Page 4794 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 11 November 2009
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and our bill, combined with the government amendment, achieves that. Under the provisions in the bill, couples will be able to assemble friends and family and conduct a ceremony, confident in the knowledge that they are creating and entering the relationship at that point in time. That is a powerful and life-changing moment and is one to be celebrated.
The remainder of the first set of amendments gives full effect to that intent. For example, there is the requirement that the details of the declaration be entered onto the register of births, deaths and marriages. By including that requirement there will be recorded evidence of the date and place the ceremony was held. This entry will act as evidence of the commencement date of the relationship should the couple ever require it.
The second amendment, the one we are discussing now, put forward by the government provides that only couples who cannot marry under the commonwealth Marriage Act will have the option of entering into a civil partnership via a ceremony. The practical effect of this amendment will be that same-sex and transgender couples have access to a ceremony to enter a civil partnership under the Civil Partnerships Act in the ACT but that this option will not be available to heterosexual couples. As has been discussed already, the government has provided legal advice that this will put the ACT Greens bill on a stronger legal footing in the context of the commonwealth law and give the federal government less cause for intervention than we have seen previously.
I would like to address two important potential issues that this amendment raises. The first is that such an amendment on first glance goes against the overall intent of the bill, which is to work for equal rights for couples regardless of gender. The concerns that the Greens have with this amendment is that by establishing a discrete option that only applies to same-sex and transgender couples we would further entrench the very incorrect view that those couples are different and require special laws.
This is a very real issue and one that has given us much to think about over the past week. But we have given serious consideration to whether or not, in pursuing that policy objective of legally recognised ceremonies for all couples, we are in fact entrenching difference and playing into the argument that same-sex and transgender couples do not deserve equal access; that, rather, they deserve special laws and to be treated differently.
We have had representations from the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex community in Canberra on this issue. These are the very community that we hope will benefit from the legislation and they, like us, have raised a very real concern that this may be a sideways step along the path of treating couples differently on the basis of sex, rather than a step forward where we treat all couples the same regardless of sex or sexual identification. But, unfortunately, that is what has already occurred at a federal level in the Marriage Act. That is the legal landscape in which we are operating. The provisions as amended by the government ensure that the ACT is acting at the limits of its constitutional power as a territory.
It is important for me to state here clearly that the ACT Greens do not believe that what is passed in the Assembly today will be the end of the road for advancing the
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