Page 3302 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 22 August 2012
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This bill rights a wrong. It rights a wrong that was done to a reform that was proposed by this Labor administration in 2006 and adopted by a previous Assembly in the terms that were proposed. It rights the wrong of an act of this Assembly being overturned by a federal government because of a philosophical disagreement about how gay and lesbian couples in our community should be respected and recognised and their relationships legally honoured.
I had just become Attorney-General in 2006 when I got a phone call from the then federal Attorney-General, Phillip Ruddock. Early one evening he rang me and told me that federal cabinet had agreed to recommend to the Governor-General that the Civil Unions Act be overturned. I said to him: “Thank you for letting me know. Why?” He said to me: “I knew you would ask me that question. I cannot tell you.” There was no rationale for this decision. It was just decided and overturned, and people who had entered into civil unions had that right ripped away from them in a completely arbitrary manner.
But this Labor government did not give up. We pursued the issue again, with a new federal government. Once again we were stymied. We were stymied by ignorance. We were stymied by an old-fashioned view about how the relationships of same-sex couples should not be recognised. We progressed reform to the extent that we could. At every step we pursued reform to the extent that we could. Changes to laws were made, words were changed, names were changed, titles were changed. It almost became absurd, but we achieved recognition, legal recognition, of same-sex relationships through territory law. And tonight we come full circle. Tonight we pass legislation which fully reinstates the reforms made by Labor in 2006 and so arbitrarily overturned by the then Howard Liberal government.
There are clearly some in this chamber tonight who would like to see that course of action repeated. The arguments we have heard from those opposite, from Mrs Dunne and presumably from her colleagues who are incredibly mute, is that there is no place for civil unions in ACT law. There is no place for the recognition of same-sex relationships through a civil union scheme in ACT law. And presumably their position, after the ACT election, if we are unfortunate enough to see them on this side of the chamber, will be to repeal a Civil Unions Act. If it is not their position, I would invite them to declare that now, because everything they have said would suggest otherwise.
This is an important reform. This is a reform that provides for civil unions, with a formal and legally recognised civil union celebrant to conduct a ceremony that has legally binding effect from the time that it occurs. From the time that declarations are made between a same-sex couple before their family and friends, it will have legal effect. There will no longer just be a paper-based scheme. There will no longer be some somewhat embarrassing administrative formality that has to be completed. It will be a meaningful, legally binding ceremony, and that is what it should always have been.
The government is proud to debate this bill in the Assembly this evening. In the detail stage I will move a series of amendments which propose to ensure the recognition of relationships from other jurisdictions as civil unions and to make a range of other changes, all intended to ensure that people who have entered into the equivalent of a
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