Page 3955 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 12 December 2006
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partnership is not a marriage. The use of “partnership” instead of “union” highlights this difference.
The second difference is that the Civil Partnerships Bill does not say that a civil partnership is to be treated in the same way as marriage under ACT law. Instead, the bill provides that a civil partnership is a domestic partnership. That is, a civil partnership is a formally recognised domestic partnership. The concept of a domestic partnership is, as I have already outlined, well established in territory law.
While the Civil Partnerships Bill provides a scheme for two people, regardless of their gender, to enter into a formally recognised relationship, it does not address the issue of attaching the same rights and obligations as those attaching to marriage under ACT law. In this respect it is important to observe that the bill does not deliver that element of substantive equality.
It is the government’s intention over time to identify any areas where certain consequences should attach to a civil partnership and to provide for those consequences in future legislation. The Civil Partnerships Bill, by itself, is simply about providing a mechanism for couples to have their relationship formally recognised for the purposes of ACT law.
A civil partnership may be entered into by any two people, regardless of their sex. While the public debate on the repealed Civil Unions Act 2006 focused almost solely on same-sex relationships, the civil unions law and this replacement Civil Partnerships Bill can also be used by opposite-sex couples. The government will not introduce a discriminatory law that is contrary to the Human Rights Act 2006.
A further change that has been made is a change in the language used to refer to the persons performing official duties in witnessing declarations. These people are referred to in the Civil Partnerships Bill as “civil partnership notaries”. This change in language is, again, intended to highlight the fact that a civil partnership is different from a marriage.
The statutory role of the civil partnership notary is to receive the notice of intention to enter a civil partnership and then to witness the parties’ declaration that they are entering into a civil partnership with each other. At one level this could be characterised as the outsourcing of an administrative function that would otherwise be performed by the Registrar-General.
While it is certainly not required or even explicitly mentioned in the bill, the declaration process offers people the opportunity to have some form of ceremony or celebration attached to the process of entering a civil partnership. It allows the parties, if they so choose, to make a public declaration of their intention to enter a civil partnership.
A public element is part of the evidence supporting the existence of a civil partnership. The capacity to make a public declaration as part of the creation of a civil partnership corresponds with that. I commend the bill to the Assembly.
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