Senate debates

Thursday, 4 February 2016

Bills

Recognition of Foreign Marriages Bill 2014; Second Reading

10:26 am

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

In rising to speak today to our bill to recognise foreign marriages, I am coming from the perspective that it is the least that we can do in this ongoing debate that we are having in Australia about legalising and allowing same-sex equal marriage. It is the least we can do. There are other countries in the world that have moved on, where Australia has not been able to so far. We have had such a debate over so many years in parliament. I know the Greens have had bills in parliament to legislate for equal marriage since Bob Brown first arrived here in the Senate, well over a decade ago.

In the time that I have been here in the parliament, 18 months, I think I have spoken on equal marriage as many times as I have spoken on any issue. So we are getting there. We know that we have the majority of the Australian community. In fact, we are told the majority of Australian parliamentarians are now in favour of equal marriage. But we are stymied. We are roadblocked. We do not seem to be able to take that step and actually celebrate marriage between same-sex attracted couples.

Our bill today, the Recognition of Foreign Marriages Bill 2014, says that the very least we can do is to recognise the marriages that have become law in other countries, where they have had the debate and they have moved forward. There are so many countries in the world now where that is the case. We have a situation where we had a change of law quite recently in Ireland, the change of law quite recently in the US. Not many years ago we had the change of legislation and the recognition of same-sex marriages in the UK and so close to home in New Zealand. Australians and Australian laws need to acknowledge that people who get married in these countries, and many others, are legally married. When they come to Australia, their marriages should be recognised.

Of course, as the speakers before me have acknowledged, including Senator Simms, who started this debate, this has all come to a head in recent times because of the tragic circumstances in South Australia with Mr Marco Bulmer-Rizzi after his husband, David, died last month. It brought to a head not just how absurd it is but that the consequences can be so harmful and so hurtful when people who have been married in other countries come to Australia and then find their marriages are not recognised.

In considering this legislation today, what we are calling upon the government to do and all members of parliament to do is this. We are saying: even if we cannot quite get to the stage, as yet, of accepting a change in Australian law to legalise equal marriage, at least have some courage to take action to legalise these foreign marriages. Having courage to do this is something that in fact will be accepted and will be celebrated by the majority of the Australian community. I think that celebration and acceptance is a reflection of—and we continue to have these debates because of—the importance of marriage in our society.

I know that is where the fundamental controversy arises, because, yes, changing to legalise equal marriage is a change. It is a change so that it is not just heterosexual couples, it is not just a man and a woman, who are able to get married. Yes, it does allow a man to marry a man, a woman to marry a woman, and somebody who is gender diverse and gender fluid and does not want to fit into that binary element of their gender to marry anybody they like. Yes, in some ways that will mean a change to how we have traditionally seen marriage. But we have seen change in what a legally accepted marriage is before. It used to be that we had situations where people of different races were not permitted to marry. I think that accepting that marriage is changing is accepting that, yes, our society changes, and it is accepting that there are couples in Australia who deeply love each other, who want to make that deeply personal commitment but also a public commitment of their love and commitment to each other. They want that to be legalised. They want to be considered the same, to have the same respect and the same recognition and not to be discriminated against—like every other couple in Australia.

I have, of course, personal experience of this, which I have spoken about before. I was married in 1986. In fact, my wife, Penny, and I are going to be celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary next month. When we married in 1986 we got married in a church, and it was a lovely wedding. It was just being part of society's celebration of a wedding, celebration of the institution of marriage, that deeply personal and public celebration. It was totally non-controversial. But then Penny, after a number of years of marriage, acknowledging that she was transgendered, changed her gender. She is now Penny. She was Peter then, back in 1986. And suddenly, at that stage, we were in a situation where we were the same two people; we still loved each other, but suddenly our marriage was not considered the same as it had been for the previous 16 years. Why should it be so? We were the same people. We still loved each other. The fact that Penny was transgendered, that she had changed from being Peter to Penny, suddenly put us in this situation where it was a controversial thing.

It should not be so. The basic reason why it should not be so is that we need as a society to acknowledge that we are not just all heterosexual people. That is the fundamental thing that our society is still coming to terms with. We are still discriminating against same-sex-attracted people. We are still discriminating against people who are transgendered or gender fluid or gender diverse. In this debate and the other marriage debates, what we need to come to terms with is recognising that we are diverse—we have this great diversity of sexuality and gender identity—and that there should not be discrimination. We should all be celebrated and all be accepted and loved for who we are.

