Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move a motion relating to discrimination in the Marriage Act.

Leave not granted.

Then, pursuant to contingent notice, I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent me from moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a motion relating to discrimination in the Marriage Act 1961.

I would love to be standing up here today debating the issue of discrimination in marriage and taking a stand with the great majority of the Australian community that wants to see an end to discrimination in marriage rather than having a debate about the suspension of standing orders. I wish we had a public gallery packed to celebrate a rare moment of unity in this parliament, ending discrimination once and for all. Instead, we are here on the back of a decision by a Prime Minister who has once again failed to lead this country into the 21st century. The spectacle yesterday was shameful—a Prime Minister who, like a cornered alley cat, used every tactic in the book: he scratched, he fought, he stacked his party room with National Party MPs because he knew he was going to get rolled on this issue. He talks about it as a second-order issue, an issue that does not warrant dominating the political discourse in this parliament. And at the same time he says it is worthy of a plebiscite. Which is it, Prime Minister?

We know this is a rare opportunity to end the issue of discrimination once and for all. Think of the signal the Prime Minister's actions send to the young people right across this country who are being told: 'You are different. The love you have for another person is not the same as the love some other people have. The way you feel is not normal.' Is it any wonder that young people right across the country who are in a same-sex relationship have a greater rate of self-harm, higher rates of depression, higher rates of suicide? It is because of the symbol, the messages, the language that this parliament has used in squashing a debate that should be held about an end to discrimination against marriage between two people, regardless of their sex, regardless of their gender.

We saw a Prime Minister who failed to lead the nation into the 21st century. We saw a Prime Minister who was so desperate to use any tactic he could to stop this debate that he diminished his standing and the standing of this parliament. When the history of this parliament is written, yesterday will be one of its darkest days. We had everything pushing us towards a decision that would have ended the discrimination that exists towards people in this country. And there is never a place for discrimination, whether it is discrimination towards our Aboriginal brothers and sisters or discrimination towards people of different faiths or discrimination when it comes to the love two people have for each other. I say to the Prime Minister: you can stand there and obstruct this momentous change that will happen, but the tide of public opinion is overwhelming here. We will get this. This will be done. We will, at some time in the near future, be able to say to people right across the country: your love is no different to the love that many people right around the country are able to consolidate in marriage. We will offer you the respect that you deserve to be able to state clearly to each other and to the nation that your love is no different, that your love matters. That is what this debate is about. This debate is about whether we are, as a nation, prepared to say to people right across the country, 'No more will we tell you that your relationships don't matter, that they are abnormal and that there is something wrong with the feelings you have towards the people you love.' Is it any wonder that we have this epidemic of mental illness among those people who do nothing other than feel what all of us feel: love towards our fellow human beings? This Prime Minister has denied them that opportunity. It is to this parliament's great shame.