Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in this chamber to speak to the private member's bill Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Bill 2017, which seeks to change the age-old definition of marriage. In the postal survey my electorate voted 61.8 per cent—ostensibly the state and national average—in support of changing the definition of marriage. There is no question that that is a clear mandate for this parliament to make a change, and I respect that mandate as I respect the will of the Australian people. Our democracy depends on that fine point. I let my electorate know from the outset that I'd be voting no in the postal survey, whilst also stating that, if the electorate voted yes, I would not stand in the way of a bill passing through the House. Today I'll honour both pledges as I honour the democratic will of the Australian people and sincerely respect its institutions.

I have voted on two issues in the last decade in this House to deal with same-sex couples. I fully supported the Rudd government's legislation to remove all discrimination from same-sex couples so they'd be treated in ostensibly the same manner as de facto heterosexual couples—a lifestyle should never set the stage for discrimination. I voted no in the bill to legalise same-sex marriage in the Gillard government. My voting record has been consistent with my strong Christian value set as outlined in my maiden speech a decade ago: the view that marriage was defined by God as 'a man and a woman united together and becoming one'. This basis, definition and meaning of marriage for me has not changed—a man and woman, made powerfully equal in the image of God, created to be together within the sanctity of marriage to raise a family and literally populate the earth. This view, while clearly no longer the majority in our nation, remains a view held by millions of Australians and literally billions of the earth's citizens. It's a view that deserves to be heard and understood. It's also a view that deserves to be protected. That's why I'll be supporting all of the proposed protection amendments today. It's also why I'm strongly supporting the current review into religious protections led by the honourable Philip Ruddock and I'll be campaigning strongly for the result of that review to come into this House as all-encompassing enabling legislation in 2018.

Those churches that marry according to the God-given instruction in the word of God, the Bible, must be free and able to marry according to that God-given mandate. They and their facilities must be protected. Likewise, other faith groups, as they marry within their faith based norms based on the marriage of one man and one woman, deserve similar protections. Furthermore, parents who send their children to faith based schools must be assured that their children will be taught the tradition and standing of marriage according to their faith. Schools' ability to teach the traditional God-given standard of marriage must be protected.

Freedom of speech and freedom of religion are foundational and fundamental principles of our nation. They were the principles that much of our nation was built on. My mother's forebears were one of the 10 very first original free-settling families that arrived in Australia in 1802 from Scotland and from England. They arrived as free passengers on the convict ship Coromandel 14 years after the First Fleet. They came seeking religious freedom and independence as they were so-called non-conformist in England; they did not conform to the prevailing religious view at the time. These families would build the first non-conformist church and school at Ebenezer on the Hawkesbury River six years after arriving in New South Wales. This church still stands and is the oldest in our nation, testimony to our nation having been founded on religious freedoms.

As a conservative Pentecostal Christian, today I remain strongly non-conformist and, as is their legacy, I still hold the torch for religious and faith-based freedoms. These families had watched their friends being dragged to the hulks and ultimately transported for the religious crime of not conforming to the prevailing view of the time—for there were no protections for them to worship in England and Scotland as they believed, no protections to marry as they believed and no protections to educate their children as they believed. These families, my family, came to Australia in search of freedom and independence that their forebears, often betrayed and imprisoned, had cherished, longed for, hoped for and prayed for.

This lack of protection for my forebears began 140 years before these first 10 pioneering families left England to seek religious freedom in Australia. In England the Clarendon Code of four acts—the Corporation Act in 1661, the Act of Uniformity in 1662, the Coventicle Act in 1664 and the Five Mile Act in 1665—removed all protection for religious freedoms. The combined act of the Clarendon Code was that any worshippers who did not adhere to the 39 articles of the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer were called non-conformists and their religious meetings were outlawed, and any meetings or gatherings were punished with prison for the first and second offence, and transportation for the third offence.

Indeed, the MP at the time, Samuel Pepys, wrote in his very famous journal after watching men and women of faith hauled to the hulks and dragged to transportation. He said:

They go like lambs, without … resistance. I would to God they would … conform, or be … wise, and not be catched!

Furthermore, my ancestors, those nonconformists, were debarred from holding any municipal offices or places of trust in the state or the military. Their children could not attend Oxford or Cambridge or receive a degree. They could not be married except under the tenets of The Book of Common Prayer, and their children could not be registered at birth unless baptised by the Church of England. Back then, as a nonconformist Pentecostal Christian, I could never have gone to RMC Duntroon or held a commission in the military or served on military operations overseas or stood here as a member of parliament, not because of my citizenship but because of a difference of expression of faith in the grace of Jesus.

This is what happens when religious freedom is not protected. The Toleration Act of 1688 would provide some relief, as did the repealing of the Conventicle Act in 1689. However, the provisions of the 1662 Act of Uniformity were only modified and partly revoked by the Act of Uniformity Amendment Act 210 years later, in 1872. Indeed, history tells us that in 1793, nine years before my family embarked on that fateful journey of the first free-settling families and 70 years after the Clarendon Code, five politicians were tried and found guilty of sedition for having the temerity to campaign for universal suffrage and parliamentary reform. All five were transported to Australia—political martyrs, unfortunately, standing for freedom.

This was the backdrop, in 1802, of the first 10 free-settling families, 18 adults and a staggering 20 children aged one to 11 on a boat no bigger than a Manly ferry, arriving into one of the harshest climates known at the time. One of the families knew the captain of the Coromandel, hence their choice of ship. They were persecuted nonconformists, at least five of them in the same non-conformist church in England. They all left everything they knew. They left everything they loved to seek freedom from religious persecution. They despaired of finding any protection in England and Scotland, so they sought to come and build into a new nation where freedom of faith was axiomatic and where fear of being dragged into the dock because of one's religious views would never again rise.

Two hundred and sixteen years later, that same call for religious freedom once again finds voice. There should never be a time again when people of faith cannot believe or marry within their faith ordinances under fear of persecution, reprisal or the courts. That is not who we are as a nation or how we were settled. Protections are important. It is folly to think that the perversions of the past cannot be revisited on the promises of the future. They can be and they will be, unless faith based beliefs and norms surrounding marriage, children and education are protected by law. I, like all of us here, cannot foretell the future, but history is a portent of what the future will tell.

So I commend the amendments to the bill to the House, as I commend the Ruddock review of religious protections that will report next year. I commend the future 2018 religious protection bill to the House, noting that marriage was defined by God in the very cradle of civilisation, the Garden of Eden, where mankind was created. I also recommit myself to the task started by my family 216 years ago to continue to champion religious freedoms, rights and protections in our great nation and to hold that torch of freedom of faith for my generation.

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