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I also want to respond to Tim Barnett’s comments because they cannot be left unchallenged. Although he and I have a healthy respect for each other’s positions I feel that he made a couple of statements that were quite wrong. First he indicated there was clear public support for this bill in polls that have been taken. Well all the polls I have seen have had support fluctuating between 40 and 60 percent and the results of the last two surveys we have available are similar. One survey conducted showed variance of 45 or 46 percent which hardly gives a clear majority for support and a survey last week by a television programme showed 76 percent opposition to this bill. I do not know where the member gets his figures from but it seems he is making a very selective choice. 
Secondly the member asked: if we were to put these sorts of issues to a referendum how would we decide what was a significant issue? I can tell him one thing—this issue is a significant issue. It seems to me that when we have issues that are as fundamental as the nature of marriage in our society and when there is such a strong public division on the issue there is a classic example of the need for a referendum. 
In this bill we are looking at the undermining of what has been the four cornerstones of marriage in society—namely that marriage is confined to two people that it is confined to people who have reached a certain age that it is confined to people who do not have relationships that are close in terms of blood ties and that it is confined to a man and a woman. In this bill we want to destroy one of those foundations without getting society’s view on the matter. We risk undermining the foundations of marriage as a result and that is a clear example where a referendum is necessary in terms of coming up with a mandate in order to make those changes. 
In fact I think that on any conscience issue this Parliament debates where there is less than 60 percent support the issue should automatically be put to a referendum. If we cannot get 60 percent support it demonstrates a clear division in society so that the issue should be decided on a much broader basis than simply by 120 members in the House. We need to give a greater say to the public. They are clamouring for it. We need to show them that we think there are certain issues in this country that ought to be decided beyond merely those issues that relate to the electoral system and beyond merely the 3-yearly vote. I think a referendum is an appropriate measure to do that. 
The lesson that we should learn through that procedure is that it is important we hear the concerns of minority groups within our society and most particularly the concerns where those minority groups represent interests that we may disagree with personally. What we need to do is to listen then to distinguish the genuine concerns that we ought to address from what are simply requests for wants rather than needs—wants that start undermining the fabric of our society. 
If we had addressed earlier the needs of the homosexual community in terms of issues such as next-of-kin rights then a measure such as the one Richard Worth promoted would have been the way to go. I am disappointed that even at this late stage we have not adopted that suggestion because that does genuinely address the needs we have been told about. 
It does not address the wants of the homosexual community who want same-sex relationships to be seen to be equivalent to opposite-sex relationships even though opposite-sex relationships have been a fundamental institution in terms of marriage and the rearing of children and continue to be so in our society. That demand for those wants which goes way beyond real needs is what a large proportion of this Committee does not accept as being legitimate.