Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Marriage (Celebrant Registration Charge) Bill 2014 and the Marriage Amendment (Celebrant Administration and Fees) Bill 2014, because these are bills which reflect very much the implementation of the 2011-12 budget decision of the Gillard Labor government to introduce cost recovery for Commonwealth-registered marriage celebrants in Australia. A couple's wedding, we could all acknowledge, is one of the most important moments in their lives, and it is important that Australians can expect that those tasked with solemnising marriages will discharge their responsibilities to a very high standard. This bill concerns civil celebrants, and it should be added that celebrants in particular are an essential feature of many modern weddings. Celebrants provide marrying couples with a meaningful alternative to a registry wedding.

The Marriage Celebrants Program was established under the Marriage Act in 1973 by the Whitlam Labor government. My parliamentary colleague in the other place, the shadow Attorney-General, remarked in the second reading debate on this issue that the program that the Whitlam government introduced was one of the many achievements of a reforming Labor Attorney-General, Lionel Murphy. Despite vociferous opposition to the idea of civil celebrants from conservative quarters, including from within his own party, Lionel Murphy exercised his powers as Attorney-General to appoint the first civil celebrant in July 1973. There you are, we have come a long way since then and since that remarkable reform that he commenced with. A recent account holds that, frustrated with opposition to the idea, Lionel Murphy returned to his office late one night, typed the first letter of appointment himself and posted it from a nearby postbox to Lois Darcy, a 25-year-old Queenslander. Darcy was a great success; and, in the following months, Lionel Murphy appointed many others to this role.

That just shows you the importance of this program. The number of celebrants has significantly increased as many people move away from the more traditional religious marriage ceremonies. Some recent statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that in 2011 some 71 per cent of marriages were formalised by a celebrant. That really shows you not only how much things have changed since that great reform of Lionel Murphy in 1973 but also how much Australia has changed and how modernised we have become when it comes to the institution of marriage and how so many Australians do opt for a civil celebrant in choosing how their marriage ceremony will be carried out. I am sure senators in this place have attended many such ceremonies with celebrants at hand to carry out their duties.

Following on from the long tradition of Labor's support for celebrants, the Gillard Labor government developed these bills to ensure the ongoing integrity of the celebrant program and to make the administration of the program by the Attorney-General's Department financially sustainable—a very important step that obviously needs to occur for the program to run efficiently and effectively. The government undertook an extensive consultation process and prepared stakeholders for the introduction of these changes. It is pleasing to see the Abbott government continuing to implement these great Labor reforms with this prudent addition to the regulatory framework. I think that is an important component of these bills, and that is what we are debating and discussing here today.

The primary focus of these bills is very much on cost recovery of the administration of the Commonwealth Marriage Celebrants Program, and I understand that that includes new fees and charges consistent with the government's cost recovery guidelines. I think what is important—and it is something that is worth mentioning—is what those actual charges may end up being. I think celebrants certainly would like to know, in carrying out their work, what charges will be imposed on celebrants, to ensure that the charges are geared to cost recovery, because that really is the primary focus of this bill. It is about cost recovery, not about gouging. We would not want to see gouging occur. We want it to be focused, obviously, on the cost recovery of the administration of the Commonwealth. I think it is also critical that the program is adequately resourced to ensure that those high standards that Australians rightly do expect of a Commonwealth-registered marriage celebrant are properly monitored and properly enforced. That is a very important component, I think, that needs to be recognised. We do expect a high standard when it comes to our marriage celebrants, and that needs to be monitored and enforced. Some few years have passed now, and there have been extensive celebrant community meetings conducted around the country by, I understand, the Attorney-General's Department. I know they happened whilst Labor was in office and I hope they have continued, as need be, in the last six months under the Abbott government. It is an important component of the model that celebrants are informed, that they are aware and that they are not taken by surprise so that, when this bill passes in this chamber, they will know what to expect coming forward.

We need to recognise that this cost-recovery model will enable the program to improve services delivered by a Commonwealth registered marriage celebrant. I think that is really what we all want. We want to ensure that services are improved in their delivery. Also, of course, we want to effectively regulate celebrants in Australia. This model does improve on the program and does improve on the history, which I outlined earlier,—which the shadow Attorney-General also outlined in his contribution—from its beginnings under Lionel Murphy in 1973. The cost recovery implementation will very much provide the program with resources to better scrutinise aspiring celebrants prior to registration. Of course we are thinking, currently, about our existing celebrants and our Commonwealth registered marriage celebrants, but we should also recognise that there could be Australians who may choose to become a celebrant as their future job career and they, too, need to know about this new process and the new resources to ensure that they are the right person for the job. We want to ensure that that kind of scrutiny goes on, because we want to continue to make sure that this program has very high standards of celebrants within it. These measures will, in turn ,ensure that professional and legally correct services are delivered to marrying couples in Australia on that receiving end, which is what this is really all about: when marrying couples have professional and legally correct services delivered for their special day.

Of course there will be exemptions available from the fees and charges on grounds set by the regulations. I understand it is intended that exemptions will allow remote communities to access celebrancy services, which is a good thing, as well as cover those celebrants with serious illness, incapacity or absence from Australia that will affect their ability to solemnise marriages for a significant part of an exempted year. This bill establishes the infrastructure for the fees, including the eligibility for exemption provisions that I just touched on, and also on consequences for non-payment, and that infrastructure is important. The bill also provides legislative authority for the government to charge Commonwealth registered marriage celebrants an annual cost-recovery levy—the celebrant registration charge as it is known. The bill will allow the amount of the charge to be set by the minister up to a statutory limit of $600. The bill also allows for the indexation of the limit for financial years to reflect CPI.

As the implementation of a continuing history of Labor reform for the civil celebration of marriage, this bill is an important step to ensure that that reform history continues and ensures that the celebrant program continues in a robust, effective and highly professional manner. As I said at the outset, the institution of marriage celebrants in Australia is very much a proud Labor achievement established, as I mentioned, under the Whitlam Labor government. Today, civil celebrants officiate at almost 70 per cent of marriages in Australia. That is an incredible number of marriages. I understand that that equates to around 120,000 marriages a year. That figure shows the popularity of weddings where people choose to have a marriage celebrant to conduct the service. People are very much exercising their freedom to choose a wedding ceremony that accords with their own personal values and with their own personal beliefs. That is a really important thing in a modern, free society like Australia where couples do have that choice and where they are exercising their freedom to choose. That statistic of 70 per cent of marriages in Australia being officiated by civil celebrants shows that people are continuing to exercise that choice.

I do support this program and I do think it is critical that the program is adequately resourced, so I hope that that is a consideration by this government. Those higher standards that Australians rightfully expect from Commonwealth registered marriage celebrants cannot be delivered unless there is proper resourcing of the Attorney-General's Department for the monitoring and enforcing of these regulations. I will stress this issue. We are coming up to the budget season. It is one thing to pass good legislation; it is another thing to adequately resource it to ensure that it can be implemented as best it can. That includes, of course, the monitoring and enforcing provisions that are contained within this bill.

The work done into this bill and all of its components—and the work that has gone on since the Gillard Labor government were looking at introducing it during the budget of 2011—has brought us to the point today where there is bipartisan support. I am most pleased that the Abbott government is continuing on with this bill. I support the work of marriage celebrants in Australia. I support the freedom of choice that Australian couples continue to have—to have a marriage celebrant to conduct their weddings.

Marriage is one of the most important moments in couples' lives. They expect that the celebrant that they choose is of the highest standard. That is what this bill helps to ensure will occur. With that I very much commend the bill to the Senate and look forward to it becoming law.