputed by either the Prime Minister or the Opposition Leader, yet we find ourselves with a $200 million plebiscite to decide the issue.

We live in a democracy that elects its representatives to lead and make hard decisions on behalf of their constituents.

Why is it that this particular moral/social issue needs any more than that?

Add to that the suggestion that this wasteful and potentially harmful popularity contest will not be binding and still be subject to a vote in parliament, is just insulting to LGBTIQ people and the wider Australian population.

My concern is not for me or the man I love, but for the kids who grow up feeling ashamed of who they are while we still debate this issue.

Living regionally, those differences can be more pronounced, more isolating and potentially more harmful.

I'd like the teenager me, who grew up here on the South Coast of NSW, to feel as accepted and valued as I do, as a member of this amazing community now.

Marriage equality – let's get it done in parliament now!

I would also like to finish by pointing out that the previous plebiscites we have done have been about things like conscription in war and the discussion around what adult males will do, and them being part of that discussion. What we are asking in this debate is to throw our children on the wire, along with vulnerable adolescents to this discussion, heedless of the impact on them of how they are viewed and the impact of the judgements that are made by the community about the relationships in which they grow up. Let's not go there while there is an easy alternative.

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