Page 1762 - Week 05 - Thursday, 8 May 2008
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I understand the pressure that has been brought on this government in the ACT. I could imagine some of the threats that were made because I know how powerful these people sometimes feel in relation to these matters and how much power they think they wield. But I think, on this one, it would have been nice to see them tested. I know that out there in the political world there are a whole bunch of people waiting for our Prime Minister to miss his footing. It does not look like he is going to, but I think he has on this one. If he had been put to the test then I think he would have folded.
If you look at all of the background to this, there is no reasonable argument that our Prime Minister could have put to intervene because of all of the things that he said in the past on the matter. And that is why I believe we should have stuck to our guns. I have taken that view from the beginning, principally because I think that we have lost the opportunity to lead again.
“Two people who have given notice to a civil partnership notary in accordance with section 11 may enter into a civil partnership by making a declaration before the civil partnership notary and at least one other witness.” The opportunity to do that will not emerge again for a long time because of all of the politics which have been generated by this.
So I do not support amending the legislation to pander to this current Prime Minister. I think he should have been taken on. In the end, I am not going to vote against Labor’s position in relation to this but I am so outraged about it that I think Rudd is wrong. As much as I welcome this Rudd Labor government, on this issue of the right of this Assembly to pass legislation of its own in accordance with the self-government act, we should be left alone, as Kevin Rudd promised we would be. So it is wrong, I think, for us to change our actions as a result of a threat from the federal government.
They gave us the right to do things. I acknowledge that they have got the right to intervene if they want to under section 35 of the act, but they are out there saying, “What the people of the ACT and the legislature there have done is the right thing,” or even if they disagree with what we have done, they took the position they had the right to deal with it.
It seems to me that the Rudd government would not want to see itself as a mirror image of the Howard government and that is a strong reason why I would prefer it if the amendments to our legislation were not to proceed. It is good legislation. It is the sort of stuff that shows the ACT taking the lead again on important issues. I emphasise the point again that the federal government, the federal parliament, should never be let off lightly for interfering in the way we legislate here in accordance with the self-government act.
There ought to be a debate. What has happened here is that there have been negotiations and never a debate. There needs to be a debate in the federal parliament about this. If the Rudd government wants to intervene then there ought to be a debate about it. Regrettably, that will not happen. As I said earlier, I am extremely outraged at the behaviour of the Rudd government, the way that it has treated this Labor
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