Page 5733 - Week 15 - Thursday, 10 December 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
These amendments do little else than add a couple of simple administrative processes to the current arrangements. I agree with the reported statements of Mr Rattenbury that they are simply hair splitting. There is in no way a change to the central theme of the legislation, which is for the creation of civil partnership ceremonies which in their construction challenge the definition of marriage under the commonwealth Marriage Act.
Civil partnership declaration ceremonies will still look, feel and sound like a marriage and therefore they probably are a marriage. In this regard, the commonwealth has done a complete backflip. After all the crowing and all the grandstanding and after all the threats, the commonwealth seems to have folded.
Recently, I wrote to the federal Attorney-General to ask what amendments the commonwealth wanted to the ACT act. His response dated 4 December, which I received earlier this week, referring to the amendments proposed by Mr Corbell, can be summarised as follows: these amendments will bring the ACT scheme into line with the nationally consistent framework for relationship recognition.
This is a feeble attempt to justify a complete cop-out on the part of the commonwealth and their longstanding policy. They have set a precedent that will be to their embarrassment in the future. The ACT’s current laws, and even the laws that will be in place should this bill pass, are the only laws of this type that exist in Australia. The Tasmanian laws do not go as far as this legislation will go if it is passed through the Assembly today.
The position of the Canberra Liberals has not changed on this issue. The declaration ceremony, regardless of the administration requirements that sit underneath that ceremony, still look, feel and sound like a marriage. It still, in our view, challenges the definition of marriage under the Marriage Act and we will not be prepared to support it.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (4.48): “Welcome to the reality of self-government.” These are the words that were said to one of my staff this week in regard to this bill, and that is why we are here today—because the ACT parliament, a young but, might I suggest, proudly developing institution, does not ultimately have the capacity to make its own laws, comfortable in the knowledge that those laws will stand.
As we debate here today, we know that in general our federal colleagues up on the hill are rarely interested in what laws we make here. We are a small jurisdiction and one would assume that, as long as we keep the books ticking over, and that the road between the airport and the big hill runs smoothly, no-one up there would really pay that much attention to us.
But this one issue, an issue of human rights, decency and equality, appears to be the one issue that the commonwealth takes a most keen interest in; this one issue of affording same-sex and transgender couples in the ACT the right to celebrate their civil partnerships through a legally binding ceremony.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video