Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

For Senator Abetz’s edification, I feel that I must speak at length. I question the motivation of the federal government’s opposition to this disallowance. I cannot help but feel that the motivation is precisely the same as that of Prime Minister Howard’s good friend George Bush: it was very clear that his recent attempt to support a constitutional amendment in the United States to legally define marriage as being between a man and a woman was more about helping George Bush keep the White House than it was about the actual context of the debate. What we are seeing in Australia at the moment is Prime Minister Howard sending a strong signal, ahead of the federal election next year, as a rallying call to social conservatives to continue to support the coalition. That is precisely what is happening here.

This has much wider connotations than it may at first appear. This debate is essentially about values and the way that the two sides of politics see the world. It has been helpfully described by George Lakoff, who does a great deal of work around values. He has outlined what is essentially true: that conservative and progressive politics are organised around two very different models of family life and that those two different models translate into every way political action is taken.

One of the models of married life is the ‘strict father family’. The other model is a ‘nurturing parent family’. Let us start with the strict father family, the model that was just outlined by Senator Fielding from Family First. The strict father is the moral authority and master of the household, dominating both the mother and children and imposing needed discipline. Contemporary conservative politics turns these family values into political values and they are: hierarchical authority, individual discipline and military might. Marriage in the strict father family must be heterosexual marriage. The father is manly, strong, decisive, dominating, a role model for sons, and for daughters a model of a man to look up to. That is essentially the model of conservative politics.

If you translate that model into conservative politics, it says that the citizens are children of two kinds. You have the mature, successfully disciplined and self-reliant ones, and for that you read wealthy businesses and individuals whom the government should not meddle with—that is, small government. Or you have the whining, undisciplined, dependent ones who must never be coddled, and, as in the family, the government must be an instrument of moral authority, upholding and extending policies that express moral strength. So we have the role of government as protecting the government and its interests in a dangerous world by maximising military and political strength. We have the promotion of unimpeded competitive economic activity so that both the disciplined moral people and the undisciplined immoral ones are able to receive what they each deserve based on their own choices. Finally, the government must maintain order and discipline, through severe enforcement of the rules if necessary. Hence, we have the overriding of the ACT in this particular case.

The other value system, from the progressive side of politics, would have the nurturing parent model, where you have two equal parents whose job is to nurture their children and teach their children to nurture others. Nurturing has two dimensions: empathy and responsibility for one’s self and others. Responsibility requires strength and competence. The strong nurturing parent is protective and caring, builds trust and connection, promotes family happiness and fulfilment, fairness, freedom, openness, cooperation and community development. These are the values of strong progressive politics. And though again the stereotype is heterosexual, if you want to look at that, there is nothing in the nurturing family model to rule out same-sex relationships and marriage. It is a vastly different view of the world.

As it is translated into politics, a progressive government has to be strong enough to carry out progressive goals. It promotes safety and protection for life, health, the environment and human dignity, translating into support for the social safety net, health care, environmental protection laws, protection offered by the police and military, governmental laws and policies to ensure protection from unscrupulous business, pollution, unsafe products in the home, unsafe working conditions and so on. It is also expressed in fulfilment of life in many ways—through satisfying and profitable work, lifelong education and learning, and appreciation of the arts, music and culture. That translates into support for schools and universities, for fairness and freedom in terms of civil liberties, offering equal protection under the law and equal rights for all citizens. So it is a vastly different model.

I would argue here that the subtext of this piece of legislation is a signal to the electorate that the Howard coalition government—that is, the Liberal Party, the National Party and Family First—are sending a strong signal that if you support them you support the values of the strict father family, and those values mean that you do not support equality before the law and you do not support the absolute basis of freedom, fairness and human dignity. That is the question that I put to the other side of politics today. Do you believe in equal rights? It is simple and straightforward. If you do believe in equal rights, if you do believe in equality before the law, if you do believe in tolerance and fairness, if you do believe in love and commitment, then denying lovers the right to a civil union is a violation of human dignity. It is discriminatory and it basically says that you do not believe in equal rights. That is the crux of this particular debate.

In the Tasmanian parliament I had a long experience of this, since the issue of gay law reform was long argued in Tasmania. It was introduced first by my colleague Senator Bob Brown and eventually it was my bill that secured gay law reform in Tasmania. It will shock people to know that up until 1997, when my bill was ultimately successful, you could be jailed for 21 years in Tasmania for being a practising homosexual. That was the case until 1997. When I moved to change that, to eliminate that discrimination against gay people in Tasmania, there were people who predicted that the sky would fall in, that the moral fabric of our society would be destroyed and that marriage would be destroyed. We heard all of the same arguments we have heard here, and nothing could be further from the truth. I have never experienced such intolerance, such hatred, such meanness, such vindictiveness, as I got in that debate from people who called themselves Christians. From people who called themselves Christians I got a level of vindictiveness and hatred that I never experienced in any other debate in politics in Tasmania. I was shocked by that, and I constantly said to people that they should do unto others as they would have them do unto them.

This is the point that I am making here: we are talking about equality, we are talking about antidiscrimination. And I would argue that that bill ending that discrimination against gay people was one of the most progressive and society-changing pieces of legislation in Tasmania in the nineties because it brought with it, to my great pleasure and surprise, a whole change in the way that people related to one another. It was as if the doors and windows had been opened. There was a happiness, a level of tolerance and a general spirit of wellbeing that had not been there as long as the small-mindedness had existed.

It is about discrimination. I draw to your attention what happened in South Africa. I think this is really interesting. After the years of fighting against apartheid in South Africa, they got a new constitution which expressed a commitment in that country to the elimination of discrimination not only on the grounds of race and skin colour but also on the grounds of gender and sexual orientation. In their Freedom Charter, the ANC said that they were very firmly committed to removing all forms of discrimination and oppression in a liberated South Africa, and that commitment must surely extend to the protection of gay rights. One of the noted freedom fighters in South Africa said at that time:

What has happened to lesbian and gay people is the essence of apartheid—it tried to tell people who they were, how they should behave, what their rights were. The essence of democracy is that people should be free to be what they are. We want people to be and to feel free.

In a speech commenting on what had happened in South Africa, Justice Kirby said:

Perhaps those who have felt the pain of discrimination on the basis of their race and skin colour (which they cannot change) understand more readily than many Australians the pain and wrong-headedness of criminalising people on the grounds of their sexual orientation (which likewise they cannot change).

In this case it is not about criminalising. In this case it is about ending discrimination. It is about recognising love and commitment—and surely isn’t that the very definition of the marital ideal, of what marriage, of what civil union is fundamentally about: love and commitment? Don’t we need more love and commitment in this world? Isn’t that what we would all be aiming for? Why do we want to spend time in this parliament denying people the right to civil union and telling people that we have a right to violate their human dignity and we have a right to tell them that they are not equal before the law?

It is time that Australians saw this particular debate for what it is. It is an attempt to shore up the coalition by sending the worst possible signal to social conservatives around the country that, if they want to advantage big business and the rich in Australia, who, to the detriment of the poor, want small government and, as I said, the removal of a whole lot of the community safety nets that we have had for a long time, then the way to do that is to reinforce the strict father model of Australian politics, vote for the coalition and not go with a more open, generous and fair society. So this is a values debate. Let us get that firmly on the agenda. It is about values.