Turner Judy: Marriage (Gender Clarification) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Turner Judy: Marriage (Gender Clarification) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:628;Page:673] 
JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I rise to speak in support of the first reading of the Marriage (Gender Clarification) Amendment Bill. When I was preparing for this speech I was reminded strangely enough of a conversation I had with Dianne Yates about the Animal Welfare (Restriction on Docking of Dogs’ Tails) Bill that she had sponsored. She explained to me that when researching the practice of docking dogs’ tails she discovered that an old attempt at tax evasion was the reason that dogs’ tails were docked—dogs were taxed and they were counted by their tails. Over time that practice has become a preference for those who breed dogs for showing. I mention that because it is the historical context of marriage that motivates me to support the codification of the Marriage Act. 
When one strips away the modern constructs of Hollywood the baubles associated with wedding days and even the addition of religious involvement in the valuing of marriage by religious organisations one comes up with the way societies originally managed and protected the human breeding pool and protected the natural family environment for the nurture and raising of offspring. The current legal constraints around marriage still reflect this which is why currently marriage firstly is between two people; secondly is heterosexual; and thirdly is not allowed to be incestuous. 
Prior to the advances in birth control getting married was all about having children. It was not just about consenting adults but about the beginning of a family. Marriage and parenthood traditionally were inseparable concepts. Both my mother’s and grandmother’s generation referred to “honeymoon babies” who were born 9 months after the wedding. So marriage was an arrangement between breeding-capable couples. Even as recently as 50 years ago the need to codify the Marriage Act would have been considered nonsense because the link between breeding and marriage was an automatic assumption. 
Today with the advances of medical science—with contraception and new birth technology developments—the traditional boundaries of marriage have been challenged and in some jurisdictions have been redefined. Single-sex couples are now able to employ these more recent technologies to construct new types of social parenting arrangements. Sperm and egg donors are now no longer just helping heterosexual couples with fertility challenges but are providing the means by which both un-partnered women and gay and lesbian couples can have children. 
Social parenting arrangements were traditionally resorted to when natural parenting arrangements had fallen over for some reason and they took the form of kinship care and adoption. Today social parenting arrangements are many and varied and it is not my intention in the time I have left to make comments on the desirability of those new trends. But I want to suggest that the medical and scientific climate around the provisions of marriage have changed considerably and other jurisdictions are responding in a variety of ways to those changes. Members of this House as elected representatives need to decide tonight whether the voters who put them here want marriage preserved as tradition makes clear as a social convention for a man and a woman with the natural breeding potential that they represent or whether their voters want them to leave open the options so that marriage can be applied to non-breeding arrangements. 
The chance to publicly declare and celebrate commitment and to afford legal protection is now available through civil unions. Marriage no longer enjoys any form of elitist status but it does still represent a distinctiveness that the voters who sent me to this House want to see preserved. So I will support the first reading and any consecutive readings of this bill.