George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Notwithstanding any extraordinary intervention by the High Court next week, the Australian people will be asked a question about changing the definition of marriage, a fundamental building block of our society. Giving people the right to have a say on an issue of such cultural importance is the right thing to do. Politicians have already voted on this issue four times: in the Senate in 2010, 2012 and 2013 and in this House in 2012. Each time the answer was no. But that's not the answer that the activists pushing this wanted, so they harassed and bullied the national conversation into asking the question again and again until they got the answer they wanted. A definitive answer from the Australian people, one way or another, is the only hope we have of moving on to other important issues. It comes down to one simple question. A lot of column inches and air time have been devoted to what this question is and isn't. That's the issue I want to address.

Let's start with what this question is not about. It is not about equality—it never was. De facto couples, including same-sex couples, are already considered under the law to be equal to married couples, with access to the same rights and privileges. No-one is barred from getting married because of their sexuality. That is the reality. It is not about equality; it's about changing the definition of marriage into something it has never actually been. Why would the activists want to so aggressively push to deconstruct the meaning of marriage rather than establish a new construct with all the same rights and privileges that come with marriage? I note the activists happily expanded the concept of sexuality from being either heterosexual or homosexual to an acronym of many—LGBTIQA—and, further, what used to be two genders, male and female, have been expanded to a multiverse of genders. That is the real driver here. Removing gender from marriage is just one part of this process. Gender will be removed from words, jobs, names, institutions, schools, and even birth certificates and passports. People like to say that's a slippery-slope argument. This is a slippery plateau argument because these things are already happening around us. They'll be sped up if the answer to this plebiscite is yes.

One collection of activist groups has made a declaration that not only calls for same-sex marriage but refers to gender classification as 'structural violence' and calls for it to be removed from birth certificates and identification documents. It's already been removed here in Canberra, in the ACT. Our children are being taught in school that gender is not determined by biology but by a feeling. The Australian government's guidelines on the recognition of sex and gender says 'gender refers to the way a person feels.' Schoolboys are told they can use the girls' toilet at school; children are made to role-play as if they were in a same-sex relationship; teenage girls are told in schools that chest binding is a great way to reduce the size of their chest. And parents don't get a say in this. This stuff comes through city programs like the Safe Schools program, which next year will be compulsory in the state of Victoria. Any education about marriage or sex must include education in this new universe about the multiverse of possibilities.

According to the Labor Party's policy platform, they are 'committed to making sex education inclusive of all sexualities and gender identities.' What's more, they're going to appoint an LGBTIQA sheriff, a new human rights commissioner, to ensure that it happens and it happens in schools. How many genders will Labor pander to in this new world of sex education? New York City's Commission on Human Rights officially recognises 31 genders, and businesses risk a six-figure fine for failing to accommodate them all and use the politically correct pronouns of each and every one. Researchers at QUT, the Queensland University of Technology, listed 33 gender options on their Australian sex survey, and the Genderfluid Support website lists 114 different genders, none of which are male or female. Facebook gave 10 genders to choose from, but that wasn't enough, so now there's a custom button. Google pronounced it would support an infinite number of ways to express gender identity. This isn't a slippery slope; we are sliding out of control, really. A good place to start to regain control would be for people to vote no on this important question. Saying no and supporting Australian law is not hate speech. Australian values are worth preserving. (Time expired)