Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very proud to rise to speak on the Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Bill today. My contribution will be unusual because it's going to be cut in half, by about 10 minutes, to get into it. I will be honest—I'm not prepared. I'm going to talk out the debate to six o'clock tonight. But sometimes those contributions are the best and they come straight from the heart. I wanted to start by saying that the speeches I heard this morning, from my colleague Senator Janet Rice and from Senator Smith, were amongst some of the best speeches that I've heard in this place. I was very moved by both speeches. I do have a thing about Dorothy and rainbows that relates to my mother watering the plants outside my room when I was a child. She used to sing that when I was waking up.

I thought the contributions today, and the tone of the contributions, were beautiful. It's not often in this place that we get to be emotional. I suppose, based on the opportunity of voting with our conscience, we can speak our minds. I think this debate is going to be an interesting moment for those who voted for us and who follow us to get a good sense of who we are and the bases of our characters. And it also interests me that, when I think back to the old Roman Senate and, prior to that, to Greece and Athenian politics, it was a time when passion, debate, reason and logic could persuade people. We get so locked into our political positions here, but I sense that this debate will give us all an opportunity to listen and make up our mind because we have that freedom to vote with our conscience. It's a very rare thing here, and I feel extremely privileged to be able to cast my vote as part of a party which has campaigned for equal marriage now for decades.

To you, Senator Smith, if I could interrupt you—I know it's been a very long and emotional day for you, as it has been for Senator Rice. I don't have any quotes off the top of my head, but they do say that one crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name. I believe that you have had yours today, and I hope that this chamber and the next place makes sure that the spirit of your contribution and the words spoken today are actually translated into action and into law.

I pay tribute to all the campaigners everywhere, and not just in this country but also overseas, who have been leading on this issue and who have suffered through the ardour of discrimination, threats, violence and a whole lot more. I want to pay tribute to them first and foremost. I pay tribute to Rodney Croome, from my home state of Tasmania, who, along former senator Christine Milne and my colleague Senator Nick McKim—who will be giving his contribution when the Senate next meets—very proudly championed reform in Tasmania. It almost beggars belief that, in my home state only decades ago, it was illegal to be homosexual. You were thrown in jail if you were determined to be homosexual. It's very, very difficult to believe that it was only 20-something years ago, but it is actually the case. Rodney, Nick and Christine got together and they not only removed that horrendous discrimination—almost unbearable and unthinkable discrimination—but also managed to bring in some of the best anti-discrimination laws in the country in Tasmania. They worked across all political parties to do it. In old, conservative, stuffy Tasmania they got a great outcome by working together, and it's a really good model for what we should be doing here in this place.

I would also like to pay tribute to Bob Brown. In Bob's recent writings he's talked about his journey as a young gay man and the kind of mental torture he felt over this issue of not fitting in. In his latest book he talks about the time in his life where he got to the point where he was going to commit suicide. He was a medical student here in Canberra. He wasn't sure how to do it and, and he thought about it. He knew he wasn't a good swimmer and that Lake Burley Griffin was very cold, and he decided that the best way to do it would be to swim across Lake Burley Griffin, because he knew he wouldn't make it. It was at that point in his life when he faced the question, 'What am I gonna do? I can't live with this,' that he decided that the three things he needed most to get through life, to build a flimsy raft to carry him across the turmoil, was to remain optimistic, to take action and to be himself. They were the three things that he decided he needed. That went on to form a big basis of his activism in his later life. This issue is deeply important to him, as it is to many LGBTIQ people around the country.

I'd like to pay tribute to Janet, who has led our team into this debate, and her partner Penny, who I am very fond of. She's also one of the world's most important climate scientists, which I think is also incredibly important to note. I also pay tribute to my colleague Sarah Hanson-Young, who's not here tonight, who was the Greens' representative on same-sex marriage for many, many years and is very well respected and acknowledged in the LGBTIQ community here in Australia.

