Page 1904 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
constitutional range of powers prescribed within the self-government act such as a law that we have passed, the Civil Unions Act.
That respect is not being shown to the people of the Australian Capital Territory by the commonwealth government in its determination to have disallowed the Civil Unions Act under the auspices of section 35 of the Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act itself. The territory and the Assembly acknowledge, in the address, the fact that the self-government act certainly allows the commonwealth the capacity under section 35 to advise the Governor-General of the commonwealth’s position that a certain enactment should be either disallowed or that amendments should be recommended to it. It is in that particular context that this address is so appropriate.
In the first instance, we draw attention to the fact that this legislation, the Civil Unions Act, is legislation enacted lawfully, consistent with the powers of the Assembly, following and in pursuance of, quite clearly, a mandate presented to the government through the election process—not just that this government was elected to govern the territory but that in fact the Labor Party, in the context of the last election, campaigned actively on the fact that we would propose, if re-elected, to remove all legislative discrimination against gays and lesbians within this community, including that we would recognise through legislation the relationships of gay and lesbian couples.
There is a clear mandate for this legislation from the people of the Australian Capital Territory represented by the election of the Labor Party to government on a platform which included the very matters legislated for in the Civil Unions Act. We campaigned on this issue. It is part of the platform position of the Australian Labor Party. We acknowledged that; we campaigned on that; we undertook in the campaign, if elected by the people of the Australian Capital Territory, to legislate in this way.
That is a clear political mandate delivered to the Australian Labor Party in government to legislate in the very way that we have legislated. And it would be an absolute denial of the democratic rights of the people of the Australian Capital Territory for the commonwealth now to assert that, because it has a particular ideological position in relation to this piece of legislation, it should be disallowed.
The commonwealth had other options available to it. It could have pursued this matter otherwise. It could have asserted in its case that the Civil Unions Act was inconsistent with the Marriage Act. It could have introduced legislation and, in insisting that the Civil Unions Act was inconsistent with the Marriage Act, it might have chosen to have the matter tested in the High Court. We would have accepted that and would have represented our position. We would have argued most strongly that the Civil Unions Act 2006 is definitely not inconsistent with the Marriage Act.
One wonders why the commonwealth did not pursue that particular path. Is it that the commonwealth would not like to see the matter agitated in the High Court? I would be very interested in seeing the matter agitated in the High Court. The High Court makes forensic legal sense. It would have been interesting to see what the High Court might have had to say about the Marriage Act, its operations and its provisions. It would have been very interesting to see what some of the judges of the High Court might say about any inconsistency between the Civil Unions Act and the Marriage Act.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .