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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Tuesday, 10 February 2004) . . Page.. 122 ..

Let’s look at what this is all about. Mr Stanhope interjected at one stage that it is called democracy. According to your consultation, 90 per cent of the people you consulted were actually against this legislation. If it is about democracy and 90 per cent of those that responded said not to do it, I would appeal to your sense of democracy, Jon. Read your report. Listen to what people have said to you.

Mr Stanhope: Happy to see you at the next election, Brendan. Happy to see you at the ballot box, mate.

MR SMYTH: I will be happy to see you at the next election, Mr 84 Per Cent. Some days you get that high. It is a very long way to fall and when you hit rock bottom it can really hurt. I will see you in eight months. I am not worried about the fight, Jon. Let’s get rid of the rhetoric. Let’s bring this debate back to what it is we are attempting to do in this legislation, that is, to legislate—

MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Smyth! Relevance, please. Enough will be said between now and October about October’s events; just stick to the bill.

MR SMYTH: Mr Speaker, I know I am being bad when I respond to the Chief Minister’s interjections, but some days you just cannot resist. This notion that you can remove all discrimination needs to be challenged.

Mr Quinlan: Remove none is the answer; don’t bother.

MR SMYTH: There you go. Mr Quinlan, always twisting things, says, “Remove none.” The people here voted to remove discrimination with you last year, but you forget about that. You are very selective in the way you pick things out of the ether and you should present a more balanced view. Oddly enough, Mr Quinlan, that would be being tolerant.

Mr Speaker, when it comes down to it, there is a fundamental divide here. My challenge to those opposite would be to stop talking the talk and start walking the walk. I am going to continue doing it. I do not agree with all sections of the community all the time, but when we legislate we should be legislating in favour of those most in need and most vulnerable. In this case, that is the child. On the evidence that I have seen—I acknowledge that there is conflicting evidence—and until somebody can give a definitive report, I believe that we should reject this bill.

MR STANHOPE (Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for Environment and Minister for Community Affairs) (9.25), in reply: Mr Speaker, this government has introduced the Parentage Bill to deal with discrimination based on sexuality that still exists in our laws about family. The Parentage Bill amalgamates existing provisions relating to parentage presumptions into a single piece of legislation. It amends the Adoption Act 1993, which is also about parentage, because it allows for people to become parents through the operation of an adoption order made by the Supreme Court.

Some people have expressed strong feelings about the amendments in this bill. I want to emphasise that we are not making major changes to the law about parentage. What we are doing is simply to remove provisions that are clearly and directly discriminatory. We all know about discrimination and we all know what it is. It is when you make an

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