Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a great privilege to follow the member for Hughes. He has just confirmed to the House that privilege rarely sees itself. If a plebiscite is 'the new black', then I want one on a national education funding model. I want one on live exports. I have got a lot of emails about live exports. Can we have a plebiscite on that? Can we have a plebiscite on the pension age? I think the public would like a plebiscite on the pension age!

As the members opposite can attest, it is a core liberal principle that we are all equal before the law. This is an uncompromising statement—there are no conditions, no ifs or buts: all are equal. Well, it is a sad day for liberalism in this country when those opposite, purporting to be Liberals, want to have a plebiscite to test whether people believe we are all equal under the law—or should be all equal under the law. It is surprising to see those opposite seek to reinforce an inequality that exists within our system of laws. Moreover, they are now asking us to spend $200 million to ask the Australian people something we already know the answer to: should we all be equal before the law? That is a pretty simple question. And those in this chamber are elected not only to answer it but to enact laws to ensure it.

This is a government that argues daily for savings and cuts that will hurt the most disadvantaged in our community. And yet they have found $200 million down the back of the couch—small change if you have a spare $2 million to put into your own election campaign—that they want to use to conduct an opinion poll to answer a question we already know the answer to. Not only are we asked to conduct an expensive and divisive opinion poll, but we are told that the result will not be binding in the parliament.

The member for Hughes can say as often as he likes that he would be bound by the plebiscite, but we know that there are others in his caucus who have clearly said they would not be. So this brings into question the purpose of the plebiscite. Is it an exercise in direct democracy or is it a political football that has been kicked around by the right wing of the Liberal and National parties at the expense of the LGBTI community, a community that we have all been elected to represent? It is a $200 million straw poll to argue the toss about whether all are equal before the law. It is a simple premise.

The Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, talks about a mandate, about representing the will of the Australian people, yet polls continually show that the majority of Australians do not support a plebiscite; they do not support this straw poll. A national survey, conducted by Galaxy, shows that, when informed that the plebiscite is non-binding and at a cost exceeding $175 million, 55 per cent of respondents support a vote by politicians in the parliament. It is unsurprising that practical natured Australians suggest: 'We just had a very expensive election. Why don't the people we elected take a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives, take a vote in the Senate and make a decision.' The Australian public know that this plebiscite is not about making a decision. This plebiscite is about a non-decision. This plebiscite is about putting off a decision.

I oppose the plebiscite for lots of reasons, some of which I have outlined. But mostly I oppose this plebiscite because it would get in the way of a referendum that this country has already said it will have. It would get in the way of a referendum to take us further down the road of reconciliation with Australia's first people.

Coming back to this plebiscite, in my own electorate I have received hundreds of emails from my constituents pleading with me not to support the plebiscite for fear of the harm it will do to the LGBTI community. Across all of those emails I have received one email from a constituent in Lalor asking me to vote for a plebiscite. We did the maths in the office—hundreds asking me not to vote for it and one asking me to vote for it.

We are in an interesting time in Australia. Mr Turnbull, the Prime Minister, says he wants to represent the will of the Australian people, but he continues to kick this can down the road. He needs to stop and listen to what the people are already saying and do his job and allow a free vote in the parliament.

I note in a recent report that 49 per cent of people support a Trump-style ban on Muslim immigration but that this view was only shared by 24 per cent of young people. What this tells us, other than that kids are right on this one, is that hate and racism are not innate; they are learnt. Discrimination is learnt. If we embark on this national campaign and if we fund a 'no' campaign for this plebiscite, we will be sending young people a strong message that they have the right to discriminate against others.

As someone who spent many, many years in classrooms I can tell you that when things happen in this place those conversations get echoed around kitchen tables in homes around this country and get repeated in classrooms and in schoolyards around this country. When those conversations are purporting that some people are more equal than others they get carried into school grounds and playgrounds, and young people get hurt by that. If we have this plebiscite and if we fund a 'no' campaign, we will be telling young people that under the law it is okay to discriminate.

In schools, when these things happen—when young people get hurt by name-calling, by bullying, by being ostracised because of difference—schools put down tools and get to work on solving a social issue, because without doing that classrooms cannot run properly. Learning time gets lost in this process. Kids get hurt in this process. Some kids get so hurt that they stop attending school.

