Franks Stephen: Relationships (Statutory References) Bill — First Reading 
Franks Stephen: Relationships (Statutory References) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:618;Page:13958] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I rise for the ACT party to speak to the Relationships (Statutory References) Bill. As was explained by earlier speakers this is a very large piece of law which amends scores of other statutes. It is a companion to the Civil Union Bill but it stands alone. It does an awful lot more than the Civil Union Bill which is simply a very long form of gay marriage provision which could have been done by removing three words from the Marriage Act. 
What this bill does is stated in the explanatory note. The Government’s own statement says: “The Government’s objective is to have neutral laws on relationships that apply across the board whether those relationships are marriages de facto relationships or same-sex relationships.” “Neutral laws on relationships that apply across the board”? That is very significant because those relationships are fundamentally different. Marriage relationships involve people who have specifically chosen to opt into a whole regime of law that defines their rights and responsibilities to each other. People who have de facto relationships may have equally chosen that they do not want the same rights and obligations as married couples. It is very simple and easy for them to get them; they have chosen not to. But this Government says it wants neutral laws. 
Well “neutral” is a euphemism. We see what a euphemism it is in the next section of the explanatory note: “As a result of this Bill the same legal rights and responsibilities will apply to married de facto … and civil union relationships. People’s choices and relationships will be protected”—I emphasise “protected”—“and legislation will be amended so that it does not unjustifiably discriminate …”. So people’s choices will be protected by a law that says to them that even when they choose not to be married they will be made to be in exactly the same position as people who choose to be married. 
I will oppose this bill. I believe that my colleagues will oppose this bill—if not its going to a select committee then certainly after it has come back—because it is simply dishonest in conception. As a liberal party that believes that adults should be free to choose their relationships ACT objects to a Government that says to people that irrespective of their choice it will make them all have the same responsibilities and the same privileges in relationship to each other. This bill is all of a piece with the law that the House passed in 2001 that compulsorily shares the property of everyone who has lived together for 3 or more years. That law is as arrogant and as oppressive as this bill. 
This bill is going to be a huge effort to wade through. It will be very hard for people to understand the consequences unless they are lawyers or intimately involved but we will have to do that if this bill is referred to a select committee. I do not want to waste the time and I will be voting against its referral for that reason. 
When I was earlier addressing this issue and said that the Civil Union Bill was very simple and I did wish it to go to a select committee so that we could raise the question of what a proper marriage is or what a marriage that satisfied those who are concerned about it should have I ended by suggesting that I would welcome the debate over gay marriage. But this bill is not trivial. This bill might be the last in a long line of laws that have at least accompanied the destruction of the mum and dad family and left literally hundreds of thousands of our children without it. Whether it is cause and effect is a matter for proper research and debate. I suspect that with some of the stream of laws starting in the 1970s with the Matrimonial Property Act and no-fault divorce and going through to the anti-discrimination provisions in 1993 to Margaret Wilson’s compulsory marriage of de factos in terms of the economic partnership that is involved and to the social welfare legislation that prejudices the married couple we can see some very good reasons for thinking there is a link. This bill is not a trifle. 
But I would respect the Maxim Institute and the thousands of genuinely concerned submitters more if they would focus their submissions and their debate on what they want marriage to be rather than simply attacking those—particularly the gays—who are asking to share in it. I suggest that marriage is a legal ruin and they should be planning a rebuild. The parliamentary time and emotional energy should be applied to restoring marriage and choice to rebuilding the legal mechanisms that can give real meaning to marriage vows. Those people should as a start demand back the right to commitment. The fashionable folk who have been in charge of this social policy for the last 30 years have emptied marriage promises of all enforceability. For the benefit of New Zealand First I say they have been like the foreign owners of Tranz Rail that emptied that company of money then moved on. Our social engineers have emptied marriage of meaning and now they are moving on to civil union and de factos. 
What should the defenders of genuine marriage be doing instead of trying to stop others from sharing it? They should be restoring it as a contract. Through the centuries the only contracts that the courts would not enforce were those that were unlawful or deemed to be against public policy like gambling contracts or contracts to commit crime. Then we had the do-gooders in an unholy union with feminism and the let-it-all-hang-out generation that I am a part of and marriage which was once a contract with the most serious sanctions for a breach of it and with enforcement mechanisms both legal and social that all cultures had was emptied. It has been put in the same basket as a contract to procure a prostitute or to print a fraudulent book. 
What do we need? We need to respect people’s choices. We do not need to impose them on everyone. There should be no requirement to impose marriage obligations or marriage-like obligations or property sharing on people who choose not to marry. We ought to respect them and allow them to choose to do it if they wish. 
Let us look at a parallel. Ms Wilson who presided over the debacle in 2001 thinks there is a set of relationships that requires utmost good faith a set of relationships that she is quite happy to dive into and assign fault in hindsight a set of relationships where the clean-break principle she has decided has no application and a set of relationships from which thousands of people are now making a handsome living out of the crying over spilt milk and that is employment contracts. We have got it all back to front. Employment contracts are surrounded by personal grievance mechanisms that explore every grizzle while marriage—a far more important contract—has been left without any sanction against even the most cold-blooded breach. Well I hope that if this measure does go through we will look at some of those issues. 
The coercive powers of the State should not be employed in either side of a debate over contentious morality but they should be employed to uphold the free choices of adults. They should not be employed to suppress the normal interplay of argument and social and economic sanctions that mould and reinforce cultural rules and institutions. That is what the Human Rights Act does. In 1993 it became illegal to favour marriage or married couples. It may be quite right that the State should be precluded from picking favourites—I can see an argument that even there the State should recognise the evidence in favour of marriage—but in prohibiting private individuals from favouring marriage or discouraging those who spurn marriage by refusing to allow any form of discrimination positive or negative we are committing cultural vandalism. 
Those 1993 law changes should be one of the first targets of any genuine reform of our marriage law. This bill is worse than tinkering. This bill simply takes us further down the track that we should never have started down. 
Debate interrupted.