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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Tuesday, 10 February 2004) . . Page.. 126 ..

death of one parent, the children will have another parent with legal responsibility for their care.

The bill defines what is meant by the term “parent”. A parent of a child is the child’s mother, the child’s father or another person who is a parent because of the operation of a presumption about parentage. This creates a parent and child relationship between a child and a person who is neither the child’s father nor the child’s mother.

To conclude, if we do not make the changes that we have been debating tonight, we will be sending a message—nobody can deny this—to same-sex couples and to their children that they are somehow second-class families and second-class citizens. If we do not make these changes, we will be maintaining a legislated piece of discrimination against a group of people on the basis of their gender or their sexuality. That is, quite simply, an unsustainable position.

I understand that some people feel very strongly about the adoption issue: it is obvious; I know it. It seems clear however, as I indicated earlier, that the notion that homosexual people generally are unsuitable to be parents is based on the idea that homosexuality itself is somehow wrong. I cannot avoid the conclusion, having listened to some of the debate and some of the opposition to the proposals the government has put tonight, that there is a notion implicit in some of the opposition that somehow homosexual people are unsuitable to be parents.

That is not the view of the majority of people within our community. Our society today—our Canberra society, our Canberra community—is open to accepting a wide range of family types provided that they provide love and security for the children within them. The bill recognises that such loving families are built by people of all kinds. I thank members for their support of the bill. I commend the bill to the Assembly.

Mrs Cross: I move that the debate be adjourned, Mr Speaker.

MR SPEAKER: The debate has been closed, Mrs Cross. As the debate has been closed, it might be more appropriate to consider moving that motion when we move to the detail stage.

Question put:

That this bill be agreed to in principle.

The Assembly voted—

Question so resolved in the affirmative

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