Page 2758 - Week 09 - Thursday, 8 August 2013
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New South Wales now looks set to consider legislating for marriage equality following the tabling on 26 July 2013 of the report by the New South Wales Legislative Council social issues standing committee on same-sex marriage in New South Wales. The New South Wales Premier, Barry O’Farrell, has come out in support of a conscience vote for the bill. He is widely quoted as saying:
My view—a view that I’ve come to in recent years—is that as a Liberal who believes that commitment and family units are one of the best ways in which society is organised, I support the concept of same-sex marriage.
With great and growing examples of international leadership, we must at last support and defend the principle that there is no justification for the prohibition of marriage based on sex or gender.
The ACT Labor government has already taken significant steps towards establishing legal recognition of same-sex couples. The ACT government has pursued legal equality for same-sex couples steadily and strategically over recent years.
The first Civil Unions Act was passed on 19 May 2006. This act provided a scheme for a couple, regardless of their sex, to enter into a formal union with the same rights and obligations as in a marriage. The civil union scheme was intended to deliver functional equality under ACT law for couples who either did not have access to marriage under the commonwealth Marriage Act 1961 or who preferred not to marry.
As members will recall, the commonwealth disallowed this act on 13 June 2006 because it “bore a marked similarity to the commonwealth’s scheme for the regulation of marriage”, and “appeared to undermine marriage, attempted to circumvent the Marriage Act, and may have created ambiguity between civil unions and marriage”.
Following this, the ACT government introduced a civil partnerships scheme in 2008, with the enactment of the Civil Partnerships Act 2008. Under this act, civil partnerships were legally recognised relationships that could be entered into by any two adults, regardless of their sex. In this way, it afforded similar rights to those under the first Civil Unions Act.
On 1 November 2011 the commonwealth passed the territories act. This act repealed section 35 of the self-government act, which allowed the Governor-General to disallow an ACT law, including the Civil Unions Act 2006. The territories act presented the first real opportunity for the ACT to provide for couples excluded from marriage under the commonwealth act in legislation that would not be subject to disallowance, other than through an act of the Australian parliament. The ACT took this opportunity, and introduced the Civil Unions Bill 2012 on 8 December 2011. The act was passed on 22 August 2012 and commenced on 11 September 2012.
The parliamentary agreement for the Eighth Legislative Assembly included a commitment to legislate for marriage equality in the ACT. The Attorney-General, Simon Corbell, has recently publicly committed to presenting a marriage equality bill 2013 that will realise formal recognition of the right to marriage equality for all people in the ACT, without discrimination.
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