MARRIAGE EQUALITY RALLY

Good morning everybody and welcome at last to a sunny Melbourne Sunday and we should take the sun shining as a bit of an omen that we're on the right track here. 
 
 And being here with all of you this morning is something of a relief after last week where frankly, we've got an incompetent Government.

 

Turns out that some of their Ministers are New Zealanders. 
 
 Then turns out that they wanted to declare war on New Zealand.
 
 It is without a doubt, just a relief to be with Australians who are interested in getting on with the job.
 
 Do you know in all of the to-ing and fro-ing of last week on all of the matters that we were arguing about it occurred to me, not once but on a number of occasions -

 

As the clock ticked down and we had these arguments about all these matters of constitutional eligibility and the like, if we had just taken an hour…

 

Taken an hour out of last week we could have had a vote to make marriage equality a reality.

 

But that didn't happen so we are back here now.

 

And it didn't happen because the Government has decided, in what can only be described as bizarreness, to have instead, a postal, statistical survey of Australians to ascertain their views in the process of law making in this country.

 

They are going to spend, this Government, $122 million.
 
 It is a shame.
 
 They are going to spend $122 million surveying people optionally where people can fill it in or not and then at the end of that survey we're going to go back to the Parliament and have a debate about legislating for marriage equality.
 
 Labor federally and Labor state has no time at all for this process of a differential law making for LGBTI Australians and other Australians.
 
 Just think about it how did it come to be that when it comes to laws affecting LGBTI Australians we have to go through a new and convoluted and expensive law making process. 
 
 This is simply not fair.
 
 The Marriage Act has been amended many times, not once in the history of that law or any other law in Australia have we decided to have an opinion poll, a taxpayer funded opinion poll. 
 
 It is a spectacular waste of money.
 
 With that money, we could fund thousands of extra nurses, thousands of extra teachers, we could literally cure kidney disease for our First Australians in remote communities for decades to come.
 
 But instead, we are going to use this money, this taxpayer money to fix an internal argument in the Liberal Party. 
 
 An argument, because we have a Prime Minister who on one hand will say, 'Oh I support marriage equality' but on the other, he says 'don't bother me I'm only the Prime Minister, what do you expect me to do about it all?'
 
 So we now have this postal survey and let me be clear I deplore the fact we have to have this postal survey, I deplore it.

Because it will give license to arguments and extremities, to hateful speech and hateful conduct which simply didn't have to occur.

 Us being here today to talk about enrolling, fundamentally important, but it didn't have to occur this way and it doesn't have to be this way. 
 
 Why should people in loving relationships have to justify their love to everyone in their street and everyone in every street in Australia?

 

The idea that some people’s relationships have to undergo the analysis of strangers and in the case of some strangers, hate filled strangers.
 
 Why should the children of gay couples in loving relationships have to go to school and know that their parent's relationship is the dinner room topic of a ballot filling process of every household in Australia, it is a dreadful shame and I deplore this.
 
 And let me be very clear about the current Prime Minister, he will support marriage equality, of that I have no doubt and he would never, he would never at a personal level tolerate hateful speech in his company but the problem is he has greenlighted this debate across the nation. 
 
 And when Labor says we don't think this is necessary, it's we don't think its necessary because it's applying two standards to some Australians compared to other Australians.

 

And I said in the Parliament and I say, here again, I do hold the Prime Minister responsible not because of his own personal views but because what has happened is that we are going to have a debate this nation didn't need to have.
 
 There are many things this nation needs to work forward together on and move forward together on but we don't ever move forward as a nation when we are telling some people that the process of lawmaking, that their relationships are second class. 
 
 Now more than ever in uncertain times, we as a nation need to pull together but this is not what’s going to happen.
 
 But having said all of this, if we can't stop, if we can't stop this statistical postal survey costing taxpayers $122 million then as Premier Andrews said if we can't stop it, we need to win it don't we? 
 
 And let me be very clear about this: Labor's decision to engage in this postal survey is not based upon the legitimacy of it because we don't think this process is sound or fair or sensible for the reasons I outlined

 

And Labor's decision to participate in it doesn't change what we think when eventually this vote comes to Parliament, we will vote for marriage equality in the Parliament full stop. 
 
 We will not denigrate the Parliament which is what this Government is doing by saying that because they can't make a decision they're going to kick this decision down the road. 
 
 This survey was designed by people opposed to marriage equality, so this survey doesn't change our views about what happens, but the reason we are participating is because we want to say to LGBTI Australians, we want to say to them, you are our brothers and our sisters. 
 
 You are our mothers and our fathers.
 
 You are our family members, you are our colleagues, you are the people we work alongside, you are the people who live in our community. We say to older gay Australians who for years and decades have gradually, reform by reform, had to fight their way to some position of equality we know this fight is not over.
 
 We say to Australians, especially but not limited to but younger Australians working out their sexuality, people who are trying to work out where they fit in in this world, what is the degree of acceptance. 
 
 We say to people who suffer daily indignations, stupid, crass and ignorant comments in the media, those sort of jokes which actually make you less human and make you less equal.

 

We say to all of these people who have to put up with the debate, we say to them: you are not alone. 
 
 We say to LGBTI Australians and we say to more than that, we say to their families, we say to families who live in blended families, people who don't live in the so-called gold standard of mum and dad and a white picket fence and little Spot the dog.
 
 We say to people who don't fit the standard 1950s definitions, we say to all of you in this postal survey that we respect you. 
 
 We say to families where there's a single parent, we say to families where there are step-kids, we say to families where there are LGBTI Australians -every one of you is an important person.
 
 Every one of you is important. 
 
 Your love matters, your choices matter.
 
 We say that this country is big enough, generous enough, smart enough, it's welcoming enough, it's sufficiently comfortable in our own skin that we know that our fellow Australians come in all shapes and sizes.
 
 You've got all sorts of lives you set out, you make decisions every day, you pay your taxes, you raise your families, you love one another, we say to all Australians: it doesn't matter if you are from a particular group you are all Australians and you and you are all equal.
 
 And we will have this argument and what we need to do if we believe that if we think that this is a process which is flawed in nature but a fight worth having nonetheless, what we say is please enrol.

 

Voting yes is an act of defiance to a bad law making process.
 
 Voting yes is an act of defiance. 

 

I'm not much at predicting what the history of this will say but I have a hunch on this one.

 

I have a hunch that the argument against marriage equality once we move beyond this survey, will begin to look weaker and weaker. 
 
 Now I get there are some people who through religious conviction, genuine - they just can't vote yes I get that. 
 
 But what I say is that when you look back at the stages of progress in this nation we have an opportunity all of you as you enroll to campaign and get people to participate in this vote, you will have an opportunity in the future to say you were there. 
 
 You were there in this postal survey, one day these badges will be collector's items because you have the opportunity to say, to people who come after us that you were there.
 
 When people say to you what did you do? 
 
 When there was a survey which essentially was treating some relationships as second class you all have an opportunity to say actually I was there. 
 
 You each have an opportunity to say I did enrol my family, I did enrol my friends, I did speak up in the workplace, I did speak up in my community. 
 
 This is one of these chances, not an opportunity we chose but an opportunity forced upon us where you all have an opportunity to say what you did. 
 
 I want as many of my fellow Australians to be able to say in the future that you were there, that you didn't let LGBTIQ Australians handle this fight on their own.
 
 I'm very proud of our country but we have a moment in this postal survey to even perhaps put a little bit more pride in our country.
 
 Please I say to you friends, I say to you people who care about each other – sign up, stand up and vote yes and we can make this a better country.