Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to discuss the Sexuality and Gender Identity Discrimination Bill 2003 [2004] because, as senators will know, the Australian Greens are proud advocates of the need to remove discrimination in many areas of law and for many groups of people, and one of those groups of people is the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex community in Australia. I am not only talking about their status as part of same-sex couples, which the HREOC inquiry is looking at; we need to also be looking at the areas of discrimination that they face as individuals in Commonwealth law. So this bill is an opportunity for us to debate that and we welcome it. As others have said, it is a bill that was introduced, as I understand it, in 1995, so it is long overdue that we have the opportunity here to debate this piece of legislation. There are a range of exemptions in this legislation which allow for religious organisations to continue to discriminate against same-sex people in schools and nursing homes, and the Greens have particular concerns about those. Indeed, I have amendments to legislation we will be debating next week in the Senate that seek to address some of these issues.

As Senator Bartlett said, this is an old bill and many of the exemptions that are in this bill are broad ranging. Since then we have seen legislation introduced in the ACT and in Tasmania which has a far narrower gamut of the exemptions to such legislation. Senator Ludwig mentioned a piece of legislation, a sexuality discrimination bill exposure draft by the shadow Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon, which has also been made available. Unfortunately it has the same wide-ranging exemptions that we see in this piece of legislation. My colleague Michael Organ, who was formerly the member for Cunningham in the House of Representatives, also introduced a piece of legislation which sought, as all these pieces of legislation do, to remove discrimination. Everyone chooses to do it in a different way but, as all of those who have spoken so far in this debate have indicated, there is support for the need to remove this discrimination. I share the optimism that the previous speaker brought to this debate in saying that I and the Australian Greens believe that we will remove the discrimination that exists in this area of law and we are on the path to achieving that. I see this piece of legislation as a stepping stone in taking us in this direction. Indeed, a similar comment was made by Justice Michael Kirby in a recent speech that he was giving. He said:

But people, and nations, eventually grow up. Once the truth of diverse sexuality is common knowledge, it is impossible to put the genie back in the bottle. It is impossible to put the gay issue back in the closet. Diversity in sexual orientation is simply a fact of life. More and more people recognise and accept this fact. We all have to get used to it.

I share that sentiment. I think it is not just a matter of getting used to it; it is a matter of celebrating the diversity that a whole range of different people bring to our community. In the same way that we accept people from diverse cultures coming to Australia, so too we are made richer as a society by accepting the contributions that a whole range of people bring to our society regardless of their sexual orientation.

We have seen attitudes on these issues change over time. Rodney Croome, a campaigner in this area from Tasmania, was speaking to a group of students in 2004 and he noted that in Tasmania the increased debate that occurred about the legality of homosexuality changed the hearts and minds of ordinary Tasmanians. He put it this way. He said:

At the start of the debate in 1988, support for gay and lesbian rights was the lowest in the country at 33%. When homosexuality was decriminalised in 1997 it was the highest in the country at almost 60%.

I am proud to say that my colleague Greens Senator Christine Milne was at that time the Leader of the Greens in the Tasmanian parliament and was able to negotiate that gay law reform with the Liberal government of the time to remove that discrimination so that finally Tasmania joined every other state and territory in ensuring that homosexuality was legal.

We have seen a whole range of reforms in the area of discrimination over the years in Australia, whether it has been women getting the vote or Indigenous people getting the vote and being recognised. There have been a range of measures brought in which continue to operate under HREOC—the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission—and the Racial Discrimination Act, the Sex Discrimination Act and the Disability Discrimination Act, which they administer. In my own state of New South Wales homosexuality was only legalised in 1982. The first Mardi Gras occurred in Sydney, my home town, in 1978. At the end of that everyone who was involved was dispersed by the police. It is now a massive celebration that occurs in Sydney. It is a real opportunity for people from across the political spectrum to come together and to celebrate the diversity of people who make up our community. So we do move through social change as we progress as a society and acknowledge the contributions that everybody makes. This is one of those arenas where we still have a way to go in not just accepting the contributions that people have to make to our society but also recognising them in law.

So often we see that attitudes within the community move ahead of the attitudes that are reflected here in our parliament. One example would be the debate that happened in 2004 in this parliament that dealt with the issue of same-sex marriage. As we all know, that was a setting-back of the direction in which we are going in removing discrimination. Unfortunately both of the major parties came together to ban same-sex people from accessing marriage. It was interesting at that time that when polls were carried out amongst the Australian community of the attitudes of people to this issue we saw that the views reflected here in the parliament did not reflect the view within the community. Of course there are growing numbers of people in the community who want to see that discrimination reformed not just in relation to same-sex couples but also in relation to same-sex individuals. Many of these people have had the opportunity to contribute to the public debate, such as through the Senate inquiry that occurred into the same-sex marriage legislation that was dealt with in the parliament. On all of these occasions we heard quite harrowing evidence put forward of circumstances of discrimination faced by people in our community. I want to share with the Senate a couple of those experiences. This evidence was given to the Senate during the inquiry into the government legislation to ban same-sex marriage. One individual wrote:

I’m a 17 year old gay male and I don’t feel safe or comfortable in my own country. I had heard of this act before. Trying to change things so that they can lawfully discriminate against Gay and Lesbian people. It IS discrimination, because if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t feel like my government hates me for who I am ... In this country I feel like I am not as deserving as a heterosexual person. Like I’m some kind of freak or mutant and that the government wants to get rid of me. It makes me so sad and I can’t do anything about it because I don’t matter.

