SameSame.com.au ~ Inside Out Australia

Gay MP Challenges Rudd On Marriage

Local News, By Christian Taylor, 19th June, 2009

Ian Hunter, a South Australian Labor MP spoke in Parliament yesterday about how much he wants to marry his partner, and how wrong it is for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to continue to stand in the way of gay marriage in Australia.

As AdelaideNow reports, Hunter has been an openly gay member of Parliament since 2006 and has been in a relationship with his partner Leith for nearly two decades. Originally born in Broken Hill, Hunter said that he’s no longer content accepting ‘the crumbs from the table’.

“I want to get married,” said Hunter. “But I can’t – I can’t marry the person I love, not in my own country… Next year will be the twentieth anniversary of my not being married to my partner Leith… Yes I could travel to Massachusetts or South Africa and get married. But I want to share my marriage with my family and my friends – like we all do. I want to get married and you, Mr Rudd, are stopping me.”

As the gay marriage wave sweeps across America, recent poll results have shown a growing acceptance of gay marriage here at home.

In April this year the Rudd government rejected a proposal from the Australia 2020 Summit to offer same-sex civil unions, stating that state based relationship registers would be ‘the most appropriate way’ to legally recognise same-sex couples.

Despite civil unions being quite different from traditional notions of marriage, the Government said that their “policy on marriage reflects the widely held view in the community that marriage is between a man and a woman” and that while “couples who have a mutual commitment to a shared life, but who are not married” shouldn’t be discriminated against, “the most appropriate way to achieve [relationship recognition] is by the development of nationally consistent, state-based” relationship registers.

According to Australian Marriage Equality, civil unions are currently offered in the Australian Capital Territory, Tasmania and Victoria. There is no civil union scheme in New South Wales, however, the City of Sydney provides a relationship register available to all residents of the state.

Hunter is an atheist and caused controversy in 2007 when he spoke out about prayers in parliament being a waste of time. Hunter is the first openly gay member of the South Australian Legislative Council and has advocated on issues of equality, including introducing an amendment in the Legislative Council to a surrogacy bill that would extend the bill to cover same-sex couples, in line with other state legislation. The Amendment was ultimately unsuccessful.