Franks Stephen: Relationships (Statutory References) Bill; AND BILLS THEREFROM — Third Readings 
Franks Stephen: Relationships (Statutory References) Bill; AND BILLS THEREFROM — Third Readings 
[Volume:624;Page:19176] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I am pleased to follow the honourable Lianne Dalziel because at least she tries to address some of the issues with intellectual integrity. We end up with pretty substantial disagreement but at least we agree that the questions are important. I am pleased to say that the Justice and Electoral Committee’s recommendation to the House that there is a whole lot of unfinished business in this legislation owes quite a lot to the fact that Lianne Dalziel was willing to look with fresh eyes at what the legislation ended up doing to our family law. 
The Relationships (Statutory References) Bill is the legislation that should have been debated and worked on before the Civil Union Bill the legislation that defined civil unions. Instead in this House in December we had a debate that was completely vacant in terms of the subject. We had a debate about passing a prescription for a pantomime imitation of marriage without knowing what legal effect it would have. When the select committee got around to looking at the legal effect the Government was embarrassed—and rightly so because it was quite plain that the legislation made a complete mockery not only of marriage but also of the civil union it was promoting. The legislation went through took nearly 100 Acts and a multitude of regulations and said: “Everywhere the word ‘marriage’ appears and where the words ‘civil union’ will appear let’s put in the words ‘de facto’ as well. And for good measure let’s make sure that ‘de facto’ covers just about any couple who shack up whether such people mean it to be long term or short term whether they respect each other whether they have a relationship of mutual trust whether the relationship is stable and committed or caring and whether it is exclusive.”—all was irrelevant. 
Yet this House was full of rhetoric about the Government wanting to endorse and strengthen what it calls “stable committed relationships”. Recognition of the problem is not enough because we have come back with legislation that still does absolutely nothing about stable committed relationships. There is no requirement in any of the law we have debated over the last 6 months for anything that expresses stability or commitment or requires caring. We have made a nonsense of one of the great inheritances of English law—the idea that marriage was not simply a token of dynastic connection that women were not tradable goods to be passed over and forced into servitude that it required competency and that it required people to know their own mind and to be of an age at which they could make an uncoerced decision. What does this legislation do? It reduces the age at which people can come into relationships where the consequence can be a serious commitment. 
What does this legislation do about consent the open ceremony in front of people where no door may be barred so that people can witness uncoerced agreement without duress? It is irrelevant. When de facto relationships that may be forged in drunken brutality qualify as being the same as marriage or civil union this Labour Government makes a mockery of the idea of uncoerced consent. There is nothing in the legislation about commitment. There is nothing that restores the enforceability of marriage or civil union. There is nothing that restores what was the most important contract people could enter into to have the slightest contractual effect. It is easier to recover for breach of a 1-day employment agreement than for a contract that is supposed to be for life. There is nothing about exclusivity. There is a mockery of it. 
This legislation goes back and amends the Civil Union Act even though it is only 2 months old and sticks into it further elaborations of the list of people one cannot civil unite with because of the blood relationship. Yet it is clearly intended for people for whom blood relationship will matter nothing because they are not expected to breed. This is gay marriage whatever the Prime Minister might say. It is gay marriage in the little things that let people down when they set out to deceive. It is gay marriage just by looking at what the Registrar-General of Births Deaths and Marriages has to do about celebrants. 
I have just received a letter from Ted Downing. He is a respected art dealer a valuer and a broker who has been a JP and a marriage celebrant for years. He told me that he is not aware of any complaints from anyone. He has no prejudices that would preclude him from becoming a civil union celebrant so he applied. He was asked to provide references which he did including one from probably one of New Zealand’s foremost art dealers and a very respected businessman. He supplied all the criteria he believed was necessary. He said what his civil engagements had been including councillor of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts and councillor of the Federation of Voluntary Welfare Organisations. Ted has held a number of positions in local organisations and he was the regional manager for half the North Island for the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind yet he found he was not suitable. 
The reason was that Ted had not stated the community he would like to serve defined by geography interest belief or some other factor. He has tried to get to the bottom of this. The community he wants to serve is his community of Eastbourne or Wellington but that is not sufficient. He has been told that that is not adequate and if he does not provide more information he will be deemed to have withdrawn his application. He is trying to work out what community it is. He asked me whether if he joined Rainbow Labour that would be an adequate community. I think he should try because it may well be that that will do. Here is an active man who is fully employed. He is not retired so it is not as though his appointment would be short term. 
Apparently the registrar-general has been told that it is not sufficient that marriage celebrants have an impeccable record all the references and an interest in providing civil union services; they must also state what community they want to serve. Why is that? Is it to uphold the remuneration these people are to get? The Government cannot say. I would say that this House can draw the right conclusion. This is a matter of gay marriage and this man has not put in the code words to say “I’m gay”. That is his problem. If the Government was willing to look at this seriously and reassure the community that this was not simply gay marriage we would have put the words into the Civil Union Act. 
The Civil Union Act is being amended by the Relationships (Statutory References) Bill. It is one of the clauses in the bill. We have quite a substantial amendment to the Civil Union Act. We would have something there that would make it plain that this was intended to be neutral. Instead we have legislation that does nothing of what it should. It should as the select committee signalled in its report state what marriage and civil union ought to be about. 
Nothing in this legislation protects next of kin rights. Members—especially members of the select committee—will know how many earnest decent upset people came before the committee to support this legislation and the civil union legislation because they wanted to be respected when they visited their partners in hospital. They wanted to be respected when they tried to go to a mortuary to identify someone they loved who had died. This Government allowed this legislation to be peddled as though it would increase respect for those kinds of problems. There is nothing in it about next of kin rights. Nothing in it states that they must be recognised by a hospital or anyone else. Those things were not covered by law anyway. Yet Government members made speech after speech about it. I think we had one from the honourable Georgina Beyer who spoke with tear-jerking intensity about what the legislation would do in that area and of course it was not even covered by the legislation. 
The solution put into the legislation regarding the nature of marriage and sexual connection is only temporary. We got away from that pseudo-definition of a relationship as Lianne Dalziel said but by replacing it with the general statement that a relationship should be “in the nature of marriage” the courts are still left with an impossible task. How much affection is required? How much mutual reliance? Is sexual connection an important element of it? Courts will struggle with that because in most of the areas in which we have tinkered with the law that is actually irrelevant.