Page 1601 - Week 05 - Thursday, 11 May 2006
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Our bill is supported by the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, and the Australian Christian Lobby in the ACT, and we have received support from same-sex couples who do not necessarily want civil unions. So, if anyone is propagating an idea that there is one undifferentiated same-sex view on this, that simply is not true. Like all other sections of the community, the views are varied. It was interesting to see the op ed by Rodney Croome in yesterday’s Canberra Times. It put the same-sex view on Tasmania’s registration scheme, but it was interesting in that he saw the Stanhope bill as the application of a conservative institution and the register as taking same-sex couples outside that conservative template. It was a very interesting article.
As I said, we have received a number of letters from people, including those who support a same-sex register and parents of people who want to avail themselves of that opportunity. We have received letters from parents saying they do not want to see same-sex unions—they do not want to see something like a marriage—but they feel that what we are putting up is the right thing to do. One woman said she was not terribly happy with the idea that her daughter was a lesbian and was very concerned about a ceremony like a marriage. She liked the idea of a register so that people can celebrate how they like, and she ended up by saying:
So I want to thank the Liberal Party for its bill, but what I don’t like is the idea that they are pretending to be married. Its meaning should not be changed by a minority group. What the Liberal Party is doing is the right thing. I don’t want to watch my daughter go through some kind of marriage ceremony. My feeling is that marriage is becoming so bland. The Liberal idea includes everyone and different types of relationships.
And it does, because it is based on the Tasmanian bill. On a controversial issue like this, probably a large number of people in our community are not particularly interested in it one way or the other; they have other matters that concern them. That is also the nature of politics. We see that in this place on all issues. But it is an issue that people who have an interest one way or the other get very passionate about. It is an issue on which the federal government law will override the territory law if there are inconsistencies, and it is an issue on which I think a vast majority of people in Australia do not want to see discrimination.
But I would also submit that probably the vast majority of people in Australia—and indeed the ACT—accept the institution of marriage as defined in the federal Marriage Act and want that protected, but at the same time are happy to see that people do not suffer discrimination and do have the same financial, economic and other rights as the rest of us. I re-commend my bill to the Assembly and, for the reasons stated, the opposition will not be supporting the government’s bill.
MR BARR (Molonglo—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation and Minister for Industrial Relations) (5.49): I am very pleased to speak in support of the Civil Unions Bill. It is important to me and indeed to the whole community. I was there when this law reform process began six years ago with a series of resolutions from ACT Young Labor that led to the Labor Party putting this to the electorate in 2001, and I am very proud to be here today to vote for this bill.
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