George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In Adelaide last Wednesday, the member for Kooyong, Mr Petro Georgiou, delivered a very fine speech on the liberal tradition. The occasion of that speech, which I understand, Madam Acting Deputy President Troeth, you attended, was the Murray Hill lecture. The Murray Hill lecture is named to honour the memory of the late Murray Hill, a member of the South Australian parliament and the father of the former Leader of the Government in this place, Robert Hill. Mr Georgiou noted, in celebrating the late Murray Hill’s contribution to liberalism in Australia, that it was in 1972, while the late Mr Hill was a member of the Liberal and Country League, that he introduced into the South Australian parliament a bill to decriminalise homosexuality in that state.

That was the first occasion of substantive what we would today call ‘gay law reform’ in Australia and it came from a Liberal member of parliament. The following year, on 18 October 1973, Sir John Gorton, then a backbench opposition member of the House of Representatives, moved in that House that ‘in the opinion of this House homosexual acts between consenting adults in private should not be subject to the criminal law’. That was the first substantive piece of gay law reform at the federal level, and it was moved by a Liberal member of parliament—indeed, a former Liberal Prime Minister.

Those like Senator Ludwig or Senator Bartlett who chastise my side of politics on this issue do so with a meanness of spirit which ill becomes them. The view of these matters, of which the late Mr Hill and the late Sir John Gorton were pioneers, is a view which today animates the Liberal Party. It is a view that has been embraced by the Prime Minister, who as recently as 8 June this year said:

I am in favour of removing areas of discrimination and we have and I’m quite happy on a case by case basis to look at other areas where people believe there’s genuine discrimination, but I think they should be looked at on a case by case basis. I don’t think it’s the sort of thing that can be done in an across the board fashion. We made some changes in relation to entitlements a couple of years ago and if there are other areas of genuine discrimination, then I’m in favour of getting rid of them.

To the extent to which there is any discernible difference between Mr Howard’s position and the position of other leading Liberals of the past, the difference is one only of approach, not of philosophy. When the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the ACT came before the House of Representatives during the time of the second Whitlam government in a private member’s bill, if my memory serves me correctly, Mr Howard voted in favour of it.

During the course of the Howard government, a number of steps have been made to remove from the statute books discrimination against gay people. The superannuation laws have been changed to include same-sex partners as potential beneficiaries of death benefits in certain circumstances. In 2004 the government amended the Income Tax Assessment Act, the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act and the Retirement Savings Accounts Act to expand the range of potential beneficiaries of tax free superannuation death benefits to include what were defined as ‘interdependency relationships’, which included same-sex partnerships. On 10 October last year the government announced its decision to extend conditions of service for Australian Defence Force employees to interdependent relationships, which would include same-sex partners of ADF members.

So it is not right to say that the Liberal Party and the Howard government have not embraced the principle embodied in Senator Bartlett’s bill. They have done so. And that reflects the liberal philosophy. It reflects the philosophy outlined in the federal platform of my party, which condemns, as ‘an enemy’ of liberalism, ‘narrow prejudice’ and which commits the Liberal Party to oppose ‘discrimination based on irrelevant criteria’. I hardly think that in this day and age any mature or civilised person would regard sexuality as a relevant criterion for discrimination against other Australians.

So the objectives of the Sexuality and Gender Identity Discrimination Bill 2003 [2004], set out in the objects clause, clause 3, are objectives which not only I warmly support but also are supported by the Liberal Party and have historically been not only supported by but pioneered by Liberals, including the late Murray Hill, the late Sir John Gorton and, among contemporary Liberals, people such as the Hon. Warren Entsch and the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull, to name but two, who have agitated on this issue in the public in recent days. It is far too late in the day for anyone sensibly to suggest that in Australia there is a place for discrimination against people on the grounds of their sexuality. That attitude reflected the prejudices of a different time and a different age which are now obsolete and must be seen to be ignorant.

This is an enormous issue for Australia because it affects so many people. I think that, in years gone by, at a time when gay people were socially marginalised and, to use a famous expression, ‘in the closet’, it was thought to be a marginal issue, a boutique issue, that affected relatively few. But we know today that that is not so. The estimates vary but social scientists tell us that between four and six per cent of people identify as being exclusively or predominantly homosexual. If those estimates are right—and I have chosen the conservative end of the estimates—that means there are about one million Australians so circumstanced.

But each of those people have parents, most of them have siblings and many of them have children, so the number of Australians directly affected by discrimination against gay and lesbian people is many times greater than the five-odd per cent of the population, the approximately one million Australians, who so identify. If one takes into account only the members of their immediate families and disregards their close friends, workmates and colleagues, one is talking about a multiple of that number, several million Australians, directly affected by discrimination which in this day and age we identify to be ignorant, bigoted and, to use the words of the Liberal Party’s federal platform, a narrow prejudice which we will not countenance. So this is an important issue and it is an issue of wide significance.

I commend former Senator Brian Greig, who pursued this issue with his customary courteous tenacity in this parliament—