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

I rise today to very strongly support the urgency motion that is before the chamber:

The recognition that an increasing majority of the Australian community supports marriage equality and believes it is time for the federal parliament to amend the Marriage Act to provide for this.

There is no justification for discrimination in Australia. That is the fact of the matter. If we are to be a modern democracy, if we are to live up to the ideals of our Constitution, there is no room for discrimination. As Justice Kirby once said, 'Equal justice under the law for all.' That is what the Australian Greens stand for: equal justice under the law for all.

I heard Senator Humphries talk a moment ago about cynical politics. It took at least five minutes of his speech to actually get to saying what his view was. It is a pathetic statement to suggest that the Greens moving on this is some sort of cynical politics. It has been our policy for a very long time. In fact for decades the Australian Greens have had a view that discrimination should be removed and that civil society ought to pride itself on equal participation and equal rights on all bases. We have argued it in terms of the rights of women. We have argued it in terms of racial equality and religious equality. We are now arguing it strongly in terms of equality under the law for people to marry. I am shocked to hear Senator Humphries say that, as far as he is concerned, the institution of marriage should be handed back to the church. I am assuming that he meant the only people who could be rightfully married as such are those who marry in a church. That would be the logical extension of that view. I find that an extraordinary thing.

I find it extraordinary because there is some suggestion that it is about symbolism and title and it is a bit obscure; so long as you have equal access to things like superannuation, equality under the law and various other matters, it does not matter whether or not people can marry. Nothing could be further from the truth. I think one of the best exposes of this occurred in South Africa, where a legal action was taken in 2002 by a couple to have their union recognised as a valid marriage. It went through the courts and on 1 December 2005 the Constitutional Court handed down its decision. The nine justices in South Africa agreed unanimously that:

… the common-law definition of marriage and the marriage formula in the Marriage Act, to the extent that they excluded same-sex partners from marriage, were unfairly discriminatory, unjustifiable, and therefore unconstitutional and invalid.

In a widely quoted passage from the judgment, Justice Albie Sachs wrote:

The exclusion of same-sex couples from the benefits and responsibilities of marriage, accordingly, is not a small and tangential inconvenience resulting from a few surviving relics of societal prejudice destined to evaporate like the morning dew. It represents a harsh if oblique statement by the law that same-sex couples are outsiders, and that their need for affirmation and protection of their intimate relations as human beings is somehow less than that of heterosexual couples. It reinforces the wounding notion that they are to be treated as biological oddities, as failed or lapsed human beings who do not fit into normal society, and, as such, do not qualify for the full moral concern and respect that our Constitution seeks to secure for everyone. It signifies that their capacity for love, commitment and accepting responsibility is by definition less worthy of regard than that of heterosexual couples.

That is the state of play in Australia for every single person who stands up and says they do not support removing discrimination against same-sex couples. That is exactly what they are saying to those people in Australian civil society and it is completely unacceptable.

In terms of the emotional scars of people who are discriminated against, it is interesting when you look back to see the justifications that went on for years about the reasons why people thought it was appropriate to discriminate against people on the basis of race and the reasons that people had to discriminate against people on the basis of their gender. When my mother started teaching it was a part of the accepted practice that once a woman married they could not teach in schools. It was not until the 1970s that you had equal pay for female teachers. We would not have had Prime Minister Gillard standing up saying that it should be a conscience vote as to whether you might remove discrimination against women under the law in Australia. We would have had an argument that it was totally inappropriate to discriminate against women in spite of, as Senator Humphries just said, the traditional understanding. The traditional understanding in Australia was that women were their husband's possessions and they could not work after they were married and they did not deserve to have equal pay. We got rid of that traditional understanding because it was plain wrong.

There is the traditional understanding that is not being spoken here that somehow same-sex couples are not equal and do not deserve to be recognised as equal. As the judgment in South Africa from Justice Albie Sachs said, if you object to the notion of marriage equality for some reason, what you are saying is that a gay couple do not have the same capacity for love, commitment and accepting responsibility and that their relationship is less worthy of regard than those of heterosexual couples. What an insult and an affront to people in our civil society. Australia is a big-hearted country. The community has recognised that these so-called traditional understandings are discriminatory and hurtful and that we would be a better society if we actually celebrated the fact that people who love one another want be able to be recognised in a marriage relationship in exactly the same way as everybody else. And why shouldn't they? Why shouldn't parents be able to have that same expectation for their children regardless of their sexuality?

I think it is a complete cop-out to be suggesting some idea of a conscience vote on an issue of removing discrimination. Removing discrimination ought to be the aspiration of everyone in this parliament and it should be something we aspire to at every level and for every reason that people discriminate. We should remove it, and we try to do so. This is not a matter of conscience; it is a matter of civil rights. In Australia we want, as Justice Kirby mentioned, equal justice under the law for all. I would ask senators to ask themselves whether they think it would be appropriate to look one of their own children or siblings in the eye and say to them, 'You do not deserve the same civil rights as other people because of your sexuality. As much as I love you as my child or brother or sister, you deserve to be discriminated against because somehow you are not up to it in the way the rest of the community is.' I put that to my colleagues. I put to them as well to ask themselves whether that is a matter of conscience or a matter of civil rights. It is a matter of equality, justice, fairness and love. That is what this is about. It is longstanding Greens policy. It is something that the Australian community wants and, frankly, some of the arguments that are being put forward against it are an anachronism.

In terms of religious argument, religions are able to maintain whatever laws they wish to govern themselves and people do not discriminate on that basis. But we are talking about equal rights under the law of the civil society in Australia, which is a fair society in which we do not tolerate discrimination of any kind.