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

It gives me great pleasure to be participating in this debate on the Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Bill 2017 and to once more, as I will, vote for marriage equality in this country, as I did in September 2012, when this matter last came to be voted on in this chamber. I, along with 41 colleagues, supported a similar bill then and I assuredly will be voting for this bill today. I indicated well before the marriage survey was undertaken by the Australian Bureau of Statistics that I would be voting that way in this chamber, should we be given the opportunity. I have not changed my view and I will be voting for this legislation.

I want to make a few comments and I'll just, in short, express my disappointment at some of the ways in which the Prime Minister characterised this debate, as if it were somehow or another a creature of the government. It is not a creature of the government. It is a creature of the parliament. I think the Prime Minister and the way he expressed himself about this being a force from the coalition, effectively, was very ungracious. I don't think it properly accounted for the way in which this parliament is seeking to deal with this legislation.

I want to commend my mate sitting over there—gruff old bugger that he is, the member for Leichhardt—for steadfastly advocating for this position for many years against the forces within his own party. And it's not because of the party; it's because of him and others like him in his party and people across the parliament with similar views that we have this legislation. This is a cross-parliamentary piece of legislation. It does not reside with the government. So I say to the Prime Minister: think again about the way you're portraying this debate. It is not fair, it is not reasonable and it's unacceptable.

And I would say to those who have, as the member for Cook has just done, spoken to us about people of faith and how, in his description of people of faith, they need to be supported by seeking amendments to this legislation to ensure religious freedom: there are many people of faith in this parliament who oppose that view. I am one of them. I'm a Catholic. I was raised a Catholic. I still go to church—not as regularly as I perhaps should but often. And I accept the proposition that it's okay to have different views. I note the words that have been in the public domain by Frank Brennan, referred to earlier by the member for Fowler. It is possible to see this as an issue of equality, not faith. It is a matter of equality, not faith. It's a matter of recognising the rights of every single person to share the same rights as every other person regardless of whether they are straight or a member of the LGBTIQ community.

This has been a tortuous discussion which has taken many years to arrive at this point. And I was actually encouraged yesterday. I shouldn't do it as often as I do, really, but I was flicking through my emails yesterday and I noticed an email from the Anglican bishop for Wangaratta, in Victoria, the Right Reverend A John Parkes AM, who authored a letter co-signed by six other Anglican bishops from across Australia in which they pointed out why it was important for us to support this legislation. If you'll bear with me, I want to read just two paragraphs of this letter. It was addressed to the Prime Minister. 'Given the magnitude of this task in the wake of the marriage proposal survey result, we commend the Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Bill 2017 to the parliament for the following reasons. First, it has been available for many months, providing opportunity for scrutiny by all those concerned. Second, it responds directly to a detailed cross-party Senate report from February 2017. We observe that the Senate committee received extensive submissions from all stakeholders. Third, the bill has strong cross-party support. This is vitally important after a testing public debate. Fourth, the bill was passed by the Senate with an overwhelming majority.'

The next paragraph reads: 'The bill also confirms substantive benefits. It preserves the fabric of our antidiscrimination laws, which have been developed over half a century. These give expression to democratic values of equality and fairness. It also accords fulsome recognition of the religious rights and freedoms that underpin a democratic, plural and multicultural society.' Hear, hear! That is why, when it comes to proposing the motions to amend this legislation, I can't put it any better than those Anglican bishops. And that is why, when it comes to voting on amendments to this legislation, I'll be opposing those amendments and I encourage others with a similar view to do likewise. As those bishops have reminded us, this bill is about equality and fairness.

Another element of this is the survey. I'm on the record as being opposed to the survey from the get-go. I still think it was a very flawed process and I'll explain why in a moment. But the Prime Minister said, 'If we'd gone down the government's route of a proposed plebiscite, we would have had this all done and dusted.' Well, if the government had the guts to bring the legislation to the parliament straight after the last election and if we had done our job as we are paid to do, it would well and truly have been done and dusted without any plebiscite or public survey. We are paid to be here representing the people of this country, debating legislation every day. We don't send other pieces of legislation out as public surveys to find out what people think. We take it upon ourselves to accept the responsibility of having those debates in this parliament, expressing a view and then voting one way or the other—and that's what we should have done here.

