Page 5737 - Week 15 - Thursday, 10 December 2009
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notary returns to the office of the Registrar-General with the witness statement and declaration of civil partnership, where the Registrar-General endorses the declaration and registers the partnership.
Anyone who was to read those two processes for the first time might well ask what the difference was. They would appear to be exactly the same process involving, firstly, a notice of intent, then declaration at a ceremony and then registration by the Registrar-General. As I said before, the differences are subtle but important. Under the existing process, the civil partnership comes into legal effect at the ceremony. Under the amended process, the civil partnership does not come into legal effect until the Registrar-General endorses the declaration at a point in time after the ceremony.
The amendments do contain provisions that require the Registrar-General to register the partnership as being effective from the date of the ceremony. However, the technical difference does remain that under the proposed new process the relationship does not become legally created until the act of endorsement by the Registrar-General occurs.
The amendments do preserve in law the declaration made at the ceremony and the role of the notary. These two elements are retained and have legal weight. The Registrar-General cannot endorse the declaration unless satisfied that it occurred in the correct format and that it occurred before a notary, and these are important components.
Importantly, the amendments put forward by the government today insert transitional provisions into the act to protect those couples who have already entered into civil partnerships under the existing ceremony laws. The transitional provisions remove any doubt and confirm that civil partnerships created over the past few weeks are fully legally valid and will remain entered on the register of births, deaths and marriages. I know that those couples who have held ceremonies in the last month will be grateful for this clarity.
In concluding, I would simply like to observe that this has been, for me and for my colleagues in the Greens, a very difficult situation. We have found ourselves in one of those unenviable dilemmas that perhaps occur more often particularly when one is in the balance of power. We have thought about this long and hard. We have engaged with members of the community. We have received representations from many members of the gay and lesbian community across Canberra and it would be fair to say that the views amongst that community are not unanimous.
There are those who are disappointed by this decision we have taken today. I acknowledge that disappointment. I seek their understanding in that disappointment, because this is not the place we wanted to be in, but I also acknowledge those members of the community who have come forward and said, “We are not happy but we urge you to take the step that is open to us now.” And that is the path we have ultimately gone down, because social change rarely comes by revolution. More often it comes by evolution. I think that is the reality of social change and it is clear that, even if this legislation is not the full step we wanted to take, it is a step forward. It does deliver us progression in delivering equality, decency and respect and acknowledgement of the fact that, in my view and the view of my colleagues in the
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