Page 3954 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 12 December 2006
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the ACT and the only parliament that is directly answerable to the people of the ACT in relation to territory matters. Only the members of this Assembly can claim a legitimate mandate to represent the views of the people of the territory.
The commonwealth executive or, for that matter, the unelected Governor-General cannot pretend to represent the views of the people of the ACT. It is a direct attack on democratic principles for the commonwealth to substitute its own views for those elected to represent the people of the territory.
It is regrettable that this attack on the democratic principle by the commonwealth government has made this replacement civil partnerships bill necessary. However, this government remains committed to the policy on which it went to the electors in the 2004 election. That policy is to legislate to enable two people, regardless of their gender, to enter into a legally recognised relationship. That is what this bill does.
The government is fully committed to this legislation. The government does not accept that it is somehow satisfactory to discriminate against one part of society, so it is introducing this legislation here today. There are no defensible grounds for refusing recognition of same-sex relationships, or indeed for refusing couples in any relationship the opportunity to enjoy functional legal equality under ACT law.
As a consequence of law reform in the ACT over the course of the first term of this government, the term “domestic partnership” is now used as a universal term in ACT legislation to refer to the relationship between two people living together as a couple on a genuine domestic basis. But while the law no longer distinguishes significantly between the effect of being in an informal domestic partnership and the effect of being married, the capacity for parties to establish the existence of their relationship remains unequal.
The government is continuing with this legislation because this is the model that consultation clearly indicated was the preferred model by those in favour of formal recognition of same-sex relationships. It also provides appropriate recognition for those opposite sex couples who do not wish to enter a marriage under the Marriage Act.
There is, of course, a quite symbolic difference between a civil union model and a registration model. That is an option that has been pursued elsewhere, including in Tasmania. The registration model recognises the fact of a relationship. It records what already is. A civil union model creates the relationship, rather than merely reflecting it.
This Civil Partnerships Bill, while it is similar in some respects to the disallowed Civil Unions Act, differs from it in a number of crucial respects. Firstly, and perhaps most obviously, the term “civil partnership” has been used in preference to “civil union”. The term “civil partnership” is used to avoid using the language of marriage.
The old common law formulation of marriage, which the commonwealth incorporated into the Marriage Act 1961 in 2004, is that marriage is “the union of a man and woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life”. A civil
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