Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Banking and Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

The Labor Party will be supporting this amendment. I do not know whether Senator Murray was present at the last estimates round when I actually asked, in some detail, what the government was doing with respect to the commitment of the previous Assistant Treasurer, Senator Coonan, and also, I understand, of the Prime Minister. Senator Minchin, the Minister for Finance and Administration, and departmental officers took the questions. What concerns me is that the previous Assistant Treasurer, Senator Coonan, gave an ironclad commitment. It has not been delivered.

I do not want to be too harshly critical of the Democrats, but I did warn them at the time when they signed up to the deal on choice of superannuation fund. Senator Murray, I recall that signing up to that was conditional on the government delivering on the removal of the discrimination against same-sex couples. Then the government announced, ‘Yes, we accept the removal of discrimination in respect of same-sex couples,’ and used the term ‘interdependent’, which actually includes a broader range of individuals. But the government has not delivered. Senator Murray, I think we are now two years on from that.