Nevertheless, the survey was undertaken and, by all accounts, a large number of people participated—but, I have to say, not in my electorate. I made the point prior to this survey being carried out that there would be great difficulty in my electorate. Lingiari is 1.34 million square kilometres and covers all of the Northern Territory except Darwin and most of Palmerston. It includes a large number of Aboriginal communities. Not one of those communities in the bush has household mail delivery. Not one. Most have a mail collection centre. If they're lucky, they might actually get their mail at some point. That assumes, once they get it, that they can read it and understand what's in it. But, of course, we know that a very large number of Aboriginal people in my electorate have English as a second or third language and have a great deal of difficulty reading documents of the type that we would expect them to read in this sort of survey. It's no surprise that the participation rate in Lingiari was only 50.1 per cent.

We've heard a lot across the parliament about young Australians participating in this survey. In my own electorate, the participation rate of 20- to 24-year-olds was only 39.3 per cent. What does that tell you? Does it tell you that they were engaged? Of course not. Does it tell you that they understood what was happening? Of course not. Did they even know what was happening? Probably not. So I don't think this is a fair assessment of the views of my community. Those views might have contradicted my own, but that is not the point here. This survey was supposed to elicit responses from all Australians. We've heard about the high levels of the response rate nationally. But, when I pointed out these concerns well before the survey took place, I was just pooh-poohed—'No, that's not going to happen.' Well, we know what happened. We know that in some places there are allegations of people not understanding what the ballot papers were for and not understanding the nature of the debate. In some local communities, I understand from reports, surveys were burned due to a lack of understanding about what was being asked. We also know of one significant report—and I believe this happened—of one family member going to the postal receipt centre and, in front of the postal workers, filling out large numbers of forms for their family members without authorisation. I made those points at the time and I won't say much more about them, but this was not something which was useful to the people of my communities. Of course, there were a number of videos sent out by the bureau in 13 different languages in my electorate—well, there are about 100 different languages spoken in my electorate, so 13 videos are not going to help much. I am very concerned that this was a $122 million price that we needn't have paid in the first place, but, having done it, we've now got what I think is a very good result, considering that so many people have voted yes. I'm pleased that they have done so, and I know it accords with the majority view across this parliament.

I want to thank those many members of my communities who have engaged themselves in this debate. In particular, I thank one of my own staff for the work she did and what she and her partner had to put up with. There were very negative aspects to some of this campaigning. There was graffiti saying, 'Gay is not okay,' written on large signs along the Stuart Highway not far from my electorate office. This message hits rainbow families—the loving rainbow families who have young children—and vulnerable LGBTIQ people in our community hard. My electorate officer Kirsty Hunt and her partner of 18 years, Amber Sayers, needed to explain to their six-year-old daughter on the way to school that, in fact, it's okay to be gay. That was unnecessary. I also understand the absolute commitment and love that so many gay couples around this country have for one another that will now be recognised in law, as a result of this. It will allow them to do what every other Australian has got the right to do, should they choose to do it, and that's get married. By the way, I'm not married, but I've been in the same relationship for nearly 34 years and we've got four wonderful children. I've got the right to marry, but we've chosen not to. I want every Australian to have the right that I've got, and that is, if they so choose, to marry.

I extend my thanks to the 'yes' campaigners in Lingiari and in the small communities across the Territory, particularly Andrew Addie and Maya Newell in Alice Springs, Pat Honan in the Top End, the gay pride committee and the organisers of the inaugural Darwin gay pride march. I also want to thank two people who I know will see great virtue in, and celebrate, the day we pass this legislation: two Nhulunbuy women, Carley Scott and her partner, Pep Phelan. I've spoken to Carley, and I know how wonderfully important this is to her, as it is to so many people I know and people I have known over generations. They are wonderful people who have gay partners, who are members of the LGBTIQ community and who want to participate and have a loving relationship and be recognised in the law. They should be allowed to do so. This bill will do it. I commend it to the House.

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