Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This week we're assembled in the parliament to debate the results of the same-sex marriage postal survey, to enact legislation to give effect to the outcome of the survey and to seek specific protections for people of faith and religious institutions related to those legislative changes. Giving Australians a say on the issue of same-sex marriage became coalition policy before the last election, and I supported that policy. Once you promise people a say, you cannot take it away.

During last year's election campaign, same-sex marriage was widely canvassed by voters in my electorate. People wanted to know my view of same-sex marriage and what I thought of the plebiscite. Many advocates of same-sex marriage opposed giving Australians a say, but I think, on balance, they were wrong to do so. Same-sex marriage will ultimately have greater social acceptance in Australia than, say, in the United States, where it came about through a decision of the US Supreme Court, because all Australians have had the opportunity to have their say about the issue. Australia, in that case, is a rare country. It's one of a handful of national jurisdictions, including Ireland, Slovenia and Switzerland, where the public have had an opportunity to have a direct say on same-sex marriage. There are also a number of countries—including the United States, South Africa, Taiwan and several South American countries—where same-sex marriage has been brought about via court decisions, which is the most unsatisfactory way of achieving social change.

The statistics illustrate the strength of the 'yes' vote in the postal survey. Nationally, 61.6 per cent of people voted yes and 38.4 per cent voted no. The vote was carried in all states and 79.5 per cent of voters participated across Australia. The national result represents the seventh-highest 'yes' vote ever for a question successfully put to Australians. Across the country, women were more likely to participate than men, at 81.6 per cent compared to 77.3 per cent. Some people have suggested to me that 'no' voters were less likely to participate; but older Australians were more likely to vote no and their participation rate was higher than among younger Australians. Those aged 70 to 74 were the most likely to respond to the survey, with 89.6 per cent participating. The participation rate was lowest for those aged 25 to 29, at 71.9 per cent.

Berowra residents actively participated in the postal survey. In Berowra, 84.7 per cent responded to the survey. That's the second-highest participation rate in New South Wales and the sixth-highest in the country. Berowra voted 54.6 per cent yes and 45.4 per cent no. In comparison to national referendum results, the Berowra majority is the ninth-highest since Federation. As with the national result, in every category women were more likely to participate than men in Berowra: 86.2 per cent of women and 83.2 per cent of men participated. The participation rate in Berowra was highest for people aged between 65 and 84, where the rate was above 90 per cent for all categories; it was the lowest in the 30 to 34 age group, at 78.5 per cent. But everywhere in Berowra, the result was above the national average. The result of the postal survey put to bed my fears that the turnout would be low and that there would be widespread allegations of voter fraud, which there weren't. The success of the postal survey is a credit to the government and in particular to the responsible minister, Senator Cormann.

As I'd said prior to the postal survey, I'm not for changing the definition of marriage. This has never been because I wish to diminish the relationships of same-sex couples, but simply because of the view I have that marriage is between a man and a woman. I've been on the public record consistently on this issue since 2009. I spoke in this House on the plebiscite bill. I wrote a column in The Daily Telegraph. My view was widely reported in the local press in my electorate. As I said in the House last December, when debating the plebiscite bill:

In the plebiscite, I will vote against changing the definition of marriage. However … in the event that the plebiscite is carried nationwide, I will vote to implement the result of the plebiscite.

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My view of marriage is a personally held view. One advantage of the plebiscite is that it gives all Australians the chance to have their own say on what is a deeply moral and personal issue. Another advantage of the plebiscite is that, because it is a vote of the Australian people, the result will carry a political weight much greater than a vote in the parliament. Whatever the result, following a plebiscite I think activists on both sides should regard the issue as being settled.

It was people on my side of the debate who called for the public to have a direct say on this matter. Having elevated this issue and asked people for their view, we have to implement that view and respect the wishes of the Australian people. To do otherwise would be to offer a Brechtian response, as if to say, 'The people are wrong. Let us elect a new people.' Therefore, I will vote yes to the bill. The passage of this bill will create a legally recognisable right for gay and lesbian Australians to marry. We all have gay and lesbian friends and family, and this will be rightly a time of celebration for them.

While this has been an important debate, it has perhaps removed attention from other issues which are important to gay and lesbian Australians, such as the need for additional support services, especially given the higher rate of suicide among gay and lesbian Australians. I call on the government to put more funding into counselling services for suicide prevention, particularly among young gay and lesbian Australians.

In passing this legislation for same-sex marriage, it's important to provide protections for religious institutions and people of faith. Many of those who, like me, voted no did so in accordance with their faith tradition. As parliamentarians, we need to balance competing rights as between minorities and majorities and as between competing minorities, and that is our task in this bill. So, while I'll vote yes to this bill, I'll also vote yes to additional religious protections. I believe we can have same-sex marriage and religious protections too. Many people of faith in Berowra have written to me to express their concerns about the need to protect religious freedoms. I will vote to give voice to those protections within the bill.

