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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Tuesday, 10 February 2004) . . Page.. 142 ..

that, without the active education of people who benefit from the changes, as well as those who administer the areas where discrimination has been removed, the changes do not have an effect.

MS DUNDAS (10.45): The ACT Democrats are also very proud to support this legislation. It builds upon the work of the Legislation (Gay, Lesbian and Transgender) Amendment Bill 2002. It also amends a further 26 pieces of legislation, mainly to include the new definition of domestic partners that was not changed in the first stage of the reforms that were passed earlier last year. I am pleased that there are still people here in the Assembly to hear this debate tonight because we are doing much more today than just allowing same-sex couples to adopt children. We are actually making the lives of queer people in the ACT community better, and making the lives of the entire community better, by removing this legislative discrimination.

The Australian Democrats have spent many years standing up for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people and I am glad to be part of this continuing push to promote equality among all Australians. It was in August 2002 that this Assembly debated a motion that I tabled on removing discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex people. That motion formed the basis of the government’s community consultation, and a number of the specific initiatives in this bill follow directly from those ideas and the debate that we had in 2002.

This particularly includes the removal of the homosexual advance defence and the introduction of anti-vilification laws to protect members of the community from people inciting hatred or violence. Mr Stefaniak has spoken briefly on his amendments that oppose the removal of the homosexual advance defence and the introduction of anti-vilification laws, but I will discuss his objections when we get to the detail stage.

I also wanted to take a minute to talk about the initiatives that did not make it into this round of legislation. The government has decided not to proceed at this time with the registration of relationships. As I have said repeatedly, a registered relationships scheme has just been introduced in Tasmania which allows all couples, whether they are the same sex or otherwise, to register their relationships with the state government. This process allows them immediate and certain access to all the partner provisions of Tasmanian law.

It is unfortunate that Tasmania has been able to proceed with this innovative program, which is about allowing all couples, regardless of gender, to have their relationships formally recognised by government, but the ACT has not yet been able to make this step. Registered relationships will allow domestic partners to have certainty and proof of their relationship, as well as allowing them the benefits of their partnership immediately without their having to wait an allotted time.

I believe that the ACT must move towards implementing a registered relationship scheme and we must do this as soon as possible. I note that it was part of the ACT Labor platform at the last election, but we have not seen it delivered as yet. When Mr Smyth spoke earlier about issues of concern to the queer community, he failed to mention registered relationships, a fundamental issue that is continually being brought to my attention as something that we do need to fix, so that couples in our community can have their relationships recognised by law.

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