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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Tuesday, 10 February 2004) . . Page.. 121 ..

particularly in schools where there is too much of a female influence and there are not enough young male teachers that boys can have as role models and aspire to be like. We even have the federal Labor Party talking about trying to get some balance back into young lives.

I have just remarried and I have a blended family. The lady that I was married to first was a single mother. I do not discriminate against people. I certainly try not to. But what you have to do when you make law is to look at the purpose of the law. The purpose of the law when it comes to adoption is to guarantee the best outcome for the child.

All we are hearing—it is certainly coming from the federal Labor leader now—is that both male and female role models are needed. It is not always possible to achieve that. It does not happen in whole lots of ordinary nuclear families, or normal families, or conventional families. There is a whole lot of blended families out there and reblended families, single parent families and extended families, and maybe it does not work. But what stops us from aspiring to that ideal? What stops us from aspiring to the ideal that, based on the evidence that I have seen, the best thing for a child that has been put up for adoption is to have a mother and a father?

We have had lots of comments on that. Ms MacDonald said that it was about respect. I am not sure what she said she got bullied for in the yard, but I was short—until I was about seven, I was very short—and I got bullied for being short. I can remember being picked up and used as a battering ram to get into the art room one day: four big kids picked on a little kid and were banging him against the door until Brother Peter stopped it. That happens. It is not acceptable and it should not go on, but don’t say we are bigots of some sort because we seek an ideal that is different from yours. It is the very virtue of Australian society that we can actually aspire to something, so do not sit there and call me a bigot.

John Hargreaves said, in answer to something Mrs Burke was saying at the time, that it is symbolic. Don’t make it symbolic, John. Come down to the AIDS Action Council picnic, come down to the president’s dinner and come and walk in the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and make it real. When I chose to march in the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras lots of eyebrows were raised, I have to say, in some of the circles I move in. I am Catholic. I go to my church every Sunday and enjoy it. I move in Christian circles. People said, “What are you doing that for?” I said, “Because they’re part of my community and because, with me and that community working together, we can fight things like discrimination, we can spread the message about safe sex and we can work together to make society better.” We are all different, but do not tell me that it is symbolic. Symbolism is really cheap. Come and walk the walk, John Hargreaves.

Mr Quinlan talks about being tolerant. I cannot see it, but there must be a chasm or a huge gulf in the middle of the chamber whereby tolerance is apportioned to that side of the chamber. Only those on that side of the table are tolerant, said Ted. I am glad that sitting over there makes you tolerant, because it must have meant that when we were in government we were really tolerant. Suddenly, now that we are sitting over here, we are not tolerant. You are allowed to have your own views. Tolerance is not given to you just because you have joined the Labor Party. If you look back at Labor Party history, you will find that they used to stand for lots of things on which would now say “Gee whiz, look at that.”

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