Page 2908 - Week 08 - Thursday, 17 August 2017
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should not be overridden by religious beliefs. I and my colleagues unequivocally agree that all Australians should be treated equally under the law, and that includes being able to marry the person they love. LGBTIQ Australians, including Canberrans, should have the same opportunities for love, commitment and happiness as everybody else.
MS BERRY (Ginninderra—Deputy Chief Minister, Minister for Education and Early Childhood Development, Minister for Housing and Suburban Development, Minister for the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence, Minister for Women and Minister for Sport and Recreation) (12.20): I would again like to add my support to this very important matter and support the motion that the Chief Minister has brought on here today. We have spent many hours in this place talking about this. In fact, we have changed laws in this place and have seen the rights of same-sex attracted Canberrans extended to the right to marry the person they love.
The Marriage Equality (Same Sex) Act 2013 was passed by the ACT Assembly as part of our campaign for marriage equality, a campaign that was fought over many years by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex communities. It was awesome. We packed out this joint and we partied on and it was amazing; it was an awesome time to be a Canberran, to support everybody in our community.
It is important that we put on record the countless hours of work—the days, the years, the decades, the generations—of commitment to this campaign. Anyone listening or involved will know that this has not been an easy campaign. It has been heartbreaking, it has been cruel and it has been very personal. I fear that, through this current campaign, this cruelness will continue. I know that many in the community also have this fear. The cruel things that people are saying in this debate as part of this survey—as bad as some of that commentary is, and I am sure we are all seeing it across our social media posts—are very difficult to ignore or avoid.
I note the Leader of the Opposition’s comments, in speaking to his amendment, about a respectful debate on this issue, but the fact that we are even having this debate at all, saying, “You are different and because of that you will be treated unequally and the rest of us will decide if you can do the things that all the rest of us take for granted, like getting married to the person you love,” the fact that we are forced now to do this, that we are doing this at all, that we are still having this debate, is offensive and is wrong.
On an optimistic note, I have great hope that we will see marriage equality in the near future. I hope that, when we win this, all of us together, as we link arms and take action, will keep rallying and will keep working for justice. And we will win.
This issue is a deeply personal one. I cannot fathom why we are not offering the same human rights to the whole community and not purely based on their sexual orientation. We have a rare opportunity, as the Leader of the Opposition just said, to say whether or not one person’s love is greater than another person’s love for their partner and to have a say on the ability and the right for them to get married. This discrimination needs to be resolved once and for all. It is no way to treat members of our community—our neighbours, our friends and our family.
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