When the schools are trying to sort these issues out, I can tell you, from long experience, that when you say to children, 'You know, there are laws in this country against you bullying someone else for being different', it works. It works. It undoes some of the harm done in some of our homes at kitchen tables where people think it is okay to be bigots. When young people hear that we have laws that say that we are all equal it makes a difference. They stop. They listen. They learn about respect—because one thing is for sure about young people, and that is that they like to fit in.

The biggest fear I have for this plebiscite is that it is going to tell a group of our young people that they do not fit in, that they are not equal before the law, that their parents, if they are in a same-sex relationship, are not equal—are not the same—as the neighbours down the road in terms of the law.

That is why I oppose this plebiscite. We would be undoing all of the work we have done over many years in schools and communities to get people to understand that in this country—in our great egalitarian Australia—we believe that all people should be equal under the law.

This plebiscite would get in the way of, and push further down the road, us having a free vote here in the people's house to say to all Australians that we are all equal under the law and that we will act whenever we find a place in our laws that says different. That is what we should be doing at this time. We should be having a free vote on the floor of this chamber and then taking it to the Senate.

Now there are some opposite who want to talk about tradition. Some time ago we had laws that clearly said that some of us were not equal before the law. I have worked with female teachers who went against tradition and continued to teach after they got married. It is hard to imagine, in this day and age, that communities frowned upon women working after marriage, isn't it? Tradition has changed. The law has changed.

The danger of this plebiscite is that we will be sending a message to LGBTI people that they are not equal before the law. We will be sending a message to the whole community that some people think they are not equal before the law—and the worst thing is that we will not be changing the law to ensure that all are equal before it.

When the Labor caucus took its decision unanimously to oppose the plebiscite I received a text message from a same-sex couple in my electorate. It was a simple message. It came quickly, as soon as our decision hit the wires. It said:

thanks Joanne for your and Labor's stand today and not falling for the harmful plebiscite and state funded hate. If this means waiting, then we know how to wait.

That is what I am hearing from the LGBTI community in my electorate. That is what I am hearing in my community. I think that is really important. To decide that we are going to approach this change in the law in a different way is to do a disservice to our communities and to the LGBTI communities.

This chamber and the will of the Australian people have been hijacked by a minority who seek to stall progress to satisfy their own views and to appease the right-wing of their party. We cannot afford that as a country. We need to move on, and we need to fix this. The argument around tradition holds no weight, because we have acted to change laws in the past. In fact, we have changed the Marriage Act so many times that people are having difficulty counting them.

A lot has been made of the Irish experience and the Irish plebiscite. Recent studies suggest that it was not such a positive experience for the people at the centre of that debate around the plebiscite. Those opposite often want to look to New Zealand and what they are doing there. In fact, Minister Porter talks all the time about New Zealand and the successful strategies over there. Recently, I had the privilege of spending some time with a few of our New Zealand colleagues. In New Zealand, they passed marriage equality legislation; it was put to a free vote in 2013. They passed the legislation without spending $200 million of taxpayers' dollars and without subjecting a large portion of the country to a campaign of division, with no guarantee that the vote would be binding. They did that three years ago.

While they have moved on, we are still debating whether to pass this legislation. We could be voting on this issue right now on the floor of the chamber. We could make marriage equality a reality today. We could say to every young person that we are all equal before the law in this country. I would think that the Liberals opposite would want to hold to that principle. I would think that they would reject this plebiscite because they would recognise it is not the way forward on this issue.

I note that, in New Zealand, they have also moved a lot more quickly and a lot further down the road in recognition of their first peoples. Perhaps in this case, in getting rid of this notion of a plebiscite, having a free vote in the House and delivering equality before the law for same-sex couples, we could then move into the space where there has been bipartisan support for a referendum on the recognition of our first peoples in our Constitution.

Last week, the Prime Minister said that it was everyone's business. It feels like we are going backwards and that we are going to police people's bedrooms. I would like us to finish this. I would like us to move forward and have a free vote in the parliament as soon as we can.

See this speech in context