Page 1614 - Week 05 - Thursday, 11 May 2006
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would not deliver true equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people.
In addition, the government takes the view that ACT marriage legislation would be more likely than any other to result in challenge either before the courts or by the commonwealth. It was for these reasons that a civil union model was chosen as the best way to deliver functional equality under territory law for couples who either do not have access to marriage under the commonwealth Marriage Act or prefer not to marry. By “functional equality” I mean that, while a civil union is different from a marriage, it will be treated in the same way as marriage is treated under territory law. A civil union will give access to the benefits of marriage in that it will provide for a domestic partnership to be established on the formal declaration of two people that they intend to form such a partnership. The record of that declaration will provide legal recognition of the relationship and will provide immediate, indisputable evidence that the two people are domestic partners and that they are in a civil union.
Mr Stefaniak has put forward a registration model in his Registration of Relationships Bill. The model proposed by Mr Stefaniak would not, by itself, deliver functional equality. While it provides a mechanism for formally evidencing a significant relationship or a caring relationship, it would not provide the same rights as marriage. The effect of the registration of a deed of relationship, as proposed under Mr Stefaniak’s Registration of Relationships Bill, would be that the relationship would be taken to be a domestic partnership for the purposes of all territory laws. While this is an advance on the current situation in that registration would provide immediate, indisputable evidence that the two people are domestic partners, it would not provide the functional equality with marriage that the government’s Civil Unions Bill provides. The government is of the view that the civil unions model is a preferable model for the ACT and will not be supporting Mr Stefaniak’s bill.
The commonwealth Attorney-General, Mr Ruddock, has expressed concerns both to the Chief Minister and me that the Civil Unions Bill equates civil unions with marriage and may have the effect of confusing civil unions with marriage. The government is of the view that there is a quite clear distinction between a civil union and a marriage. This distinction has been recognised in other jurisdictions and needs to be acknowledged here. New Zealand, for example, has both a civil unions act and a marriage act.
The distinction between a civil union and a marriage was considered by the New Zealand parliament’s justice and electoral committee in its commentary on the New Zealand Civil Unions Bill 2004. That committee noted that there were certain differences between civil union and marriage and that the two were different things. The list of differences that the committee noted in its commentary included that marriage is available solely to a man and a woman and civil unions will also be available to same-sex couples; that, unlike the marriage act, the bill did not contain references to husband and wife in relation to civil union partners; and that the marriage act provided for the solemnisation of marriages overseas, service marriages outside of New Zealand and proxy marriage where one party cannot be in New Zealand, but the New Zealand bill did not provide for overseas, service or proxy civil union.
The committee also noted that, in terms of non-legal differences, marriage has many varied religious, cultural and societal beliefs associated with it and civil union does not,
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