Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Materiel) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak as one of the senators who took part in this inquiry but who signed the dissenting report which has been tabled today. I do so because, although I am a very strong supporter of the Senate committee system and the value of that process, I believe that this inquiry was not one of the Senate committee system's finest moments. This issue has been much raked over by other organs of this parliament, other committees, in the past. I do not believe that this iteration of the same-sex marriage issue has greatly added to the volume of knowledge about this issue.

I was very surprised to read in the majority report such an emphatic affirmation in favour of same-sex marriage. I was surprised because the evidence facing the inquiry was complex and diverse. The starting points of many of the senators who took part in this inquiry were also very diverse, even within similar party groupings in the Senate. So it is surprising and frankly a little disappointing to see that the majority report so emphatically, even stridently, call for the advent of same-sex marriage in Australia. I think that the nuances of the evidence, the subtleties of the arguments, that were put to that inquiry were not fully reflected in the way in which this report has been framed.

The dissenting report makes clear that the tone of the majority report was unnecessarily dismissive of much of the contrary evidence presented to the inquiry and that at some points the report almost becomes proselytising in its tone. I point to the fact that the first of the four recommendations made by the inquiry was a recommendation that all political parties in the parliament should allow their members a conscience vote on this issue. The Senate referred this issue to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee to consider the merits or otherwise of the bill. For the majority report to recommend how parties should deal with this matter is an outrageously political comment in the course of what ought to have been a dispassionate examination of the evidence before the committee. That recommendation does the Senate committee no credit.

The minority on this committee believed that we cannot advance an argument for so-called equality in marriage when there are so many other areas where most of us would say that it is not appropriate to provide for an equality of access to marriage. We all have limits in this respect, but where those limits should be drawn is unclear from the majority report.

We also believe fundamentally that a recommendation in favour of legislating now for Senator Hanson-Young's bill represents a serious breach of trust by this parliament with the Australian people. In this chamber, the overwhelming majority of us went to the last election promising that our vote would be used on the floor of this chamber to support a traditional definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman. But today the Australian Labor Party has decided to change its position and, as a consequence, has rushed headlong by at least a majority to embrace a change of policy and provide for that legislation to facilitate that change of policy to be put and passed by the parliament. I do not lightly put aside what I promised to the electorate at the last election. Like the other members elected for the ACT at the last election, I promised to preserve a traditional definition of marriage. But today I find myself the only member representing the ACT who maintains that position. That is not a good way for this parliament to exercise its rights based on the mandate given to us by the Australian people. For that reason alone, I believe it is grossly inappropriate for the parliament to support the recommendation of the committee to pass this legislation.