Andrew Leigh

I moved a private member's motion in the House of Representatives today on United Nations Public Service Day.

United Nations Public Service Day
25 June 2012

To move—That this House:
(1) recognises that:
(a) 23 June is the United Nations Public Service Day;
(b) democracy and successful governance are built on the foundation of a competent, career-based public service; and
(c) the day recognises the key values of teamwork, innovation and responsiveness to the public; and
(2) commends the Australian Public Service on continuing to be an international model of best-practice public service and providing outstanding services to the Australian community.

The United Nations General Assembly designated 23 June as United Nations Public Service Day. In the words of the UN, it is a day to celebrate the value and virtue of public service to the community. Public servants make an enormous contribution to the Australian community, and as a member for a seat based in the ACT I have the privilege of representing, meeting and working with a large number of public servants. Public servants form a significant portion of my community. In my electorate of Fraser we also benefit from a continual influx of people moving here to take up opportunities to serve the Australian public. We see this passion for community translated into a great benefit locally, the ACT having higher than average rates of volunteering and participation in sports and recreation—two indicators in which we top the nation.

Very rarely do we stop and appreciate the hard work performed by Australian public servants. Australian public servants have performed extraordinary acts. They headed into flood-affected Brisbane to make sure that people received their government payments, they developed a fiscal stimulus package to get us through the global financial crisis, they are in Australian workplaces making sure that Australian workers have good conditions, they are keeping infectious diseases out of the country and they are finding the most effective way to price pollution to protect our environment. None of these tasks would be possible without a public service to develop and implement policy and programs. We would all still be stuck with old-fashioned ways of running our economy and society if it were not for the public servants who continually review and refine what we do now and develop innovative approaches to public policy. I commend the Crawford School of Public Policy for its work through the HC Coombs Policy Forum in developing better policies.

Australia is at an exciting point in its history. The government is looking to the future to develop policies that will shape our place in the world and the way we look after the most vulnerable. Australians joining the public service today have the opportunity to form and influence Australia's future. This ties in with another aim of UN Public Service Day, which is to encourage young people to pursue careers in the public sector. Every year thousands of young and not so young people move to the ACT to take up jobs as graduates in the Australian Public Service. I encourage all young Australians to consider a career in the public service. In doing so they will be able to help address the challenges of today, and inform the decisions we make for Australia's future.

UN Public Service Day is also a time for us to reflect on and recognise that an efficient and effective public service helps to achieve international goals as well as national ones. The Australian Public Service is one of the most efficient in the world, which is how we are able, as a medium-sized power, to have a strong voice in the international community. One of the things that Australia does best as part of our foreign aid strategy is to assist countries such as Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and East Timor set up transparent and accountable public services. Knowing our foreign aid dollars will be managed for the benefit of the entire community is important, and we also know that structures of government are a vital part of a robust democracy. Assisting with good governance is of long-term benefit in our region.

Successful nations are underpinned by successful public sectors. Those nations that were most successful in the last century were so successful because they had a capable public sector. In fact, progress as a nation is virtually impossible without a committed public service. It is vital for our region for Australia to continue to be an example, to provide practical assistance to those countries most in need. We are fortunate in Australia to have a public service offering frank and fearless advice to governments of all persuasions, and it is time we all took a moment to thank our hard-working public servants.

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I spoke in parliament today on the 20th anniversary of the Mabo judgment.

20th Anniversary of the Mabo Judgment
25 June 2012

Imagine the moment in 1974 when, talking with his friends, Eddie Koiki Mabo realised his land was owned by the Crown, not by him and his people. Noel Loos and Henry Reynolds recall: 'Koiki was surprised and shocked'. He had kept saying, 'No way, it's not theirs. It's ours.' It would turn out to be one of the most significant moments in Australian history. From then to the historic High Court decision of 3 June 1992 Eddie Mabo showed us that a deeper appreciation of Indigenous Australia is the responsibility of all Australians and that the recognition of Indigenous history and culture and the challenges it faces is not an optional part of being Australian but is essential to who we are.

Eddie Mabo Day, 3 June, helps us identify, acknowledge and celebrate all Indigenous Australians and their contribution to our nation. It is a critical part in the process of reconciliation. But it is also a great moment to celebrate the life of a great Australian and to remember a man of extraordinary vision, warmth and intelligence. Eddie Mabo's story is one in which I think Australians can take great pride. I think it is also a reminder that Australia is at its strongest when we remember the stories of Indigenous Australians.

