Smith Murray: Relationships (Statutory References) Bill — Second Reading 
Smith Murray: Relationships (Statutory References) Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:624;Page:18982] 
MURRAY SMITH (United Future) 
: 
GiambattistaVico after completing an exhaustive study of ancient history concluded in 1725 that marriage between a man and a woman is an essential characteristic of civilisation. Without strong social norms that encourage a man to direct his sexual attentions to a single woman and thereafter care for his offspring Vico concluded that chaos ensued. Marriage he wrote was the seedbed of society. 
British anthropologist J D Unwin reached the same conclusion some 200 years later. In his 1934 book  
Sex and Culture 
 Unwin chronicled the historical decline of 86 different cultures. His exhaustive survey revealed that “strict marital monogamy” was central to social energy and growth. Indeed he said no society flourished for more than three generations without it. Unwin stated it this way: “In human records there is no instance of a society retaining its energy after a completely new generation has inherited a tradition which does not insist on prenuptial and postnuptial continence.” In the 21st century the findings of Vico and Unwin are confirmed by hundreds of sociological studies that document the impact of marital forms and marital dissolution on men women and children. Those studies speak with a surprisingly uniform voice: enduring marriage between a man and a woman is the best environment for the social physical mental emotional and economic development of men women and children. Without stable marriage women suffer men suffer and children suffer the most. Every deviation from the ideal model of enduring monogamous marriage between a man and a woman increases the suffering of men women and children. 
We were fortunate in the Justice and Electoral Committee to have a submission from John Sax a well-known Auckland philanthropist. Unfortunately his submission had almost no attention paid to it by the select committee. He outlined for us the social statistics on marriage relationships and children who are born into marriage relationships when compared with other forms of relationship. Just extracting a few of those makes salutary reading. 
According to Australian studies family abuse and child abuse leading to the deaths of children are three times more likely to occur in de facto parent families than in marriage four times more likely to occur in solo-parent families than in marriage seven times more likely to occur where a family includes a stepfather or blended marriage five times more likely to occur where the child is living with a family without one or more biological parents and from UK studies 18 times more likely to occur with cohabiting biological parents and 73 times more likely to occur where the mother is cohabiting with a non-biological partner. 
When it comes to the area of health problems solo mothers are four times more likely to have health problems than married mothers and adolescents in divorced or unmarried relationships are twice as likely to have health problems. 
In education children from single-parent families have a 76 percent lower academic completion rate than children from families with parents who are married and twice the number of high-school leavers who leave with no educational qualifications have parents who are not married rather than married parents. Children with parents who have never married are 1½ times more likely to be expelled. Children in families with solo mothers are twice as likely to drop out of school than children who have married parents and children whose parents have never married are four times more likely to be expelled. 
When it comes to economics solo parents have 4½ times the level of child poverty of married parents and de facto relationships are twice as likely to have child poverty within them than in married relationships. 
 When it comes to suicide children from families with step-parents or blended families are twice as likely to commit suicide. Children with single parents are three times more likely to commit suicide. In fact in Sweden the factor was 20 times. In Sweden which is upheld by our Prime Minister as a model it is 20 times more likely that children from a single-parent family will commit suicide than children with married parents. Children with separated parents are 20 times more likely to commit suicide. Children from fatherless homes are 40 times more likely to commit suicide. 
When it comes to teenage pregnancies the number of teenage pregnancies in daughters who live in homes without fathers is over six times the level of teenage pregnancies of daughters who come from homes with married couples. 
When it comes to the area of serious crime resulting in imprisonment the number is three times higher for boys raised in step-families than for boys raised in married-couple families two times higher for boys raised in solo families and 3.7 times higher for children raised in a family with a stepmother. There is a 2½ times higher chance of jail for boys born to unmarried parents and a three times higher chance for males who live with stepfathers and it is 19 times more likely that children who come from fatherless homes will be involved in a serious crime resulting in imprisonment. 
All the statistics point us towards the fact that children raised in a married-couple family do far better on all socio-economic indicators than children in other forms of relationships. We should be providing a safe place for our children. We should be minimising the violent offending sexual abuse youth suicide addictions and mental health problems of our children improving their health and providing the best education outcomes for them. Promoting marriage ahead of all other forms of relationships helps to do that. 
This Government does the opposite. This bill undermines marriage. It states that civil unions are equivalent to marriage but there are no guidelines in terms of what civil unions will end up as. As I said in my minority report on the bill future societal expectations have been left in limbo. In terms of same-sex civil union relationships there is a failure to recognise the important but different contributions that mothers and fathers make to the raising of children. What the proponents of this bill are saying is that two mothers or two fathers are just as valid and just as helpful to children as having a mother and a father is and that is just plain wrong. 
Marriage deserves to be discriminated for. All the statistics say so. Instead this Government is bending over backwards to reduce marriage to equal status with other far weaker forms of relationship. We should be funding and encouraging pre-marriage counselling. We should be teaching the importance and value of marriage as a stable exclusive heterosexual and long-term relationship to our children. We should be providing early intervention for marriages in trouble. We should be encouraging a culture of staying in marriages as far as it is possible to do so. Until we seriously address the environments in which our children have been raised and encourage the level of parental commitment that marriage alone provides all other factors are like ambulances at the bottoms of cliffs and the money will be largely wasted. 
Why do we not address the causes of those problems—namely the breakdown of family relationships—rather than keeping on addressing simply the results that we suffer? Why are we creating new forms of relationships such as the civil union when we have no idea what that will involve? But in my view it undoubtedly will lead to relationships that are less stable less exclusive and probably more temporary than marriage. If that was not going to happen we would not need to introduce them. Why are we doing that when all those indicators point us in a different direction? They point us to the fact that marriage is the one strong institution in our society that provides the best outcomes for our children. 
This bill should not pass.