Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me a great deal of satisfaction and pleasure to rise to speak in support of the Family Law Amendment (De Facto Financial Matters and Other Measures) Bill 2008. I do not know what the opposition’s amendments are. They had a long time to bring this kind of legislation into the parliament, having announced—rather hypocritically—that they were in favour of the essence of this idea but doing little about it over the last decade.

The package of bills of which this is a part has been a long time in coming. These bills represent the fulfilment of a promise which Labor first made at the 1998 election—when I was first elected to this place—to remove discrimination against gay men, lesbians and same-sex couples in federal legislation. It is a promise we made to a community which has suffered a historic legacy of discrimination. It is a promise that I, and some other members—notably my friend the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, Mr Albanese—have continued to promote over the past decade. It is a promise that we are, at last, in a position to keep, and I want to express my appreciation to the Attorney-General and the Prime Minister that these bills are being brought on so early in the government’s term in fulfilment of that promise.

This week we were delighted to see a fine young Australian, Matthew Mitcham, win a gold medal in diving in the Beijing Olympics, and I know all members will join with me in congratulating him. But what does it say about us as a country that while we congratulate him we continue to tolerate laws in this country that deny him and his partner—the partner who provided him with so much support—some of the rights that other Australians take for granted? It says we are a country that still has a long way to go before we achieve full equality for all of our citizens. These bills mark another step, an important step, in reaching that goal.

This bill amends the Family Law Act to provide opposite-sex and same-sex de facto couples access to the federal Family Court on property and maintenance matters. The bill also amends the act to provide for amendments relating to financial agreements between married couples and superannuation splitting and to provide for certificates given in relation to family dispute resolution. It is hardly revolutionary stuff, but it has the ability to affect the lives of many people. The bill is part of a larger package of bills, of which the most important is the Same-Sex Relationships (Equal Treatment in Commonwealth Laws—Superannuation) Bill 2008. Taken together, these bills go a long way to fulfilling Labor’s promise to end discrimination in Commonwealth law.

These bills will mean a lot to many people in my electorate, including people who I know well and am proud to call my friends. But I point out to all honourable members on both sides that these bills will benefit gay men and lesbians in their electorates, whether they know of their existence or not. The gay and lesbian community may be more visible and vocal in the electorate of Melbourne Ports, but that does not mean that these bills will have no importance in the electorates of Riverina, O’Connor, Maranoa, Casey or Bradfield. They will certainly have importance to people in those places—people whose voices are not often heard in this House.

I am pleased that the opposition have decided to support these bills. I do not know what their amendment is, but I am entitled to point out that the reason we had to wait 10 years to see these bills before this House is that the opposition, when they were in government, preferred to play cheap populist politics with this issue rather than do what they knew was the right thing. We all remember the stunt pulled by the then Howard government in 2004, when they brought in their ‘defence of marriage’ bill in the run-up to that year’s election in the hope of playing wedge politics with the issue of marriage out in the electorate. In other words, they hoped to exploit homophobia to win that election—whatever they may have said in this House or not. I know this is true because a member of my staff heard two Liberal members of this House saying exactly that.

Let us be clear about this—it has never been Labor policy to change the definition of marriage in the Marriage Act. I have never heard such tortuously hypothetical nonsense from the member for Mackellar, who spoke before. Her points about the definitions of de facto couples were very ably answered by the member for Moreton, who said there is a vast area of case law affecting the definition of de facto couples.

I know many in the gay and lesbian community are unhappy about the fact that the government are not affecting any definition in the Marriage Act, but that has always been our policy position. These bills do not change that. They do not affect the status of marriage and they certainly do not ‘undermine’—as the member for Mackellar was trying to insinuate—the institutions of marriage or family, as some people have alleged. What they do is provide that people living in same-sex relationships and their children will have the same rights in the fields of superannuation and family law, and before the courts, as people who are legally married. As someone who has recently entered the esteemed estate of matrimony, I reject the view that married Australians will somehow be adversely affected by extending equality in these areas to other Australians. Extending rights to others enhances rather than diminishes the rights of all. It was Lenin who said that freedom is so precious that it must be rationed. I would be disappointed to find that members of this House shared that view.

At the time of the ‘defence of marriage’ legislation, the then Attorney-General, the honourable member for Berowra, said that the government would bring in a bill ending discrimination against same-sex couples in superannuation—as if this would somehow compensate the same people the government was insulting with their crude wedge politics. I do not doubt that the honourable member intended to honour that commitment. But he was not able to so do because of opposition by the cabinet, led by the National Party. So it has fallen to Labor, as it has in so many areas of important social reform, to do the right thing—in this case, to do what every member of this House knows should have been done a decade ago. It is with great pleasure that I commend this bill to the House.

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