Page 1597 - Week 05 - Thursday, 11 May 2006
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voted, federally, in favour of the Howard amendments; I think it was last year or the year before.
In terms of this bill, I think the federal shadow Attorney-General, in accusing the Howard government of interfering against the law-making of states and territories, misses the point. There is a problem here. The federal government has indicated that it will strongly oppose any action that would attempt to equate other relationships with marriage or that would create confusion over the distinction between marriage and same-sex relationships. As I said, we support its stand on the definition of marriage in the commonwealth Marriage Act.
When the bill was flagged, Mr Ruddock, the federal Attorney-General, signalled his intention to deal robustly with the ACT government’s meddling in commonwealth law by default, delivering this broadside:
And for a Territory to say, well, that’s fine for the Commonwealth Parliament to have resolved it in that way, but we’re still going to assert that a civil union is a marriage in all but title, and we’re going to use marriage celebrants to demonstrate that, let me make it very clear that that will not satisfy the Commonwealth …
There are some significant problems in the government bill as it stands, and I do not think they are necessarily fixed up at all by the amendments. There are significant problems specifically with section 5 as it stands, which states: “A civil union is to be treated for all purposes under territory law in the same way as a marriage”. Also, section 19 states:
A marriage solemnised in a foreign country that cannot be recognised as a marriage in Australia because of the Marriage Act … section 88EA is a civil union for the purpose of territory law.
Also, people do not have to be residents of the Australian Capital Territory to enter into a civil union. Indeed, they do not necessarily even have to be residents of Australia. I am not sure if that has changed in the government’s amendments. There are some further problems with it, which have certainly raised a lot of debate and concern in the community.
We have just dealt with other legislation about the age at which someone can be detained, which will be 18. Sixteen and 17-year-olds now cannot be detained under the preventative detention laws that the government has just had passed. Yet this particular bill allows—and it seems even the amendments would still allow—teenagers as young as 16 to enter into same-sex civil unions. You cannot do that under the Marriage Act; one person has to be over 18 and one person can be 16 or 17, and of course must get consent. But under the Civil Unions Bill both partners can be 16 or 17, and that is a very significant departure from a lot of traditional law in Australia, and indeed an interesting departure from the government’s principles in a law we have just passed.
The government’s bill also provides for the use of marriage celebrants authorised under commonwealth legislation to perform civil union ceremonies and attend to the legal requirements for registering the unions. I note that the government has an amendment to that; what effect that will have is something I certainly cannot say. But certainly the bill as it stands has that provision.
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