Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to participate in this debate and I support the bill before the chamber. I think it is important that this chamber vote to remove discrimination against our fellow Australians who are gay, lesbian, transsexual or intersex. I think this bill has been misunderstood by some speakers in this chamber. I think it would be good just to go to the main points of the bill before I go to the arguments as to why I support the bill.

This bill will amend the Marriage Act 1961 to ensure that all adult couples who have a mutual commitment to a shared life have equal access to marriage. The bill seeks to end discrimination against same-sex couples who wish to have their relationships recognised by the state by amending the definition of marriage that is currently in section 5 of the Marriage Act 1961. At the same time, this bill protects religious freedom. The bill will permit a minister of religion, a person authorised under a state or territory law or a marriage celebrant authorised under the Marriage Act 1961 to perform a marriage between same-sex couples and will permit that marriage to be recognised in Australian law. In addition, amendments to section 47 of the act will reinforce the existing provisions that ensure that a minister of religion is under no obligation to solemnise a marriage where the parties to that marriage are of the same sex. That is the guts of the bill. It does not force any obligations on a minister of religion but what it does do is give our fellow Australians who are gay, lesbian, transsexual or intersex the same rights as every other Australian.

I became extremely concerned about the need to give gay couples the right to marry after one of my constituents, a mother of a gay son, rang me about three years ago and took me through in great detail the discrimination, the violence and the mental trauma that her son had to endure as a young gay man. When we hear about the problems for a gay son or a gay daughter it did not strike me until that mother spoke to me about the problems and the intimidation that her son had faced that this was not only a problem for the gay son; it was a problem for the whole family. It was a problem for the gay son's mother, his father and his siblings, and the family were basically living in what she described to me as a siege mentality about trying to protect her son. I thought, 'This is Australia'—I think it was in about 2010—'how can we continue to tolerate this type of intimidation and discrimination against a young Australian man?' How can we? I say that we need to deal with it now. After I spoke to the mother, I decided to come out—no, I didn't 'come out', but I did decide to say I would be very vocal in the Labor Party to say this discrimination had to stop, because quite frankly I was disgusted that gay members of the Labor Party had to basically deny their very being because of a policy position the Labor Party had that said: 'Marriage is between a man and a woman and you as a member of the Labor Party are not as equal as other members of the Labor Party.' It is not just in the Labor Party we have this; we have had High Court judges who are gay. We have police, who you expect to go out and protect you when you are in trouble, who are gay. We have brain surgeons, surgeons, lawyers, doctors and nurses who are gay—people that we expect to come and help us in our moment of need. And yet we say to them: 'Because of your sexual preference, you are not equal. You cannot get the same rights as other Australians.' I think that is wrong. I think the Labor Party needs to deal with it, and we have taken one small step towards dealing with it.

I agree with the other speakers who have said that, regardless of the outcome of the debate tonight, history is on our side and we will change this and we will make sure that the young Australian man from Greystanes who has suffered all that humiliation, violence and intimidation will have the right sometime, and sometime soon, to make a commitment to the person that he loves and marry that person. That is what we need to do. I think we have to do it. I think it is extremely important.

Not long after that mother rang me and after I publicly indicated my support for same-sex marriage I was in Albury and a gay man approached me at a meeting I was at and thanked me for coming out and saying that everyone should be treated equally. Again, the story that that man who lived in the country told me he had suffered in terms of discrimination his whole life would make you weep. It was just terrible. That is because we have stigmatised gay people over the years. We have treated them as if they are not normal. I do not want to personalise this debate, because I think it should be above the personal, but some of the contributions that I have heard—as I have listened to a lot of the contributions—are certainly rooted back in the fifties and sixties when we were not as sophisticated as we are now, when we did not accept that people had the right to have sexual preferences that were different from heterosexuals.

I also want to thank my friends and colleagues in Rainbow Labor. It is pretty hard when you are a member of a political party and you have got gay, lesbian, transsexual and intersex members of that party who belong to a party that says, 'You are not equal; you will not get the right to marry.' I cannot look my comrades from Rainbow Labor in the eye and say, 'You should be treated differently from other people in this country.' I just won't do it. I don't think it's right.

I take the view that activists and courageous people like Senator Pratt are absolutely right in getting out there and supporting their right to have a marriage. The arguments I have heard tonight from some in the chamber about how a child will be disadvantaged by being brought up by a gay couple I think deny the reality of some children facing absolutely terrible lives with heterosexual couples. Gay couples who make a commitment to a child, in my view, make that conscious decision that they want a child, that they love that child and they will look after that child, and I think some of the arguments are quite offensive. It is offensive to argue any other way.

I come to this debate from a working class background. I was brought up in Lanarkshire in Scotland—a place called Bellshill that was pretty renowned for the sectarian divisions in that area of the west of Scotland between Catholics and Protestants. Years ago it was frowned upon if a Catholic married a Protestant or a Protestant married a Catholic. We have overcome that, so we have matured as a society and things are getting better. But in that working class background that I had there was a culture of discrimination, intimidation and violence against gay and lesbian people. I think it is reprehensible that we have not tried to deal with it before. It was fuelled by fear and fuelled by ignorance; it was fuelled by religious and cultural intolerance; and it was fuelled by a legislative discrimination in Australia even up until recently and right now.

I come to this debate not only as a working class man who has witnessed the discrimination and intimidation of gays; I come to this debate as a married man. I did find it quite offensive for Senator Brandis to generalise about the view of the Left on marriage. Yesterday was my 41st wedding anniversary, so I know a bit about marriage.