Page 4784 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 11 November 2009
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It is quite clear that the amendments to the commonwealth Marriage Act in 2004 operate in a discriminatory manner by specifically referring to a union between a man and a woman. The consequence of a definition framed in these terms is quite deliberately to expressly exclude same-sex couples, suggesting that the former coalition government feared that they might otherwise have been included in the Marriage Act. The effect of the current definition in the Marriage Act is that a sufficient number of Australian citizens are left without the full range of legal rights and protections that are conferred by marriage solely on the basis of their sexuality or gender.
To avoid any inconsistency with the Marriage Act, therefore, the government has been left with no choice but to move amendments that will positively discriminate in favour of same-sex couples in order to gain an appropriate and previously absent recognition of their rights. The current discriminatory provisions of the Marriage Act convey a message that same-sex relationships are inferior and not deserving of the same respect and recognition as relationships between heterosexual adults. Same-sex couples should, in the government’s view, have access to choices similar to those enjoyed by heterosexual couples for the recognition of their relationships.
Now, of course, the other issue at play here is the right of this place and this territory to make laws for same-sex couples and to provide for legal recognition and equality before the law. The issue at stake is the power vested in the Assembly to make laws for the governance of the people of the territory, subject to the understood position that only the commonwealth may legislate in relation to some matters. Marriage is only one of those matters. The recognition of civil partnerships is not one of those matters if legislation to legally recognise those relationships does not take the form of an ACT marriage act.
The Greens have indicated the importance of their bill in maintaining pressure on the commonwealth to promote equality for gay and lesbian people in the ACT. The Labor Party welcomes the Greens’ support for and commitment to this process, a process that we have championed for a long time. In addition, this bill will also place political pressure on the commonwealth to acknowledge our right as a self-governing territory and to acknowledge the power vested in the Assembly to make laws for the governance of the people of the ACT. The people of the ACT are responsible through their elected representatives for their own governance, and this bill should be allowed to stand when it is passed today.
Those are the essential elements of the government’s reforms and the government’s amendments to this bill. The government believes strongly that there is a need to ensure that at all steps those who are in same-sex relationships are not discriminated against in our community and that, equally, where there is an opportunity to provide for legal recognition of the important and solemn act of choosing to enter into a relationship with another before friends, family and the community at large, it should be able to be made available through a legally recognised and binding ceremony. The government will be supporting this bill today and supporting it with the amendments that I have outlined to the Assembly.
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