Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens will be opposing these amendments and all of the other amendments that plagiarise from the widely rejected Paterson bill. I won't make further comments on the other amendments, because these comments apply to all of them. These amendments seek to increase discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer Australians. Now, the far Right conservatives who are promoting these amendments say they're a shield for religious belief, but in fact they're a sword for hatred and bigotry that will be turned against our fellow Australians. The bill contains protections for religious belief. The bill contains them. As you would have heard from the previous debate, we think some of those are turning from protections into something else, and in fact it goes too far. But to suggest that the bill does not contain those protections is simply wrong.

We must remember that the people who are moving these amendments are the people who didn't want marriage equality to happen in the first place. There comes a point where you have to accept the verdict of the people and the verdict of the parliament, which are that equality has won. The people moving these amendments, in continuing to prosecute the fight against marriage equality, run the risk of looking like those World War II soldiers stuck a decade or two later who hadn't realised that the war was actually over. There comes a point where you have to realise that equality has won and it's time to come out of the jungle.

We need to get on with doing what the Australian people want. Australia has voted not for hatred but for love. The Australian people do not want us to insert in this bill potential weapons that can be used against the very people who this bill is trying to support. Now it is time to give up the war against equality. Equality has won. We urge the House to reject these and all of the other amendments so that we can now pass the Senate bill unamended and make equality a reality within a matter of minutes.

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