Page 1646 - Week 05 - Thursday, 11 May 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
correctly refer to a union solemnised in a foreign country, in the same way as these unions are referenced in section 88EA of the Marriage Act. I commend the amendments to the Assembly.
MR STEFANIAK (Ginninderra) (10.13): Mrs Dunne is going to briefly mention something and I will use this to finish up our part of the debate, noting the ruling in relation to my bill, which I will not get to close because of that.
The last thing the attorney mentioned, and one of the big problems seen by a lot of people in our community with this bill, was that this is not just for people in the ACT—unlike, for example, the Tasmanian registration scheme, which was just for people in Tasmania—but for people right across the world. As Mr Corbell rightly says, it did refer initially to marriage in other countries; he has now changed that to a civil union. But I think the same principle basically does apply. We are saying that, despite what he has done in this bill, he does seem to say that a marriage and a civil union are one and the same. However, regardless of that, it still applies to people outside the territory.
One of the problems seen by some people was that people could come here from all over Australia, enter into a civil union and go back to their respective states, rather than being able to do it in their own jurisdiction—in other words, we are legislating for all of Australia. That might be interesting for tourism, but that did cause a concern for people, because normally our laws—for example, our criminal law and civil laws—tend to relate to things that just happen in the territory, and if someone living in New South Wales did something in New South Wales they would not be affected by ACT law.
This does cause a lot of problems, and I do not see any real change in terms of a civil union being open to other than non-ACT residents. It is a state or territory law; it is not meant to be a national law. That may cause you some problems still with the commonwealth. I hark back to what you said earlier when you introduced this suite of amendments—that in no way is this meant to equate civil unions with marriage. Your amendments, although I have not exactly had a lot of time to look at them, do seem, in terms of the learned opinion I tabled, to still be very problematic.
Mr Stanhope: Learned?
MR STEFANIAK: I am sure she is just as good as young Annabel you got to do an opinion for you in relation to the human rights thing the other day, Jon. From what I have seen of your amendments, I still tend to think that you may have some very significant problems with the federal Marriage Act and the commonwealth law, despite your efforts here tonight with these amendments. I would not necessarily bet my house on it or anything like that, but the fact is we have not had a huge amount of time to see them. To all intents and practical purposes, the bill still equates a civil union with a marriage. You still have a problem, I would think, with the federal Marriage Act and the federal parliament. Indeed, from what you were alluding to about some of these amendments, they still might not have the effect you hope they do.
We are not going to know that tonight. Your bill is going to pass. We just have to wait and see. But you might have a lot of disappointed people as a result of what you are trying to achieve with your bill, which leads me to the opposition’s bill. Somebody accused Mrs Dunne of saying that what we are supporting is a lesser relationship. That is
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .