Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

The issue, of course, before the House is how society should define marriage, and that issue is as complicated as it is old. There is an image I recall vividly and, likely, will do for some time. It was the sight of a Neolithic man and woman—roughly 5,800 years old—arms and legs interlocked in an embrace, which, all these thousands of years later, is recognisably tender. That image brings to mind a pivotally important truth about marriage, that the institution is beyond ancient. It is probably fair to say that almost as early as there were such things as sentient beings that we would regard as human, those humans had been seeking someone to share their lives with, pairing for support, for comfort and to build and care for families.

It is not that marriage reduces down to how unpleasant we humans have found being alone. Much less shamefully, I think it boils down to the fact that human life has traditionally been so difficult and so full of tragedy that we have found a great truth in living—that hard, individual lives are improved by the finding of a greater strength and resilience in sharing life's tragedies than is ever attainable from living and dying as creatures of solitude. In my mind's eye, I see that Peloponnesus image preserving, with remarkable dignity, the final moments of a couple that held each other in their arms. Whatever their fate was, and however hard and likely cruel their lives were in what they endured, they had each other right to the end. Most things about the lives of that couple we'll never know, but we can assume with safety that their lives were hard, much harder than ours. It's no stretch to note how in the great sweep of human history life was, in the whole, generally full of want and tragedy and very often unimaginably violent. Also, it's far from a stretch to conceive of this ancient couple as married to each other. This is because marriage is so ancient that it predates written history or even writing itself. The instinct and want to couple is likely as old as the instinct to use tools.

So, while the couple I have in my mind's eye may have been the subject of only the humblest ceremonial recognition of their existence as a couple, they may well have made a commitment to each other every bit as real and human as the commitments that we now as moderns make governed by law and sanctioned in different ways by various religions both new and old.

Being a construct of such antiquity, marriage in its practice has always evolved. For a great part of human history, the practical considerations of alliances and intertribal arrangements dominated the reasons for marriage, but over time the marriage of reasons has been replaced by the marriage of emotions. Alain de Botton described modern marriage in the following way:

Marriage: a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don't know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully omitted to investigate.

For all its changeability, the reason for its endurance is that marriage is driven not ultimately by reasons but by a fundamental human emotion: the want to conquer life's challenges by sharing its burdens.

Marriage predates governments and it predates organised religion. In fact, I suspect that the instinct for humans to want to couple is as old and as fundamentally defining of humanity as the instinct to use tools. In fact, it may be even older than the instincts for religion or art. Religion adopted and synthesised marriage so that it has become critically inseparable from many religions' theology, and that is the reason why extra protections for religion should accompany this bill, but neither governments nor churches can lay claim to inventing or owning marriage.

As the most thoroughly and fundamentally human of institutions, only people own marriage and only people can adapt and evolve the institution in a durable way. That evolution in Western nations has wisely been, in the last several hundred years, undertaken slowly and with due and proper care, reflecting the institutions' fundamental influence on our way of life. The plebiscite that we have all experienced was not just an extraordinary democratic event; it was the eventual form of a democratic event that was absolutely necessary to make durable and make acceptable this change to our most fundamental of institutions.

The foundational nature of marriage and the wide divergence of strongly held opinions about its proper form meant that a vote, a referendum, a plebiscite, a mass democratic movement—whatever you want to call it, however it was ultimately constituted—was always going to be the best and likely only way to settle this dispute in a broadly acceptable form to be enduring. The simple fact is that the party that was to facilitate this bill being brought before this House in a way that could secure its sustainable passage into law was always going to need the clearest authority of the people that truly own the institution of marriage. If this change, this progress, could have been easily achieved without an underpinning, direct democratic mandate—if it could have been simply achieved by parliamentary vote held without this foundation—then why did Labor not achieve that progress when they were in office for six years?