Unfortunately, the public reaction to the idea of religious protections has revealed that religious literacy is not what it once was—not our level of religious observance but our level of knowledge, particularly about Christianity, the religion which has shaped the free society in which we live today. If understanding of Christianity in our culture were stronger, perhaps there'd be more sympathy for religious protections. Despite the census result, people of faith often feel that they're in a cultural minority, if not a numerical one. In some quarters, there's been an attempt to usher faith out of the public square and to diminish or mock people of faith as being superstitious, backward looking or not relevant to modern Australia. We see this especially when church leaders appear on Q&A. But faith and religious communities are important to the moral ecology of our country. Religion provides answers to some of the fundamental questions of life like: Who am I? Why am I here? How then should I live? At the heart of the Judaeo-Christian tradition is the radical notion that, whoever we are—young or old, black or white, gay or straight—we are created in the divine image and derive our human dignity from that fact. This fact motivates people of faith to great acts of heroic service. Religious communities provide much of the education, health and social welfare infrastructure in this country, and they bring an extra element to their service because of their teaching about human dignity.

Sometimes this debate has been presented as same-sex Australians versus people of faith. It shouldn't have been put that way. On that point, I note the statement of the Catholic bishop of Broken Bay, Peter Comensoli, whose diocese covers my electorate. Bishop Comensoli wrote:

While I had hoped for a different outcome, I readily acknowledge the result of this survey and respect the firm decision made by the Australian people.

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I want to stress, once more, that I never considered this a 'referendum' on the worth or dignity of gay and lesbian people, which is beyond question. My concern has always been with the question of what constitutes marriage as a distinctive kind of relationship, and the unique roles of husband and wife in a family.

Before I came to this place, I had the privilege of working as a senior executive in the largest mission of the Catholic Church in Australia, at Australian Catholic University. I also served on the board of a Catholic aged-care and health organisation. As a person of the Jewish faith, it was a particular privilege to work for these large Catholic institutions. I regard working for these missions of the church as one of the greatest privileges of my life.

Christians, as I learnt, have a holistic perspective on the nature of marriage, life and family. It's not a minor article of faith but is central to their tradition and, indeed, to their whole outlook on life. It's a perspective which is shared by people of my faith, and yet it is a perspective which is not well understood and often not sympathetically treated in broader parts of society, particularly the media. My concern about religious freedom is motivated by the way in which this issue has played out in our country and also in foreign jurisdictions. Activists have resorted to lawfare to make a point. Some of those activists are not interested in the position of same-sex couples. Rather, they're interested in attacking the churches and further diminishing their role and status in society. It's for this reason, in the context of litigation, that people of faith seek particular protections and defences, which I support.

The religious protections in the bill currently before us focus on protections relating to the marriage ceremony and subsequent celebrations. However, the need for religious protections goes beyond the marriage ceremony itself. It goes to the right to teach and preach about marriage. In changing the definition of marriage, we need to ensure that religious leaders and people of faith can continue to preach without harassment, even though the law has changed, that, according to their tradition, marriage means between a man and a woman. The right of people of faith to choose to teach their children about the faith of their parents is vital to the continuity of any faith community. We also need to ensure that these rights are granted to religious schools so that they can continue to teach unimpeded what marriage means according to their tradition. Therefore, I will be supporting protections for people of faith and religious institutions, which are proposed by some of my colleagues.

I want to say something about the inquiry on religious freedom which has been set up under the chairmanship of my distinguished predecessor Philip Ruddock. To the extent that such an inquiry makes recommendations about specific protections in legislation, addressing individual problems and issues identified by faith groups, then I will support them. But, to the extent that it becomes a stalking horse for the introduction of a bill of rights, to that I am implacably opposed.

I know the idea of legislating for the broad principle of religious freedoms as opposed to individual exemptions is increasingly attractive to people involved in the governance of faith based organisations. But the global experience, not least in Victoria, should gave faith leaders serious pause before enacting global human rights conventions and broader principles into our law, especially in the form of a bill of rights, which will do little to protect people of faith and instead transfer decisions on issues such as these from the parliament to the courts, which are no friendlier to people of faith and indeed may be more hostile than elected representatives.

At the end of his long life, Sir Isaiah Berlin, the great British philosopher, received an honorary doctorate at the University of Toronto. Reflecting on the 20th century, he spoke up for compromise from absolutist positions. That compromise is what is needed now. In addressing the question of how to reconcile competing values, Berlin had this to say:

I am afraid I have no dramatic answer to offer: only that if these ultimate human values by which we live are to be pursued, then compromises, trade-offs, arrangements have to be made if the worst is not to happen. So much liberty for so much equality, so much individual self-expression for so much security, so much justice for so much compassion. My point is that some values clash: the ends pursued by human beings are … generated by our common nature, but their pursuit has to be to some degree controlled—liberty and the pursuit of happiness, I repeat, may not be fully compatible with each other, nor are liberty, equality, and fraternity.

So we must weigh and measure, bargain, compromise, and prevent the crushing of one form of life by its rivals. I know only too well that this is not a flag under which idealistic and enthusiastic young men and women may wish to march—it seems too tame, too reasonable, too bourgeois, it does not engage the generous emotions. But you must believe me, one cannot have everything one wants—not only in practice, but even in theory. The denial of this, the search for a single, overarching ideal because it is the one and only true one for humanity, invariably leads to coercion. And then to destruction, blood—eggs are broken, but the omelette is not in sight, there is only an infinite number of eggs, human lives, ready for the breaking. And in the end the passionate idealists forget the omelette, and just go on breaking eggs.

Like Berlin, we need to make the omelette that is this law through compromise by saying yes to same-sex marriage and yes to protections for religious institutions and people of faith beyond the marriage ceremony as well. That is why I'll vote yes to religious protections, but, even if those protections amendments do not succeed, in accordance with my promise, I will vote for the bill in the second and third reading stages.

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