Attorney general claims bill will be Liberal party legacy as it passes second reading in Senate without opposition

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Marriage equality will be the “imperishable legacy” of the Turnbull government, George Brandis has said in an emotional speech trumpeting the historic social reform as the “final act of acceptance and embrace” for LGBTI Australians.

Brandis claimed the mantle of law reform removing discrimination against gay people for the Liberal party and conservatives in a speech on the cross-party same-sex marriage bill on Tuesday.

The bill passed the second reading stage without opposition, the first time a marriage equality bill has passed either house of Australia’s federal parliament.

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Brandis credited the bill’s author, Liberal senator Dean Smith, for his “abundant tenacity and conspicuous moral courage” in championing marriage equality.



Smith – the first openly gay federal parliamentarian in Liberal party history – entered the Senate in 2012 and has credited the death of gay man Tori Johnson in the Lindt cafe siege for changing his views on same-sex marriage.

Brandis said it was a “privilege” to have acted as Smith’s confidant at critical times in recent weeks, adding: “I know better than most the burdens of stress, of loneliness and of hurt [Smith] endured to make Australia a better place for countless others.”

The attorney general said the passage of the same-sex marriage bill “will demolish the last significant bastion of legal discrimination against people on the grounds of their sexuality”.

“At last, Australia will no longer be insulting gay people by saying different rules apply to you,” he said. “So this bill is important not merely because it will enable gay people to marry, just as everybody else is able to marry.

“It is more important than that. After centuries of prejudice, discrimination, rejection and ridicule, it is both an expiation for past wrongs and a final act of acceptance and embrace.”

Brandis said that, particularly for young gay Australians who have lived with fear “silently and alone”, the bill would send the message: “There is nothing wrong with you. You are not unusual … there is nothing to hide.

“You are a normal person and, like every other normal person, you have a need to love … Whom you love is for you to decide and others to respect.”

Brandis said Turnbull was “the first Australian prime minister to have advocated and prosecuted this cause” and it was appropriate it would be fulfilled by “a Liberal government”.

He said it would “stand as one of the signature achievements” of the Turnbull government, an “imperishable legacy” that would rise above “tawdry, day-to-day politics” and the “ephemera” of debates about the economy and political intrigues.

In the only reference to Labor, which will provide the most votes for the reform in both the Senate and House of Representatives, Brandis said it would be “churlish not to acknowledge the role of so many in the Labor party in also promoting this cause”.

“I can well imagine their frustration during the six years of Rudd and Gillard governments when the cause was delayed, because it is the same frustration I have felt at times with leaders on my own side of politics,” he said.

Brandis credited Smith alongside three gay Liberal MPs in the lower house – Tim Wilson, Trent Zimmerman and Trevor Evans – who had unsuccessfully pushed for a free vote on marriage equality and cosponsored the cross-party bill. “But of course, towering above this debate, we must acknowledge the seminal role of the member for Leichhardt, Warren Entsch,” he said.

Brandis said Entsch was regarded as an “unlikely champion of the cause of same-sex marriage … [but] is in many ways, its ideal champion, embodying as he does, in his exuberance … generosity … larrikin spirit and his gentle soul, so many of the qualities which are so essentially Australian.”

Brandis said although Australia had been “slow to reach this day” – noting it was the last English-speaking democracy to embrace marriage equality – when it came, it came “joyously” and “triumphantly”.

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“And it came, most importantly, from the Australian people themselves,” he said in reference to the Turnbull government’s decision to require people to vote in a postal survey before considering a marriage bill.

A total of 61.6% of those who voted approved of same-sex marriage, which Brandis said illustrated that “like all of the best and most enduring social change, it was not imposed from above” but rather “germinated in the hearts and minds of the people themselves”.

“Now that the Australian people have spoken, it is for us, their elected representatives, to respond.”

In the committee stage, Labor, the Greens, the Nick Xenophon Team, Derryn Hinch and a group of Coalition moderates combined to defeat the first tranche of conservatives’ amendments 42 to 24.

Coalition senators in that group were Dean Smith, Simon Birmingham, Marise Payne, Nigel Scullion, Linda Reynolds, and Jane Hume.

If that group holds, the conservatives’ amendments are unlikely to pass, after Labor decided to vote down all substantive amendments.