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

Senator Abetz knows that the only way to offer that respect is to offer a conscience vote on this issue. That was denied to the Liberal Party caucus yesterday after some six hours of debate. Instead, yesterday was very much a day of disappointment, disunity, duplicity and division, all at the hands of a Prime Minister exploiting every heavy-handed tactic that he could use. To Senator Abetz and to those senators who think, for some reason, that the Prime Minister's ham-fisted approach is a good way forward for this nation, I say: times have changed, although your Prime Minister has not. Unlike the Prime Minister, Australians do recognise the dignity of this country's people by wanting all of us to have an equal opportunity to realise our dreams and have access to community life in our cultural expression, in our work and in the ambitions we can pursue. However, the legal definition of marriage, as it stands, denies same-sex couples the dignity that Australian values would rightly accord them. Currently, in our Marriage Act, the love between two people of the same gender is not worthy of the same recognition granted a relationship between heterosexual people. That institution of marriage can evolve. I believe it does need to evolve, although the Prime Minister cannot himself evolve.

The time is right. That has been evidenced by the turnout of people right across the country and by the surveys and the polls that have been done. The time is right for Australia to embrace marriage equality and leave behind that discrimination, as we have seen happen in so many other ways and in so many other countries, like Ireland, the United States and New Zealand. On top of that, yes, it would be good for our economy to actually have marriage equality here, rather than same-sex couples having to fly to New Zealand and New Zealand benefiting from that. It was a sad day. I hope that there is some reconsideration in the party room and that the voices of those who support marriage equality are heard loud and clear. (Time expired)