Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This is affecting thousands of Australians. In the year that I have been in the Senate I have had hundreds of people supporting our position of standing up for their rights. It affects young people; it affects old people. Just this morning there was an older man, Gerard—a 62-year-old man—who rang ABC radio in Melbourne, in tears, because he was so upset about this further delay. He is not in good health, and he is worried that he is going to die before he is going to have a chance to marry his partner, the man that he loves. You think of people like Gerard—there are people like Gerard all around the country who are being denied the ability to have their human rights accepted and their love accepted like everybody else in Australia.

There is a young friend of mine who has just got engaged to his bloke. They looked so happy. In the photos I saw of them they looked radiant. He was hoping to be able to set a marriage date so that they could be married in front of their friends and family and have that celebrated and supported by the community. Yesterday's decision would have been an absolutely tragic blow to him. The other thing happening is that people like my friend are likely to go off to New Zealand to get married before the end of the year. We are losing so much. It is a ridiculous situation for us to be in, here in Australia, when every other English-speaking country in the world accepts equal marriage. We are the laggards. We are being left behind.

But it is a matter of time. We know that love will prevail; we know that love will win out. We will have equal marriage in Australia. The sooner it happens, and the sooner this parliament catches up, the better a country we will be.