Penny's and my marriage is still controversial in that, if Penny were to change her birth certificate, we would have to get divorced. This is a ridiculous situation, and it is totally illogical. Penny has decided that, no, she is not going to do that; she is not going to change her birth certificate, because we want to stay married. But we need to be changing our legislation so these completely ridiculous, old-fashioned, outdated notions of who is able to be married disappear.

Where we are at now in our Australian society in recognising that not everyone is heterosexual and that everybody, regardless of who they are, regardless of their gender and their sexuality, needs to be able to be married really comes to a head in this sort of legislative change that is needed to bring our legislation to catch up with where the Australian community is. As I mentioned before, we are now in a situation where clearly we have a majority of the Australian community who support same-sex marriage, who would think that the issue of Australia acknowledging the marriages of people married overseas should be a complete no-brainer—there should not be any discussion about it at all.

It is certainly not controversial amongst young people. I have been struck over the last couple of years by the total acceptance of same-sex relationships and the total acceptance of gender diversity amongst young people and by the number of same-sex-attracted young people I know who have been getting engaged. They have engagement parties. They have great celebrations, declaring their love and saying, 'Yes, we intend to get married.' They are engaged. They do not know how long they are going to have to stay engaged before they are going to be able to be married in Australia, but they are saying: 'This is who we are. We intend to get married and are waiting for the law to catch up.' So this legislation that we have before us today is just a small way, the beginnings, of the law catching up.

We had a contribution from Senator Fawcett, who was expressing concern that people would essentially go country shopping for their marriage, that these same-sex-attracted couples who are getting engaged in Australia would go off—whether they go off to New Zealand or they go off to the UK or, if they are able to, get married in the British consulate—and that this was a concern. For me, I think, it is actually acknowledging the power of their love and the deep commitment that they have. If they are going to make that effort to actually go to another country to get married, I say good on them. I am told that New Zealand is very nice at this time of year and that the New Zealand wedding industry is doing very well out of Australian couples who are travelling there to get married—having a legal marriage there that should be recognised here in Australia.

Recently I was invited to a pre-marriage party of friends of mine, one of whom is an Australian who has been living in the UK for a number of years and is getting married to his husband in the UK later this year. He would dearly like to have been able to get married in Australia. Most of his friends and family are in Australia, but, no, they are getting married in the UK. I have my wedding invitation, or effectively my wedding invitation, to come to their pre-marriage party in Australia.

We have such social acceptance of people who are same-sex attracted, transgender and gender diverse marrying in Australia that, here in this parliament, we need to be reflecting that. It is a ridiculous situation that our parliaments are so behind, so stuck in the last century. We need to be moving into the 21st century and catching up with the attitudes of the vast majority of Australians.

Returning to the issue of recognition of foreign marriage, it is such a ridiculous situation and, potentially, as we saw with the tragic case in South Australia, such a hurtful situation that foreign marriages are recognised in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania but not in South Australia, Western Australia, the ACT and the Northern Territory. It just makes a mockery of our laws relating to this issue that that is the case. It shows the importance of why something like marriage should be legislated at a national level so that we can have uniform laws, because it does not make any difference as to whether you are in South Australia or in Victoria.

It is ridiculous that if you travel between those two states you have such a change in the status of your relationship. It is ridiculous, it can be so hurtful and it is just totally confusing. In the states where foreign marriages are not recognised, it is discrimination through and through. In the states where foreign marriages are not recognised, it is basically saying to people, 'Your marriage, your relationship, is not as significant and is not as important as other people's relationships.'

The Greens position is that we want to see equal marriage recognised as soon as possible but, in the meantime, this legislation is one small step forward. I must note that in relation to this legislation, which has been on the Notice Paper for quite a few years, it was drafted at a time when the issues of transgendered people were not as much in the spotlight as they are now. So those who are transgendered or who may not fit into either gender are not reflected in this legislation. I think it is unlikely that we are going to bring this legislation to a vote today, but at a later stage we would intend to amend this legislation to make sure that it does account for equal marriage not just same-sex marriage.

The Greens have got the courage. We have had the courage for years and years to be putting this on the agenda. Every time we have had a debate about equal marriage in any parliament in Australia, every Green—every vote, every time—we have been supporting the idea of equal marriage and having our parliaments and our legislation catch up with the community. We are very much commending this legislation to the Senate today. We see it as a small step forward that will really make a huge difference and a small step forward towards the time when we know that we will celebrating the love between two people, regardless of their gender, regardless of their sexuality, celebrating the end of discrimination against same-sex attracted people and transgendered people, and celebrating everybody being treated and valued for who they are.

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