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

At this juncture, I'd like to make a big call-out to my home state of Tasmania, where nearly two out of three people voted for marriage equality. I'm very proud of Tasmania. I'm very proud of my home electorate of Bass, where nearly 61 per cent of people voted in support of equal marriage. But it's a point of concern for me that not a single Liberal member of parliament at state or federal level supported or campaigned for the 'yes' vote. It may have been a coincidence that, within a few days of the release of the postal plebiscite, Liberal ex-Premier Robin Gray, who's no friend of the Greens, called for Senator Abetz to retire because he's so completely out of touch, as is the Liberal Party in Tasmania. Some of my Liberal colleagues are here today. In their speeches, they may want to address the issue of why no-one campaigned for the 'yes' vote yet nearly two-thirds of the state came out in support of equal marriage.

As someone who's been married nearly 20 years, I would like every Australian, no matter what their sexual preference, to be able to enjoy what I've enjoyed. There's no reason at all that we should be discriminating against people on any basis, let alone on the basis of their sexual preference. I would like to highlight that I have very close friends who are LGBTIQ and there are members of my family who are LGBTIQ. In 2012, when I first started as a senator, I met a fantastic young man, Andrew Greene, at a marriage equality barbecue. Andrew is based in Launceston. I've got to know Andrew over the years. I've even worked with him on an art project around this. It's people like Andrew that I stand here to represent today. I know how much he's suffered and how difficult his life has been.

I talked last week about the pressure that LGBTIQ people have been under for decades. I've chosen to finish my speech in this debate with the words of two very famous LGBTIQ people—in fact, some of the more famous in the world—David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, of course long since departed. One of my all-time favourite songs, 'Under Pressure', is an anthem for the LGBTIQ community. This song was released by Queen, and it talks about the pressure that young homosexual men were under to come out and talk to their family and friends about their sexual preferences and the discrimination that they felt. This was nearly 40 years ago, and yet we still face the very same problem. Although it's quite hard to read the words of a song that you love really well, I would recommend that people, if they are listening to this speech or they read it afterwards, to download it, crank up the volume and have a listen to it. It is a really, really powerful song. I am going to pinch some words from various verses, from both David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, and it starts with this:

Pressure, pushing down on me

pressing down on you no man ask for

Under pressure that burns a building down

Splits a family in two

Puts people on the streets

…   …   …

It's the terror of knowing

What the world is about

Watching some good friends

Screaming Let me out

Pray tomorrow gets me higher gets me higher

Pressure on people people on the streets

I turned away from it all like a blind man

sat on a fence but it don't work

Keep coming up with love but it's so slashed and torn

Why, why, why?

Love love love

Insanity laughs under pressure we're breaking

Can't we give ourselves one more chance

Why can't we give love one more chance

…   …   …

'Cause love's such an old-fashioned word

and love dares you to care for the people

People on the streets for people on the edge of the night

And love dares you to change your way of

Caring about ourselves

This is our last dance

This is our last dance

This is ourselves

Under pressure

Under pressure

Under pressure

Now, we're all under pressure. We're all under pressure to actually do something historic here, and that is to end discrimination in this country. We've already spoken many words; there have been over 10 attempts to actually legislate this in parliaments across this country. The people of Australia have now spoken and they've spoken very clearly. Let's get on with passing this legislation in the Senate. I trust that we pass it in the House. I will make it very clear, the Greens won't be supporting any amendments that attempt to legislate to further entrench discrimination. We will also be moving our own amendments to improve the bill and, as I said at the beginning of my speech, Senator Rice, Senator McKim and Senator Hanson-Young especially, and previously Senators Bob Brown and Christine Milne, have campaigned so hard for so long to achieve this outcome, and we are here to do it. Every single time, we have voted to end discrimination, and we will be standing up for LGBTIQ people in the Senate.