Opposition to a plebiscite itself is not beyond understanding. But I think that that opposition is made worthy of serious scrutiny by virtue of the efforts of many members opposite who became opponents of a plebiscite and who now characterise themselves as the chief architects of change. What should not pass without mention is that, when the coalition did take the risk of advancing this issue to a durable resolution by committing itself to a fair and broad democratic mechanism—a democratic process that was absolutely necessary to actually get this issue resolved—some Labor members did not merely oppose that democratic process but did so with a vigour that we rarely see in this place. They argued the debate would be intemperate, and the wild irony was that they put this argument in the most blisteringly intemperate way. There is no avoiding now the fact that Labor carefully cast predictions of rampant, widespread hate, chaos and harm, and that those predictions now look utterly absurd. The reality was that the generally civil, fair and temperate way the plebiscite was conducted merely displayed that excessive, intemperate activism is no more enlivened in debates to do with sexuality than it is, sadly, enlivened in any number of other issues.

Excessive activism on any issue is a sad reality and a fixture of some democracies. It should be called out and decried wherever its ugly head is raised, but its mere existence should never be a reason to not have a public debate, because that would be its ultimate victory. Far worse than the absurd predictions of calamitous, widespread hate with a calculated effort to undermine what now, clearly, was the necessary democratic path forward is by characterising the process as rigged. The member for Isaacs said:

This entire rigged exercise is designed to divide Australia and to encourage hateful words and arguments in order for the 'no' case to win.

The idea that the plebiscite was a conspiracy designed to rig a no vote is utterly absurd. Those statements were ridiculous before the outcome but, in the face of the actual outcome, they should be called out for the utter nonsense that they were. In fact, rarely has a conspiracy theory been proved so wrong in the outcome than that absolute howler from the member for Isaacs.

Over many years, there has been great effort to recast important progressions in Australian society as the exclusive province of Labor politics. It is often a surprise, particularly to young Australians, to learn that important social progressions were the result and actions of conservative governments. It was this side of politics that took on evergreen risks and the tough grinding work of advancing and making real, important policy changes to eliminate prejudice. It was a coalition government that abolished the White Australia policy and the same government that delivered the seminal 1967 referendum to include Indigenous Australians more completely in our nation. The modern rewriting of political history is perhaps most remarkable now for how quickly it occurs, so let's start by getting the history right, right from the start.

The plebiscite was an outstanding civil success of a truly voluntary democratic process. The coalition made a clear assessment that a plebiscite was critical to both parties and this chamber in being able to craft a broadly acceptable and enduring change to a foundation institution in our society. The coalition government, against enormous opposition, made the plebiscite happen and work. That the process was bitterly opposed by progressive politicians who themselves failed to progress the issue over their six long years, when they had their chance to do so, is now an undeniable fact. The Leader of the Opposition said about the plebiscite:

They have stacked the deck against young people, against expats, against Australians who support equality … The opponents of marriage equality have set this process up to fail.

It did not fail; it succeeded thoroughly, brilliantly and fairly.

The dictum made living by John F. Kennedy that success has a thousand fathers and failure is an orphan has never been truer than on the night of the plebiscite result. Some of the many people who celebrated the result of the process were people who did everything within their power to stop the process that brought us to this very point in this chamber right now. They said it was stacking the decks against young people. They said it was set up to bring about failure. They said it was rigged in order for the no case to win. The opposition leader said, 'I hold the PM responsible for every hurtful bit of filth this debate will unleash.' What the debate actually unleashed was the democratic will of the Australian people. It is a case study in the way the world's greatest democracy devised the best and most temperate way to resolve the most emotional, delicate and difficult of issues, and the progress that it catalysed is what the Prime Minister is responsible for. That is the legacy of this government and this coalition, and as we now head to consider amendments there are several protecting religious freedoms that I consider worthy of support, and I will be free to support them if I wish.

Members opposite, who may hold similar views to mine, will be gagged and bound in a collective exercise which will limit their conscience and free choice on this issue. The fundamental fact will always stand: Labor's role in the foundation of this progress was to oppose the critical democratic process that enabled it. The progress that we are now all engaged in was, in the ultimate event, achieved by this coalition for the simple reason that we trusted the Australian people, and in the face of overwhelming political and media criticism we made sure that their say was had.

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