Page 1598 - Week 05 - Thursday, 11 May 2006
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Despite the government’s amendments, which I must say we have only had a very short period of time to look at, we would say that the Civil Unions Bill is unnecessary. There would be significant problems with it, I would submit, in terms of the federal government’s attitude towards it and indeed the commonwealth parliament’s attitude towards it. I have certainly had a number of chats with a few Labor members there, who are scratching their heads as to why the ACT government has gone down this path. I doubt very much that the Chief Minister and his cohorts here have the support of a significant body of people in their own party up in the big house.
This could well be another Stanhope white elephant. Indeed, it was introduced at the time the government was having big problems with its budget, which seem to have been miraculously cleared up today. Gee, let us hope that that is right, but I doubt it. I will believe that when I see it. It could simply be a classic case of diverting attention from yourself. When Idi Amin had troubles, he invaded Tanzania, and that sort of badly backfired on him. In a different but not dissimilar situation here, if it is grandstanding, this could simply be another white elephant and indeed could backfire on the government.
The government has presented this Civil Unions Bill as the middle road. There are a lot of people in our community who do not see it as such. It represents an extreme in terms of precedent in Australia. A lot of people have been bombarding members with emails in the last couple of weeks saying that. In fact, there is one which is—
Mr Barr: Very few from inside the territory; they have all come from interstate.
MR STEFANIAK: There are quite a few of them. Anyway, the middle road, I would suggest, would be represented by the model of a register of relationships. There is no need for the government to introduce a marriage-by-any-other-name model, which it has done, to achieve symbolic and legal equity, which the Chief Minister stated were his aims when introducing the bill. What the Chief Minister does not dwell upon is that, even among the submissions that he has received, there was no clear majority support for the position the government has arrived at. I can be corrected if I am wrong here, but there were not a huge number of submissions for this. I think the Chief Minister, when introducing it, said there were about 40 and about 50-50 either way.
Mr Barr: Four hundred.
MR STEFANIAK: Well, even so, that is still not a huge amount given that I have tabled a petition with over 1,600 signatures, Mr Barr. It is interesting that, even if it is 400 and it is 50-50 either way, that is not a huge amount of support for the position the government has arrived at. I think, too, that there are probably a lot more pressing concerns facing the people of the ACT at this point in time, and we have had debates about those in this place.
As I said, I have tabled a petition, which was gathered by the Australian Christian Lobby, objecting to civil unions yet supporting a registration scheme. It is very significant to note that in our discussions on this bill—and we have had quite a few discussions with a number of people, including groups who were very keen to see a civil unions bill—the main Christian churches in Canberra, the Roman Catholic Church, the
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