Baldock Larry: Civil Union Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Baldock Larry: Civil Union Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:622;Page:17523] 
LARRY BALDOCK (United Future) 
: 
 I certainly do not condone any violence towards homosexuals in this country. But despite the previous member’s speech I do not believe that that would be the outcome of a properly handled referendum in this country. It would simply be an opportunity for people to share their views on this very important subject. Nor do I condone the Government introducing legislation against hate speech into Parliament at some time in the future. That would restrict the ability of any New Zealander to have an opinion about homosexuality. I think that the honourable member Stephen Franks made that point very clear in his speech. What concerns many New Zealanders as they look at this legislation is that they see it is one more step towards shutting down any kind of opposition to a homosexual lifestyle. I believe that New Zealanders should be free to have their own moral views and to be able to express their opinions when they feel that they need to. 
I need to address the amendment that I have on the Table for this legislation before we run out of calls and I will spend the rest of my speech on doing so. It is an amendment to clause 18. My colleague Marc Alexander also has an amendment to remove clauses 17 and 18 from the bill altogether. We believe that that is the Trojan Horse in this legislation whereby people will be able to access marriage officially while in a same-sex relationship because of the ability within the bill to convert from civil union to marriage. Currently the bill states that couples can do that only if they are eligible to marry. We understand that under the current interpretation of the Marriage Act marriage is for men and women. But we do not hold any confidence that that may not be overturned in the future by judicial activism which we have seen occur in the past. I simply want to put the issue beyond all doubt by making an amendment to clause 18 that adds the words “and who are a man and a woman” so that it can be very clear that the intention of Parliament if this bill passes is that only those civil unions that are between a man and a woman could ever transfer to marriage officially. I do not see that as an unreasonable request. 
If the supporters of this legislation are adamant about the fact that it is not a step towards gay marriage then let us make it clear in the legislation that that cannot occur in the future. I believe the contrary to that is true. I believe that this bill is a Trojan Horse. I cannot see any reason why those transfer clauses are in this bill except to allow a same-sex couple who are in a civil union to go to court in the future and say that they are being discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation and to take an appeal right through to the Supreme Court. I believe it is entirely possible that the Supreme Court would overturn the will of Parliament and begin to give gay marriage to civil union partners. The thing that concerns us about this bill is that civil union is made so much like marriage that it is possible to flip-flop between the two. Why on earth do we want heterosexuals to have civil unions when they could have civil marriages anyway under the current law? That simply does not make sense. 
A number of speakers have raised the issue of the international precedents. They have happily cited the European countries that have provided for civil unions and for marriage. One of them that has not been referred to of course is the Netherlands which has had civil unions or gay marriage since 1999. In the Netherlands’ 5 years of experience the surveys have shown that each civil union lasts for an average of 18 months. It is entirely the right of people to have civil relationships but we ought to look at the facts about what those civil unions have produced there: relationships that last on average 18 months. The surveys show that during those 18 months people have also had up to six or eight partners. In a free society people are entirely free to do that if they wish to do so but that is not a relationship that we should consider putting children into. Children need more than 18 months in order to grow up and mature. They need to have a stable relationship between a mother and father over a period of at least 20 years in order to be able to grow to maturity and to have the benefits of the love and care of those individuals. It is not enough just to be loving and caring at the beginning of a relationship. That love and care has to continue throughout a lifetime in order to provide a stable relationship in which children can grow mature and become adults themselves. One of the submitters who came to the Justice and Electoral Committee said that his studies of same-sex relationships over the entire world had found that the average length of those relationships was 2 years. We know that marriages break down and that de facto heterosexual couples break up but their average internationally is 17 years. That is a much better average than 2 years.