Page 441 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 16 February 2016
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The other point to be made is that the history of recognition of same-sex relationships goes back much further than the passage of the same-sex marriage act here in the ACT a few short years ago. It goes right back to the recognition of same-sex relationships in the same-sex partnerships legislation that this place sought to legislate for on a number of occasions.
Let us remember the great history of the Liberal Party when it comes to the disallowance, the undemocratic disallowance, of those laws. The federal Attorney-General at the time, Philip Ruddock, the man who is now going to be our international human rights champion, rang me up, as his territory counterpart, and said, “The cabinet has decided to recommend to the Governor-General that your law be disallowed,” and it was. It was overturned.
The Liberal Party do not have clean fingers on this, and neither do my federal colleagues in the Labor Party. They have equally at times been slow to recognise the importance of this issue to so many people in our city and elsewhere. I recall the conversations that I and the Chief Minister, Andrew Barr, and Katy Gallagher and Jon Stanhope all had with our federal counterparts about whether or not we were even allowed to have a ceremony to recognise the relationship between two people of the same sex. But we ultimately got there. We got there because we were persistent and we got there because we reiterated time and again the importance of equal recognition under law of people who were in a same-sex relationship.
Those opposite opposed those laws as well. They opposed the partnerships reforms. They opposed reforms that allowed same-sex couples to adopt children. They opposed all sorts of other removals from the statute book that were discriminatory against same-sex people. So that is their legacy and that is their record, and it dates back much further than Mr Hanson would let us believe.
That is the history of this debate. There has only been one government in this place that has consistently and persistently endured on the question of the recognition of same-sex relationships. It goes right back to 2003-04, with the reforms enacted by the then Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope, that removed over 100 discriminatory provisions in the ACT statute book against same-sex couples, many of which were opposed by those opposite, some of whom are still members of this place.
This is a matter of public importance. We must endure on this question. And the question of a plebiscite is yet another redoubt from the opponents of equality and recognition of same-sex relationships. Let us remember there are those in the Liberal Party federally who say they do not care what the result of the plebiscite is; they are still not voting for same-sex marriage. So what is the point of having it?
Even the freedom commissioner—remember the now self-declared candidate for the seat of Goldstein in the federal parliament?—has said that the plebiscite is a cop-out, that the responsibility for enacting same-sex marriage laws rests with the federal parliament and that the federal parliament should get on with the debate and vote on the question. And they should get on with that debate and that vote. The plebiscite is a ruse. The plebiscite is simply a last-ditch gasp by the conservatives in the party
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