English Bill: Civil Union Bill — In Committee Procedure 
English Bill: Civil Union Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:622;Page:17501] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 The Minister has just put his finger on the nub of the problem. The reason we do not have the Relationships (Statutory References) Bill here is precisely that the Justice and Electoral Committee discovered the legislation had unintended consequences. One of the big problems with this issue is that the Government is taking a bureaucratic view of human rights. The logic of what the Minister has just said is that we all have a human right to have the same sort of relationship which the Government somehow has to guarantee in law. 
Hon David Benson-Pope 
: No that you’re not discriminated against. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: No. The only way to show that people are not discriminated against is for us all to have the same sort of relationship. How can any difference in rights and obligations possibly be justified according to the Minister’s logic? That point is demonstrated in clause 18 of the Civil Union Bill. I notice the subtle change made by the Justice and Electoral Committee. Clause 18 used to be called “Converting civil union into marriage”. At least that was honest. Now it is called “Changing form of relationship”. Labour has decided that civil union cannot be said to be marriage. Lianne Dalziel got up yesterday and said that civil union is not gay marriage. The Government therefore could not have anything in the bill that looked as though it was gay marriage so it has changed the title of clause 18 from “Converting civil union into marriage” to “Changing form of relationship”. 
We know the policy intention because that is expressed in the commentary on this bill. I refer the Committee to the heading “Prohibited degrees of civil union”. The paragraph under that heading states: “While the policy rationale is to reinforce the status of civil union as legally equivalent to marriage many of the prohibited degrees of marriage were introduced for historical reasons …”. I do not want to discuss the prohibited degrees in any detail but that does make it quite clear that the Government’s policy rationale is to reinforce the status of civil union as being legally equivalent to marriage. I want the Minister to tell this Committee what degree of legal equivalence there will be between civil union and marriage when this bill is passed if it is passed at the end of this week. That matters because people will be able to interchange the two sorts of relationships. They will have different statutory definitions so if anyone is to vote for or against this bill he or she needs to know the consequences of those definitions. That is why this bill is a nonsense without the Relationships (Statutory References) Bill—we simply do not know what will be in it. 
The issue is tricky enough even within marriage. In the church in which I was married the registration aspect is simply a requirement by the Government that has no relevance to the validity of the marriage of which I am part. In fact the Catholic Church in which I was married says that we marry each other; we do not even need to have a celebrant. The substance of the marriage is in the personal commitment made in front of the community with the sacramental overlay—which is more than an overlay; it is at the heart of it. That is a completely different version even within marriage of how and why it happens and why it is valid. We then go off and sign the Government’s licence because that is what the State requires us to do. If we have that kind of complexity within the social meaning of marriage then what are the implications of civil unions being converted into marriages and vice versa? 
People have a right to know what this legislation means. If the Minister cannot tell us who will decide that? Parliament could with subsequent legislation. As I have said before in this debate I do not think Parliament will ever see that legislation because the select committee will not be able to resolve issues like the definition of de facto. For welfare purposes de facto means a couple that has been together for a couple of weeks and for property purposes it is a couple that has been together for 3 years. How can we possibly discriminate in that way?