Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I just want to correct one thing for the record, and that is that today is the first we have heard that all of a sudden this is such an urgent matter that we need to change the hours and start changing what was previously allocated as coalition time. This was not raised in the whips and leaders meeting earlier this week. As far as we knew until this morning, this was coalition time that we are talking about being used tomorrow. The coalition have given their time over to the Labor Party to allow the Labor Party to tick and flick their marriage equality bill so that the party do not have to worry about it anymore.

Senator Evans's argument may have been stronger and may have had an ounce more truth in it if indeed we did not see what occurred in the House today occur, where procedures were totally changed and where the Prime Minister could not even get to her feet to explain to the Australian people or the rest of her parliamentary colleagues why it is that she was voting no to marriage equality.

Despite the fact that she is the Prime Minister, we are hearing the government say, 'This is such an important issue—urgency, urgency—we need to rush it through,' and yet the Prime Minister did not even have the guts to stand up in the parliament today and explain to the Australian people why she believes discrimination should continue.

The Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition are as one on this. They believe that same-sex couples and their families deserve to have their relationships kept out of sight, out of mind, and that they do not deserve equality. The Prime Minister voted for that today and so did the Leader of the Opposition.

We in this place know that there is more support for this bill in this chamber than there is in the other. Of course we know that. But we also know that when this bill comes to a vote tomorrow—as is being forced by the government—it is not going to pass. That is exactly what the Prime Minister wants. It is exactly what the Labor factions want. It is exactly what the ACL want. The Australian Christian Lobby have put out a press release congratulating the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition because they voted down marriage equality today. So I guess they are looking for a second press release to be issued late in the night tomorrow, in which Jim Wallace is going to say: 'You get a gold star, because you did it twice in one week! You killed off the issue twice in one week!' The ACL want this issue killed; the Prime Minister has agreed, and the Leader of the Opposition has facilitated it. What we see in this motion is the opposition in this place handing their own private members' time to the government to vote down marriage equality, despite the fact—let's not forget—that it actually is part of the Labor Party platform.