It is really unfortunate that people in our community feel that way. What this piece of legislation does is to allow for us to share the contributions that everybody has to make by recognising the contributions that all people have to make. Many other people made similar comments. There were some comments made by a 17-year-old young woman from Ballarat. She said:

These new actions have now placed a new fear in me as I am now unsure whether it is ok for me to feel attracted to the same sex. I want to one day get married and adopt a child and now I am unsure whether I want to. Please help me. What can I do now?

Two male persons, in their submission, stated:

We are male persons in our mid to late 70s. Since 1948 we have lived in a permanent and loving male relationship as partners in Melbourne … It is puzzling to learn of disdain for same-sex couples as somehow unworthy citizens intent on undermining traditional respect for marriage and family, and not even deserving of privileges extended to de facto couples.

It has long been disappointing to same-sex couples such as ours that we have been denied such recognition and rights of “survivor benefits” similar to those of heterosexual partnerships. (Our own partnership has lasted 56 years.)

These contributions all deal with the issue of same-sex marriage that we dealt with in the parliament two years ago. But, as others have said, an inquiry is currently being carried out by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, which is looking into the discrimination against same-sex couples regarding access to financial and work related entitlements. I welcome the contribution of Senator Brandis, who spoke before me, who said he would like to see all those recommendations put into place once they come out from HREOC. I also share in that enthusiasm, but I think we need to acknowledge that the HREOC inquiry is limited to looking at just same-sex couples and work related entitlements. Whilst I am sure the report will be comprehensive, as all reports from HREOC are, it may not deal with all of the issues in the arena because of the slightly narrower terms of reference that it has set itself.

I want to share with the Senate some of the submissions that have been received by the HREOC inquiry. One in particular comes from a group called the Coalition of Activist Lesbians. It draws together a number of stories from people in the community. One of those stories reads:

A librarian at a council run library in south western Sydney, described being asked to remove a small rainbow flag from her desk—

at work—

for fear of offending other workers. This lesbian said that because the order came from her boss she was not willing to challenge this or make a complaint. She also described how books on gay sexuality were kept out the back and library members had to individually ask the librarian for access to them.

Another lesbian, working in a New South Wales government department, described having obscene emails sent to her and, when she spoke with her supervisor, she received more harassment and ended up leaving her place of work.

A lesbian involved in a motor vehicle accident, where her partner of seven years was killed, was ignored as the next of kin when she went to the hospital. Despite arriving at the hospital in two ambulances from the one accident scene and her telling them over and over again that this was her life partner, workers at the hospital recognised the dead lesbian and contacted her uncle to identify her body. The other woman was discharged and sent back to their shared home three hours later, with no further contact from the hospital, despite having just seen her partner of seven years killed by their own vehicle and having been knocked over by the car herself. This woman needed to access a solicitor to maintain her right as next of kin in order to make funeral arrangements and organise the woman’s estate. The police did not accept her claim as next of kin for several days and visited the family home to ask specifically about their relationship in inappropriate ways.

I give another example where a lesbian mother has spoken about being banned from seeing her two teenage children because their father thought that she was a sinner. She was unprepared to fight this as she thought it would be too humiliating publicly, especially within the church, and she feared it would be destructive for her children and other family members. There have been countless circumstances. A woman was visiting a women’s centre in Illawarra and was verbally abused and threatened by a worker in front of the coordinator of the centre, where she was told, ‘Get your dirty lezzo friends out of the centre.’

These are not the sorts of circumstances that any of us want to see our fellow citizens having to face, and this piece of legislation does allow us that opportunity to move in the right direction. I have many other examples here, including people who wanted to give birth and felt they needed to move interstate in order to have both of their names on the birth certificate. When a young woman at a school in regional New South Wales told her friend that she thought she may be a lesbian, the rumour circulated in the school and she was held down by students in the car park afterwards and a car was driven over her feet. She was too frightened to tell the school authorities or to seek medical advice or contact the police for fear of further violence or of having to tell her parents. None of us want to see these circumstances happen to people in our community. The government has a capacity, through changing regulation and being involved in public education campaigns, to show leadership on this issue and ensure that people do not face the kind of discrimination that unfortunately so many people currently do.

