Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker, we are probably 24 hours away from a major shift in social policy in this country. It is very clear to me that, within this chamber and in my city, in my electorate and nationwide, there is a view that every couple deserves to marry. While there are unique and special elements to every bond—and certainly your own marriage is a very good example of that—all marriages deserve equal recognition and two adults should be able to do it. That broader definition will come into force as early as the coming days. Recognising love in its all forms must now be recognised by a mature nation that can make that shift. The world, this country and my electorate are better places with more love—as much love as we can muster—and states that recognise that love.

Of course, two people forming a serious bond with the right intentions deserve state recognition. History will remind us that Australia legislated the Marriage Act, which, up until now, has been the only way to have it officially recognised. So to broaden this definition of marriage was, by far, the most expeditious way to make sure that every Australian adult had an equal opportunity to have that relationship recognised, and setting up parallel institutions, civil unions and other options, while they've been toyed with, was not the best way to proceed. Marriage of course occupies a central if not a pre-eminent place in human history, but other permutations do not necessarily corrode that. Until now, as I've pointed out, solemnising those relationships could only be done through this very limited Marriage Act. That had two fundamental weaknesses. The first one was obvious: it was unfair for same-sex couples. But remember also that it forced non-religious marriages for couples who had no connection to any form of faith whatsoever. It doesn't make faith any stronger to make it the only avenue to officially recognising a relationship.

Five or six years ago, I was the first MP in this place to defer the decision on same-sex marriage to my electorate. Back in 2012, I committed to undertaking an annual plebiscite—a postal plebiscite; a household survey—through Australia Post, with a free post return, and that process yielded a result every year. I undertook to adhere to that result every year and to keep repeating that plebiscite until there was a better version. I am delighted that last year that became a reality with a commitment to a nationwide plebiscite.

Whatever your views might have been on that methodology, there is one thing that is very certain—that is, we have today come to the point where we can look at a genuine change to the Marriage Act that potentially would not have occurred for years or for parliamentary terms as the Senate consistently found ways not to pass it into law. That has been avoided. In my electorate we have been holding plebiscites since 2012. We have allowed every household a say. We have promoted it through social media. We have built participation. We have had scrutineers from both sides and we have publicised the count.

What we realised was that people don't mind having a say on this matter. Sure, it took me five or six attempts over five or six years, undertaking to repeat it every time. But over a quarter of my households had their say, and I had a reasonable read on the view of my city. Let it be known that the view of just under 50 per cent was to say yes and the view of slightly more than 50 per cent was to say no. That was because our participation rates were far lower than the $100 million affair that the ABS put together so professionally. But to criticise polls that were held in my electorate as not being realistic is like criticising the ABS survey because only 80 per cent of people participated. The point is that everyone had the opportunity to participate if they thought this was an issue important enough for them to participate in.

Two years, two months and two days after the much celebrated Irish vote, Australia did an even better job. And just like the celebrations in the streets of Ireland, Australia saw exactly the same thing. We had exactly the same result as the Irish plebiscite, a 'yes' vote of around 62 per cent, but we had an 80 per cent participation rate, mostly down to, I think, Australia's general predilection for participating in votes when they come along. But no-one came near to forecasting that 80 per cent participation prior to us actually carrying it out.

I am actually delighted that the Liberals crafted this methodology; that under a Liberal government we have seen these laws passed; that we have crafted commonsense amendments that many on the other side have taken seriously. But I am disappointed that the Labor Party have elected to vote as a bloc against those amendments. I respect their right to do it but I think we could have had a far more mature debate about those very valid concerns.

It is a shame, isn't it, that we do have to dive into these detailed amendments? It is because 99 per cent of Australians can accept the verdict and operate in a civil democracy and respect the views of others but we do have an incredibly tiny minority on both sides of this debate who will take this to the nth degree, who will explore every single legal loophole and push their view until they can possibly get it to court. That is very regrettable. We will never get rid of those extreme elements, but I thought the reflections from the previous speaker, the member for Parramatta, about those legal protections, particularly for religious freedoms, churches and not-for-profits was extremely well considered and I congratulate her on them.

I am going to spend about three minutes running through eight of those amendments. The first one is the primacy of the marriage between a man and a woman. While I accept that someone would hold that view if they were in that relationship, I do not think that writing different versions of marriage into law is in the public interest. We can each hold our views on marriage and the various configurations and the benefits of them. I think there is no gain for this nation and no external benefit whatsoever in defining multiple versions in the act.

