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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister representing the Prime Minister (Senator Abetz) to a question without notice asked by Senator Wong today relating to marriage equality.

To pick up on Senator Macdonald's remarks in relation to marriage equality, in fact it is the Liberal Party which is not looking at representing the people of Australia. He would know very clearly that the majority of the people of Australia want marriage equality. It is, in fact, this government that is denying that outcome.

We saw very clearly yesterday—and this came through in the opaque answer given by Senator Abetz—a Prime Minister who is actually prepared to manipulate his own party room and subvert the Liberal Party of Australia from allowing a free vote on this issue. I thought the Liberal Party supported that kind of proposition. No; of course not, because Tony Abbott, the Prime Minister, is fighting tooth and nail to remain yesterday's man, to take everyone back to the 1950s when the Australian people simply do not want to go back there. All he has done, of course, is make this an election issue when he could have given his Liberal Party members a free vote, a conscience vote, on this issue, which the Labor Party allows, so that people can vote on this issue—which is incredibly personal for a number of people—according to their conscience. I ask Senator Abetz to answer to the nearly 2,000 Tasmanians who turned out at City Hall in Hobart last Saturday to urge the Liberal Party to allow a conscience vote.

No matter what your views are on this issue—and I understand Senator Abetz's views, as they equate to the views of the Prime Minister, and I respect the views of others on this issue—I would expect everyone to respect other people's views.

Senator Ian Macdonald interjecting—

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Macdonald, you are not in your seat.

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