There are so many others, but they're just the ones that come to mind. I think it's important to acknowledge the fight and the struggle that they've had over a number of years to get us to this point. When this passes, and I'm sure that it will, it will be a crowded hour of glorious life for all of us—maybe more than just one hour. When this passes, if the party is anything like what we saw in Braddon, Canberra, last night, then we'll be having an early Christmas celebration.

I would also like to say—and I truly mean this—that one of the best speeches that I've heard in this place was in 2012 when we had this debate the last time. I was a new senator and I sat in here and I listened to former Senator Faulkner speak on this issue. He talked about this issue being a lot of things and there being a lot of layers of complex emotions but that, ultimately, the most important thing was to ensure that everybody was equal before the law. It's a pretty simple concept. If we discriminate on the basis of your sexual preference or your gender identity, then why can't we discriminate on the basis of your race or your religion or the colour of your skin or your football team? The list goes on. He said it's a fundamental principle that everybody in a democracy should be equal before the law. This issue has hurt a lot of people over a long period of time. They may not choose to get married, but it's the right—their right—and the choice that's absolutely critical to these people.

So I think, at the end of the day, we can talk about our religious differences, but we really need to look at what the basis of a democracy is, and that is all people being equal before the law. When I ran with ex-senator Christine Milne in 2010 on her ticket for the Senate in Tasmania, I was tasked with going as a Greens candidate to an Australian Christian Lobby forum in Launceston. I remember that it was a very colourful night, and when I got in there I figured that I wasn't going to get any votes, so when it was my turn to talk I stood up and I said, 'Look, I don't expect any of you are going to vote for me, so I'm just going to speak my mind tonight and tell you what I think.' I talked about the issue of people being equal before the law and discrimination and other issues, and it occurred to me that there was a lot of fear in the room, which, to me, has always been the opposite of love. So I said that. I said, 'Gee, there's a lot of fear in this room. Where does that come from?' To be honest, I might have agitated them a little bit by saying that if Jesus were alive today he would have been a Green, because of his preachings of love. I did grow up in a Christian family and I was a practising Christian till my early 20s, so it's something I am schooled in and I do believe deeply. Interestingly enough, at the end of the night when I talked to people individually I had a few people say to me, 'You might've got a few more votes than you thought, Peter.'

I met one of the local pastors who I agreed to have a breakfast with because he said, 'I want to talk to you about that fear.' We went out and we had a 2½-hour-long breakfast where we discussed this issue, and I've got to say that I think I get where the fear comes from—the fear of the unknown, the fear of change—but I also was quite surprised and quite shocked with the focus on the sexual aspects of same-sex couple relationships. It was something I wasn't expecting, to be honest. I think it's understandable that people fear change. They have grown up with their own views and they have their own ethics and their own philosophies, but I still think it's a fundamental right in a democracy for everybody to be equal before the law.

With only a few minutes left to go, I will say a little bit about the plebiscite. It was a victory yesterday. It was an ugly one, because so many people have suffered throughout this process, and it was a very expensive one. But, nevertheless, it was an important victory, because nearly eight million people around this country sat around their coffee tables, around their kitchens, in their bedroom, out in a cafe—who knows where—and they filled in that form. They filled in that form and they said, yes, we should legislate for equal marriage in Australia. Because it's an unusual exercise in our democracy to have a postal plebiscite and people have gone to those efforts to vote and recognise that, I can tell you that there are going to be very high expectations on us. Eight million people around the country are going to want to know why we haven't legislated for same-sex marriage. At the end of the day, this will be a reform that I am going to be very proud to have been a part of. It certainly will be a reform that I'm going to talk to my children about, and I'll tell them that I was here to witness it.

I'm looking at the clerks. I saw the interview with Rosemary Laing before she left. She was sitting in the chair when the Mabo decision came down. It was a very emotional time for her. I certainly hope that all of us are going to be able to share in the gravity and the momentousness of this decision.

Debate interrupted.