We have expressive rights which we are very concerned about, in order that they are currently adequately protected. There are states that in fact do not protect them, but I am not sure that this bill is the right place to be protecting them. They should be protected in other legislation. Certainly if you do not like the protections in your state then it is up to you to vote out that state government and replace those laws. I don't think this bill is the place to be hanging every exemption for things such as expressive rights for a range of religious issues of which marriage is just one. I don't support amendments that insist on multiple definitions of marriage. I also recognise that many of these amendments are unlikely to pass. So many of our positions, if we do vote for amendments, will fundamentally be to send a signal to our electorates. It is hard to know if these expressive rights concerns are genuine, apocryphal or just theoretical. I accept that there are occasionally challenges under 18C, but in reality this is extremely infrequent. Nonetheless, I'm glad that the Hon. Philip Ruddock will look into these issues, and I signal my support for protecting expressive rights, though I'm not confident that it needs to occur in this legislation.

The third issue is religious and conscientious protections, particularly for military chaplains. If that chaplain is a religious member of a church, they should be able to continue to have that protection if they're not paid in the armed forces. The minute you take a public purse then you agree to operate under the laws of the land, not the laws of the church. If you're a paid military chaplain then you can answer to the Chief of the Defence Force and how the military wishes to operate. This is no place for MPs to be telling them how to do it. There is a clear religious exemption, and chaplains can seek that out. If that is not the view of the military, and you don't like it, you can cease being a chaplain in the military.

Likewise with celebrants, I can respect the primacy of conscience. That point was very powerfully made by the member for Fairfax—conscience, believe it or not, probably trumps religion. But, alas, we live in a world where all sorts of bizarre views can be passed off as conscience. For that reason I cannot allow people to act freely from their conscience in circumstances like working as a celebrant in a commercial position or running any form of business that may encounter someone who's married in a configuration that they may not support. For that reason I'm also not terribly in favour of some sort of register of religious celebrants. There is an exclusively religious exemption, which I think there is support for. If you're a celebrant, seek out that church and stick to your version of marriage in the church. That's why it is there. If you're a celebrant and you're taking commercial exchange for the services of marriage then you should do so under the law of the land, which now recognises all forms of marriage, as we see in the act. Celebrants are running a commercial enterprise. If they want to take on the religious exemptions, churches are there for them to link with.

We're also somewhat concerned that business would discriminate for a whole host of reasons, including using same-sex marriage as a way of simply discriminating against people who are in same-sex relationships, or against homosexual Australians in general. Occasionally in life we may encounter these circumstances. But, again, this is not the place to be writing in the exemptions for those kinds of attitudes, which in many cases are bigoted ones. If you are in a commercial setting offering services to the nation, the law already makes it very clear that you will not select people by a whole range of what we refer to as 'protected attributes', and the form of your marriage should be an attribute that does not allow that kind of discrimination. You may not like something about a customer; sometimes you may have to do what you don't like doing. But the degree of hurt in doing that is not sufficient to demand exemptions under legislation.

Now we move to schools. Again, I have great concerns, not with Safe Schools in general but with how it is applied. In Queensland it is not a part of the curriculum but it is a resource made available to teachers to use when they want, and parents are not allowed to know that they are using it. That is a completely unsatisfactory circumstance, but I do not support the moral right of removing children simply because you think that some other form of marriage is going to be taught at school. That is a dangerous precedent, and we need a far more balanced approach. Obviously, if you don't like the school, that might be one reason to remove your child. If you are absolutely adherent to religious definitions of marriage, you seek out the school that teaches it. But you cannot move into a public school with publicly funded workers and be selecting when your child sits in class and when they don't. To be honest, for your child to listen to different versions of marriage is probably a public good.

Lastly, we have two very similar amendments from two of my colleagues about associational freedom. I agree completely that faith based organisations should be protected. Most of them already are, but there are genuine concerns that that could change in the future, and there is a desire for stronger protections. This is not the bill for those stronger protections. I support stronger protections; I'm not convinced this bill is the place to do it. Similarly, that would be the stripping of charitable status from organisations, as we've seen overseas—also extremely disappointing and extremely regrettable. But this bill is not the place for those exemptions, and it is something that will be considered very early in the new year.

This is a very, very important bill. I'm the only MP in this place who represents exclusively one city. The city of Redland, on the coast of Moreton Bay, voted slightly more strongly than the Queensland and the national average in favour of same-sex marriage. Regardless of my personal view, which I've never expressed on this issue, in 2011, as I said, I committed to following the verdict and the guidance of my people. I'm delighted that over the years more and more MPs have come to do the same. If you chose not to follow your people, as an MP, I respect that also, but the decision of Redland city has been made. I'm glad that it concurs with the view of the nation, and I look forward to passing this legislation in the coming days.

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