Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to take this opportunity to set out my views on same-sex marriage in response to the request by a great many of my constituents that I do so. Like the member for Throsby, I intend to advocate for change in accordance with the processes of my party.

Put simply, my view is that discrimination against same-sex couples is unjustifiable, and for too long it has been a hurtful and oppressive aspect of life in Australia, and of public policy in Australia—as it has in many countries. Unfortunately that discrimination exists today, and one aspect of the discrimination is in the law that prevents same-sex couples from choosing the relationship status that we call marriage.

Marriage equality is about extending to all Australians the capacity to choose a relationship bond and name that represents the most formal and traditionally respectable relationship status. While some approach this debate by saying that it is the practical or procedural or legal discrimination that really matters, and that marriage, as a form of relationship, is only a matter of symbolism or terminology, I take serious issue with that view. I take issue with it because terminology and symbolism and the conceptual categories they create form the essence of the black magic that enables discrimination in the first place. The fact that same-sex couples cannot marry is precisely the kind of categorical exclusion that underpinned the practical exclusion of such couples from the recognition and legal benefits that others have enjoyed as of right.

On the matter of practical equality, I am proud to have been part of a Labor government that, in its first full parliamentary year, made huge strides in removing legislative discrimination against same-sex couples in a wide range of Commonwealth laws. The two bills that were passed—a general law reform bill and a specific bill dealing with superannuation—had the effect of eliminating legislative and administrative discrimination against same-sex couples and their children in areas including taxation, social security, health, aged care, veterans entitlements, workers compensation and immigration among others.

As I said when I spoke on the bills in 2008:

Australia’s commitment to various international agreements should have prevented same-sex couples from having to wait this long to achieve the equality that they, and other civil rights groups, have campaigned for.

… it is my very firm view that the legislative framework of any country should be constructed and, more importantly, renovated to take account of the international standard of human rights. Article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights—one of the three elements of the International Bill of Human Rights—states that everyone is equal before the law and entitled to the full protection of the law.

The imperative to remove discrimination against same-sex couples, therefore, comes from a position of basic logic and from a foundation of fundamental human rights. Of course, this was the finding of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, as it then was, in its 2007 report Same-sex: same entitlements.

Above all things, the argument for marriage equality proceeds, in my view, from two key principles. The first is the principle against discrimination—that is, that any couple that seeks to form a relationship bond of the kind we call marriage should be able to do so, rather than being discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation. The second is that, by extending marriage equality to same-sex couples, which means extending its scope, we are not in any way lessening the value of marriage. Like happiness, marriage is not a commodity to be divided up between participants. Anyone who takes the view that its exclusivity is part of its value is only acknowledging the fundamental discrimination that exists in that exclusion.

To finish, I would add the final observation that marriage equality, in my mind, should not be about reinforcing a sense in which marriage is a relationship status that naturally sits at the top of some relationship hierarchy. There are many couples and families who do not choose marriage. I hope in future that will include both opposite-sex couples who have made that choice and same-sex couples who are making that choice for the first time rather than having no choice at all. But couples and families that are not founded on marriage are in no way necessarily less committed or less deserving of respect, if that is the best word, than those who choose marriage.

In the end, the commitments we make to each other, and to our families and children, are the commitments that lie in our heart. They are commitments that we live up to and make real and meaningful by our actions, and in the depth and endurance of our care, love and loyalty. Names matter inasmuch as they should not be exclusionary or discriminatory, and that is why marriage equality for same-sex couples is a matter of natural justice.