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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Tuesday, 10 February 2004) . . Page.. 123 ..

assumption about a person based on an attribute that the person has, rather than considering the person as an individual.

We can all think of examples: “Women cannot do labouring jobs because they aren’t strong enough”; “Aboriginal families are bad tenants”; “People over 55 don’t make good employees.” Those are sweeping, discriminatory statements that we all know are wrong. Saying that same-sex couples cannot make good parents is equally sweeping, discriminatory and wrong. I think that we all want a community in the ACT in which people are judged on their own merits and are treated equally. That is why the government is committed to reducing discrimination and that is what this bill is all about.

The bill is not, despite being the focus of much of the debate, about whether homosexuality is wrong. We know that that is not the view of the majority of the people in this community. This bill is not about making groundbreaking changes to the law on families. It is not about so-called social engineering. It is simply about removing discrimination. It is about giving equal treatment under the law to same-sex partners and to their children.

We want same-sex partners to be treated in the same way as opposite-sex partners are now treated. Importantly, we also want to remove discrimination against their children. Children of opposite-sex partners presently have two parents recognised by the law. There is no reason why children of same-sex partners should be treated any differently.

Some people will argue—indeed, both Ms Tucker and Ms Dundas have mentioned it tonight—that this bill does not go far enough and that we should allow for legal recognition of more than two parents for a child. They point to examples where known gamete donors want to be involved in the life of a child born within a same-sex partnership.

While there are many families where parenting roles are taken by adults who are not recognised as parents, this bill is not aimed at legal recognition of those social arrangements. This bill is simply about equality of treatment of same-sex couples and their children and, because it is about treating everyone equally, any changes to the number of parents recognised would apply to all couples and to all families. That would be, I think we would all have to concede, a major change in the way our community dealt with families and it is not part of this government’s current policy.

The Parentage Bill extends current parentage presumptions that arise when a woman has a child. These parentage presumptions have been in place for many years. They set up a structure aimed at identifying two people to be responsible for each child. The presumptions are not mutually exclusive, nor are they effective in identifying a second parent for every child. However, they have been widely agreed as a method for the law to identify who may be the parents of a child in most situations and the Supreme Court is given the power to resolve any conflicts over parentage.

If a woman has a child while she is in a domestic partnership, both she and her partner are presumed to be the parents of that child. The bill makes that presumption operate in relation to same-sex domestic partnerships, not just opposite-sex domestic partnerships.

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