George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

thank you, Senator Scullion—during his time here. Nobody who has spoken to this bill so far has questioned the underlying principle, the moral sentiment, behind it—and I hope no-one would. But may I pause to say a word about the false antithesis which some people seek to draw between the advancement of this issue—respect for the rights and dignity of gay people—and so-called family values. There are certain people, some of them occupying the lunar fringe of my party, and certain extreme religious groups who seek to make that antithesis. It is a false antithesis. As if homosexual people are not members of families! As if their sense of commitment to their families and the values of their families, and the value to them and to the community of their families, is not as important to them as to anyone else! It is an ignorant, absurd and offensive notion.

I said before that, to the extent to which there is a difference between the mainstream parties of Australian politics on this issue today, it is a difference not of values—at least, not among those who occupy the mainstreams of their parties—but of approach. Senator Ludwig adverted to this too. The method of this bill is to seek to fold into the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act certain generic prohibitions against discrimination. That approach, which has many things to commend it, is at variance with the government’s approach, the Prime Minister’s approach, of identifying discrimination and dealing with it on a case-by-case basis.

There are good arguments for both approaches, but I must say as a lawyer who values precision in statutory language that I am more impressed by the case-by-case approach than by the generic approach. For that reason, and another which I will mention in a moment, I do not think that this bill, valuable as it is to enable people to make declarations of intent and of values, is the right vehicle to deal with the prosaic, technical field of law reform. That is much better done by fixing up, case by case, the statutes which discriminate.

It is for that reason that, in April 2006, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission announced the commencement of a significant public inquiry into this matter called ‘Same sex, same entitlements’. Its discussion paper was published at that time. That inquiry is still pending. Hearings of the inquiry for later this month and next month in the various Australian states and territories have been announced. It seems to me an unusual and a premature thing, when the Commonwealth agency specifically charged with responsibility for human rights is presently in the middle of an inquiry into this matter—one of whose aims is to seek to identify the particular matters which need to be dealt with—to pass a bill which deals with the matter in an imprecise and generic way, honourable and laudable though the values and objectives of those who sponsored bill might be, and reflective of the mainstream of public opinion in this country in all respectable political parties though it might be.

One of the most useful things—a very prosaic issue which would only excite lawyers, but one of the most useful things—that the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s inquiry has done is to trawl through the tens of thousands of pages of Commonwealth statutes to identify each and every specific instance which needs to be reformed in order to achieve the objectives embodied in the objects clause of the bill currently before us. The result of that research was published on 26 September, only two weeks ago.

The preliminary draft of the background paper lists 68 particular Commonwealth statutes which in various ways, many of them quite technical ways, like in the superannuation and taxation field, would require to be amended so as to achieve the goal of eliminating discrimination. And within the 68 statutes that are identified, in many there is a multiplicity of different provisions that would need legislative amendment.

So the way to do this, I think, if I may say so through you, Acting Deputy President, to Senator Bartlett and others who support this bill, is to wait until the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s inquiry is complete, to wait until its draft list is finalised, and to deal with it in an omnibus bill—one of those dreary bills, like the taxation laws amendment bills which we are so often seized of here, which list in the schedule all of the statutes and all of the particular provisions which need to be fixed up, and then amend or repeal them or amend the definitions to include same-sex relationships in the defined sense. That is the way to go about this. And for that reason I would not encourage honourable senators to vote for this particular bill whilst, as I have said, nevertheless acknowledging the usefulness of having this discussion and enabling all of us—Democrats, Labor, Liberals—to declare our support for the values which it enshrines.

May I finish on this note. Speaking as the chair of the Attorney-General’s backbench policy committee within the government, this is an issue which we have been pursuing for some time. It is an issue that, both at the committee level and in private conversation, I have raised with the Attorney-General. And without violating the confidentiality of private discussions or the private proceedings of the government’s backbench committee, may I say that I have no doubt whatever that Mr Ruddock, as a Liberal in the mainstream of the liberal tradition, an honourable political figure through his long career, finds himself entirely in sympathy with the objectives that are sought to be prosecuted today.

So I think we are at that stage of the debate in which the issue of values has been fought and won. Society has moved on. People have become more tolerant. People have become more respectful of differences in others. The Liberal Party, which years ago used to have a relatively conservative position on these matters has, led by people like the late Murray Hill and the late Sir John Gorton, now embraced a modern, tolerant, inclusive view. We are at the stage in the debate where we are moving from a debate about the values to a technical debate about statutory drafting. I am glad to say that we have reached that point. It is high time that we got here. Once the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission report is finalised, I hope the government loses no time in implementing its recommendations to the full.