Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It is very important that we are discussing this issue today. It is why the Greens have moved this motion, because every day we delay ending discrimination in marriage is a day that thousands of Australians around Australia are suffering that discrimination. There is no doubt that the existing Marriage Act is discriminatory. It needs to be changed, and the majority of the Australian population support that change.

Yesterday was a very sad day in Australian politics when the Liberal and National parties decided to deny their members of parliament a free vote on this issue, an issue of conscience. The Greens have a free vote on this, but we agree—every Greens MP, in every vote, in every parliament, every time—and we recognise that the issue of allowing equal marriage is an issue of human rights; it is an issue of ending discrimination; it is an issue of ensuring fair treatment of all Australians.

I am proud to stand in this place and represent lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people. The discrimination that LGBTIQ people face in their everyday lives is real and confronting, and every day that we have institutionalised discrimination against them by not having equal marriage is a day that that discrimination—the hurt and their feeling of being considered different from the rest of the community—is real. Every day that we delay is a day that there is further suffering. Every day that we delay is a day that Australia is still lagging behind the rest of the world in recognising this as an issue of discrimination, an issue of fair treatment, an issue of allowing love to prevail so that people can feel that they are being treated the same as other Australians and have the freedom to love the person they love—to marry the person they love.

I feel that I am in a very special place, in a same-sex partnership, and in one of the very few marriages in Australia legally recognised in Australia as a same-sex couple. I want other Australian couples—other lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex couples—to be able to share that right, to be able to share their love, to be able to declare their love in front of their friends and their family in their community, and to be able to say, 'Our love is equal to everybody else's.'