Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to contribute to this debate and once again reaffirm my support for same-sex marriage. I have voted in this place previously in support of this issue. I have been in this place a fair time and I do not think I have ever come across a proposition so ludicrous as the one that is confronting us in the Plebiscite (Same-Sex Marriage) Bill 2016—that we should go to a plebiscite on something that this parliament should decide on. We do not have plebiscites on whether we go to war. We do not have plebiscites on whether we need to change Medicare. We do not have plebiscites on education. We do not have plebiscites on any other issue which this parliament makes decisions about. Yet, we are being asked by the government to accept a proposition that we should, as a matter of course to test public opinion, have a plebiscite. We are elected into this place by the people of Australia to make laws. We are elected into this place as parliamentarians in a democracy to make decisions. What the government is doing here is quite the opposite. It is refusing to accept its responsibility to allow the parliament to make a decision that is enforceable about same-sex marriage and marriage equality.

In my community, there is a great deal of concern about the direction in which this debate has been heading. What is the point of forcing 15 million Australians to vote when Malcolm Turnbull, the Prime Minister, cannot even guarantee that the members of the government, the Liberal and National parties, would vote in support of the outcome of that plebiscite in this parliament? We already know how weak he is as a leader, and we saw that writ large yesterday—in fact, shockingly so—in Senate estimates when the Minister for Defence was asked: who is responsible in the Department of Defence; who is the senior minister? There does not appear to be one. Apparently, the Prime Minister is not able to arbitrate the responsibilities of the Minister for Defence, the Leader of the House or Minister Tehan in their respective portfolios. He cannot even do that, let alone have the courage and the spine to stand up to his party room, express his own personal opinion, tell them what it is and get their support.

He knows that the extreme right-wing elements of his party will not support him. It would not matter what decision was taken by the community at large, a number of them have determined that, regardless of the public opinion which might be expressed through a plebiscite, they have no intention, ever, of supporting the proposition of marriage equality. That says more about the Prime Minister and the coalition than it does about the Australian population. How can we have confidence in a government when the Prime Minister, whose own views are widely known about marriage equality, cannot even lead his own government to a position of support for the proposition in this parliament? That speaks volumes about the incapacity of the Prime Minister and his weakness as a leader.

I also think we need to be contemplating the impact of a potentially very divisive plebiscite—and I think it would be. There is no question in my mind about the hurt that will be perpetrated upon family members in the LGBTQI community. They will be offended. I have some correspondence from people I know well, who are partners and who have small child. I would like you to hear what they say. Kirsty writes:

Amber—

Kirsty's partner—

and I have lived in the Darwin Rural area for 8 years and we have a 5 year old daughter.

The plebiscite concerns us greatly as we believe that in our daughters first week of primary school in 2017 she will be exposed to a campaign the shows her family to be lesser than all of her classmates.

We have already seen evidence that the "no" propaganda will be particular hateful and this material will be around and circulated during her primary school and formative years. We know that marriage has nothing to do with if / how we can raise a family, but unfortunately this is the debate this is already being had.

Our daughter Saige is gorgeous but very shy child with a big open heart.

I want to do everything, like every Mum would, to protect her from potential bullying and harassment from classmates, teachers who have a differing opinion on our family, other families and the media.

My concern is also with the mental health of my friends in the LGBTQ community, I've already seen firsthand the distress it is causing our friends.

The campaign on social media, the talkback radio and the ongoing belief that we need to justify our relationships is causing harm.

All of this is only the beginning of a hateful debate in our community.

I urge all our members of Parliament to abandon the plebiscite and have a free vote.

Hear, hear, I say! Hear, hear! The Prime Minister believes this. The Prime Minister wants this, but he is too gutless to enforce it. He does not have the leadership skills or the capacity in his own party room to carry the day. Such is his weakness. It is evidenced every day at the dispatch box. Every day he comes into this parliament, he gives further evidence to his weakness as a leader.

Another constituent of mine wrote to me and said:

I am in a same sex relationship of sixteen years, my wife and I are absolutely unequivocally prepared to be patient and wait for marriage equality in Australia if it means hate speech and slander are prevented from flourishing and prospering during a plebiscite campaign, and that the lives of our fellow Australians are spared significant harms that will be inflicted upon them.

This is a widespread view. It is not something which is made up. These are Australian families. There is a wide-eyed view held by some in the community—indeed, some who profess faith may have a legitimate view about their faith, and the faith based view that they have might be that they oppose marriage equality—but I ask this question: what are the common forms of relationship in this country?

My own relationship, for example, is regarded by some as illegitimate. My partner and I have been living together for 32 years. We have four children. Is there something wrong with that? There are some who would say there is, because they say that the only way you should have children is in a marriage. That, of course, is absurd, as most Australians would admit. It is just as absurd to deny the possibility of two people of the same sex having a relationship. It is a matter of fact. It is not a matter of contention. We know this is happening, yet some, in their wisdom and perhaps delusion, say to us that it is not appropriate that they should have the same rights as other Australians to cohabit and that, really, it is unseemly or inappropriate for members of the same sex to bring up children or be married. In the case of my partner, Elizabeth, and I, we chose not to be married. We took a choice. I am not opposed to marriage—fill your boots, I say—but we have taken a decision, just as there will be members of the LGBTQ community who may take a similar decision, but what they want is the right to be married. That is all. And, if they choose to be married as a result of that right being given to them, good on them. They too can fill their boots. But it is not right to say that they, among all other Australians, should be excluded the right or the possibility of being married.

No-one seeks to compel a church, or any person really, but particularly a church or church based organisations, to carry out services they do not believe in—no-one; least of all me—but I absolutely believe in the right of people to have that choice. When you think about where we are at this time of our history, so much change has taken place over the last 200 years. Belief systems have differed, the role of churches has changed, the moral leadership in the community has moved, the discussion and the debate has changed, and people who were pilloried and jailed for being gay are now accepted as equals in the community, as they should be. Why then can't we accept that they have an equal right to make a choice about being married? It is a very simple question. And why does the government want to insist that the decision on the merits or otherwise of those relationships, and their right to be married and to raise children, should be put in the hands of those who do not believe in them? Why should we? It is a discriminatory action to say that one set of Australians, such as these, should be treated so differently from another.

One of my constituents who wrote to me, in a very well thought out and, indeed, very cogent response to this issue, was Peta Phelan. She does not mind me using her name. She wrote:

The momentous social and economic burdens of such an action—

that is, the plebiscite—

cannot be ignored. Consider the financial costs of running a non-binding, unnecessary and irrelevant national opinion poll, at approximately 200 million dollars—

more or less—

The social, financial and economic burdens that have not been discussed are the following:

and she makes four points—

I ask the Prime Minister: when you are at home at night and you are contemplating what is right and wrong, do you actually think about these issues? Do you have it on your conscience—the impact of the decisions we take in this parliament and the possibilities of how the decisions you make might affect these people or the rest of the Australian community, or the cost involved? How can you, as the leader of this country, stand up here and say, as you are doing, that these things are irrelevant and inconsequential; they do not matter; what matters is the right to give every Australian the responsibility to have a vote on something that will be non-binding and irrelevant? I think it is despicable that we go through this charade of having a debate about something which the government does not believe in.

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