Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I support the Marriage Amendment (Marriage Equality) Bill 2015. Maya Angelou wrote:

Love recognises no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.

We are full of hope when we say 'I want to walk through life by your side'; when we say 'I want to share the good times and the bad it with you'; when we say, 'I want to grow old with you.' Neither hope nor love are so common or so cheap that we should deny their legitimacy because of gender. As a legislator, I am proud of the fact that the previous parliament changed 85 laws to remove discrimination against LGBTI Australians and same sex couples. That is Labor's legacy. That is behind us. What is before us is a final challenge—to remove this last great inequality from same sex couples.

How can it be fair to deny one group in our community, citizens of Australia, the legal protections and responsibilities that marriage confers? In a few years time the notion that two men who love each other or two women who love each other could be barred from the social and legal status that marriage confers will seem as anachronistic as laws which prevented Aboriginal Australians marrying whom they chose.

No-one can imagine today that Jack Akbar and Lallie Matbar had to fight for years in the 1920s to be allowed to marry because Lallie was Aboriginal and Jack was not. Indeed, Lallie was jailed after she and Jack eloped. Their four children never knew the barriers that their parents had to overcome to marry until after their deaths.

The state being able to deny marriage on racial grounds is obscene to us today; and so it will be in the future for same-sex marriage. This is not a question of tolerance; it is a question of legal equality. This bill makes it clear that no church will be forced to marry any couple but our government and our legal institutions should not discriminate.

In the lead-up to the Irish vote, author Sebastian Barry wrote:

I don't see it as a matter of tolerance, so much as apology. Apology for all the hatred, violence, suspicion, patronisation, ignorance, murder, maiming, hunting, intimidation, terrorising, shaming, diminishment, discrimination, destruction, and yes, intolerance, visited upon a section of humanity for God knows how many hundreds of years, if not millennia.

Sebastian Barry's gay son was just shy of 18 and too young to vote. Barry wrote:

By voting Yes I will be engaging in the simple task of honouring the majesty, radiance and promise of his human soul.

I hope that by making this change we will make it clear to every young man or woman shamed or shy about their sexuality, struggling alone to come to terms with being different from their brothers or sisters or their best friends that it is just fine. It will be fine. We accept you how you are.

We will be saying to the same sex couples who have loved each other tenderly for years or even decades, who have supported each other financially and emotionally, who have nursed one another in sickness and who have woven their families together: 'We see you.' And we will be saying to the many, many kids who have two mums or two dads or two of each: 'We know you are proud of your family, and you have every right to be.' It is time—it is well past time—that this parliament says to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex Australians: we recognise that you love, and that is more important than who you love.

So, to paraphrase William Shakespeare: let us not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.

I commend the bill to the House.

Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I note the support that has been given to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition by large numbers of the Labor Party. Let me just say first that I do believe very strongly that people in same-sex relationships should not be discriminated against because of the nature of their relationship. And, while the Deputy Leader of the Opposition took credit for the legislation introduced in 2008, I might say that would not have been possible but for the work I initiated as the Attorney-General in the period running up to 2007 when I sought to get the Law Reform Commission involved and sought to have departments look at the range of discriminatory issues that might well be addressed by a statute.

So I do not come to these issues as a person who is concerned to adversely discriminate against people because of the nature of their relationships. But I do speak to this bill with a degree of disappointment, because there was an expectation, particularly amongst a number of members on this side, that the matter would be addressed in a way that would allow those who are in favour of this type of legislation to be party to it. The fact is that the Leader of the Opposition elected to press it, seconded by his deputy.

The fact is the engagement that we may have expected did not occur. These comments were made by the Prime Minister, who said it should be presented as a cross-parliamentary bill and should be co-sponsored rather than put forward by any particular party. The member for Leichhardt, a passionate supporter of this view, reiterated that. It was a matter that the Prime Minister's sister, a prominent advocate for same-sex marriage, said should not become a political football. So there is disappointment.

I have said that, in relation to legislation of this type, even though I may not be a supporter of it, those who are interested in the subject matter ought to be prepared to look at it in a wider perspective; and that has been denied. It might have been possible if there was to be some discussion. I have said—and it is known now that I did say it; I said it fairly publicly on Q and Athat we should have a willingness to look at the French approach, in which the state simply regulates relationships. They do not necessarily have to be marriages; they could regulate marriages alone and leave it to the institutions who believe that marriage is only between a man and a woman—the churches, the Buddhists, the Muslims, the Hindus—to legitimate those relationships within their form of structures. That is denied. The French approach, I think, could have been a useful matter for members to look at and take into consideration, but that has been denied.

We are very disappointed that this matter, we are being told, should be treated on this side as a conscience matter; while on the other side, their party councils want to tie their members into a particular view. I think the Deputy Leader of the Opposition was one of those who were proposing that approach to their federal body. So it seems to me that this matter is being addressed in a political context not in a context of good faith where those who have a strong view in favour of these matters might be able to play a part in helping to settle the form that legislation might ultimately take and garner broader support for it.

It is extremely disappointing to me and my colleagues that the opposition have taken the approach that they have, and we would encourage them to withdraw and to allow some discussions, with those who have an interest in these questions, to see whether there is a meaningful way forward which can be pursued with a degree of cross-party support.