It is good to see Senator Santoro in the chamber, because I know this has also been an issue for people in the aged care sector, where same-sex couples currently can be discriminated from accessing particular aged care facilities. It is an issue we will be dealing with in legislation next week, where I will be moving some amendments to ensure that people’s rights are recognised within the aged care sector.

I do not know whether there has been any discussion to date about the private member’s bill proposed by Liberal MP Warren Entsch. Today’s front page of the Melbourne Star newspaper indicated that Mr Entsch’s bill is only about establishing a reporting mechanism on discrimination, rather than actually addressing discrimination. What we need to be doing is dealing with legislation such as this that seeks to remove that discrimination. It is good to have reporting mechanisms on the discrimination that exists. It was indicated earlier that that is part of the inquiry that HREOC is undertaking. But, in terms of moving forward and addressing these issues, we need legislation that deals with discrimination, as this particular piece of legislation does.

I want to deal with one issue concerning the obligation that we as a country have to stand up for human rights and stand up in opposition to discrimination not just within Australia but also overseas. This is an issue that the Australian government has been very involved in. There was a human rights conference in Vienna in 1993, at which the Australian government committed to raising in the international arena issues of discrimination against people with respect to sexual orientation. The Australian government was very active in that. Indeed, when the Howard government was elected in 1996 it continued to play this role in raising issues about sexual orientation within the international arena and involving that in its human rights dialogue, for example, with countries such as China. But it is my understanding that the Howard government is no longer continuing that level of advocacy. Indeed, I am certainly keen to hear whether there has been a change in policy and, if so, why that has occurred. For me, that has been highlighted in a number of instances that have occurred recently, where we have seen same-sex discrimination in particular countries. I have written to the foreign minister and asked questions in Senate estimates regarding the need to ensure that these issues are raised and what representations the Australian government and the foreign minister have made about these circumstances.

One such issue on which I am yet to receive a reply relates to a situation in Uganda, where a newspaper published a list of names of people they sought to out as being gay or lesbian. Many of these people have subsequently been arrested and many others are in hiding; indeed, a number of them are part of the Uganda Green Party as well. The Ugandan government does not have a good track record on these issues, and I have asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs what representations are being made by the Australian government about these activities happening overseas.

I mention also the criminal sanctions for homosexuality that members of the government raised here when two young boys were hanged in Iran some time ago because of their sexuality. I have raised the issue before with the government about whether representations were made on this issue. My recollection is that the answer I received was that representations were made about opposition to the death penalty, but I did not hear that there were any representations made about these specific instances of the death penalty being imposed because of homosexuality.

I know the government has been active in this area in the past, and I want to encourage the government to continue to speak out in international fora about these issues for all people, whether they are Australian citizens or not. We had an example last year of an Australian tourist and a Fijian who were sentenced to two years jail for engaging in consensual homosexual sex, which was an offence under the Fijian criminal law. It so happens that the Fijian constitution was changed in 1997 so that there cannot be discrimination based on sexual orientation, and so their case was overturned in the Fijian court on constitutional grounds. But there was much activity within the Australian community on this issue, and I was certainly very involved in the activities, campaigns and writing to the foreign minister to ask him to speak out on this. But we did not hear any comment from the Australian government on that issue, so this is one area where I really encourage the federal government to take up the mantle they have held in the past in speaking out against this kind of discrimination when it happens not just in Australia but around the world.

We are seeing fantastic things happen around the world. The rest of the world is moving towards recognising same-sex partnerships. The list of countries that have decided to establish civil unions or civil partnerships is very long: Denmark, Norway, Israel, Sweden, Greenland, Hungary, Ireland, France, South Africa, Germany, Portugal, Finland, Croatia, Luxembourg, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, 10 states within the United States, next year Switzerland will establish civil unions, the Netherlands, large parts of Spain, Belgium, and three states in Canada. All these countries have recognised same-sex marriages so it is a direction that internationally we see the community moving in.

I do share the optimism of the speaker prior to me that we will get there in Australia. Because I do share that optimism that we will see change in Australia, I feel disheartened by the experiences of discrimination that people currently face. I am an optimist and I think we will see this discrimination removed, but until it is removed I feel for those people who continue to face that discrimination. I want to sum up with an optimistic comment, which again comes from Mr Justice Michael Kirby, who said:

The journey to enlightenment in Australia is by no means complete. But on the issue of sexuality, it has certainly commenced. As the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights told the recent conference in Montreal it is a matter of fundamental human rights and basic human dignity. In the end, it is not only about gays. It is about all people and the quality of freedom and mutual respect in the society that we want to live in. The momentum is unstoppable.

I agree with Justice Kirby that the momentum is unstoppable. I see this bill as part of that unstoppable momentum; hence, I commit the Australian Greens to supporting it and I commend it to the Senate.