One of the books that have made an impression on me is Stories of the Ngunnawal, a collection of stories of the local Ngunawal people. To me those stories reflect that so much of what Eddie Mabo was facing was also being faced here in the Canberra region. There had been suggestions in the middle of the 20th century that the last remnants of the Ngunawal people had gone. An article in the Canberra Times in 1985 said, according to the writers, it was felt the last remnants of the Aboriginal tribes of this area were gone by 1911 with the deaths of Ned and Lucy Carroll at the Edgerton mission station.  The article went on to say that reports of the extinction of the Ngunawal people had been greatly exaggerated 'according to a very much alive survivor, Mr Tom Phillips of Kambah'. Tom Phillips was indeed a character. One story has him being arrested while walking naked in the Namadji area. Apparently he was called into a courtroom with a blanket wrapped around him. The judge said, 'What are you doing, walking around like that? You can't walk around like that in front of people.' Mr Phillips said to the judge: 'Mate, I'm an Aboriginal. I was born naked, and I'll walk around how I want. I'm not going to sit here and listen to a man sitting there with a dead carcass on his head telling me I can't do this and that. I'll walk around how I want.'

Another great survivor of the Ngunawal people is Auntie Agnes Shea. She is a familiar sight to those of us who attend conferences in Canberra because she is one of the most frequent of those to welcome attendees to country. Auntie Agnes tells the story about how as a young girl she did not learn the Ngunawal language. She says: 'The elders decided that, if we kept using it at home, we wouldn't do it intentionally but automatically we'd use it if we were off down the town or somewhere, and it would get us into trouble.' By that, she means the risk of being taken away from her parents. Auntie Agnes says: 'So they forbade us to use our language, for our protection, and that's how we came to lose so much of the Ngunawal language. I was around seven or eight around then.'

It is a great source of pride to me to be a federal member representing the land of Ngunawal people, to be able to remember some of their stories and recognise the great strength of Indigenous Australia and that we are greater as a country thanks to that Indigenous heritage. This is, I think, broadly recognised by both sides of parliament, on this the 20th anniversary of the Mabo judgment, but it was not always thus. The Attorney-General, in a speech on 6 June, reminded her audience of some of the history of the Mabo case. She said:

'Disenfranchised by the Bjelke-Petersen government, Eddie Mabo, David and Sam Passi, Celuia Salee and James Rice, all from the Meriam people, set themselves the seemingly improbable task of literally creating a space for indigenous rights to land and waters—where previously this had been said to be an impossibility.'

She pointed out that the Bjelke-Petersen government dogmatically attempted to legislate away any prospect of native title, that Tim Fischer had said that native title was unnecessary as 'dispossession of Aboriginal civilisation was always going to happen' and that Hugh Morgan said that the High Court had thrown property law into chaos and 'given substance to the ambitions of Australian communists and the Bolshevik left for a separate Australian state'. She pointed out that Tim Fischer said: 'Mabo has the capacity to put a brake on Australian investment, break the economy and break up Australia—a brake, a break and a break-up we can do without,' and that John Hewson, after native title legislation passed the parliament, in December 1993, described it as a 'day of shame'. John Hewson said:

'The Coalition is totally opposed to this piece of legislation. It is bad legislation. It will prove to be a disaster for Australia. It goes way beyond the High Court. It introduces inequities into the Australian system. It consciously sets out to divide the Australian nation and there is only one thing you can do with bad legislation and that is to throw it out.'

The reason I quote all these statements made two decades ago by a business leader and prominent members of the opposition is that they remind us of what the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency has called the divide in Australian politics between the reformers and the wreckers. It reminds us that almost every reform that is now held dear in Australia was not gotten through bipartisan agreement but was hard-fought-for at the time. Great reform never comes easy. It is often opposed at the moment at which it is fought for. But in so many cases Australia can now look back to great Labor reforms like native title with a sense of pride. I believe it will be so for the great Labor reforms like a price on carbon, a mining tax, the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the National Broadband Network.

Reconciliation works best in Australia when it is not just self-flagellatory reconciliation—although there were great wrongs done—but when it also operates with a sense of pride. The moment in the 2000 Olympics when Cathy Freeman won gold and the moment when she lit the Olympic flame were moments that did as much for the cause of reconciliation as perhaps all the honourable speeches of this kind. There was the moment when Gough Whitlam poured sand into the hand of Vincent Lingiari and Lingiari said to him, 'We're all mates now'. These sparks of positive reconciliation are a great source of pride for all Australians, and it is with a great sense of pride that I remember the 20th anniversary of the Mabo judgment.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/6vZOd9Hjkcc

I spoke in parliament this morning on a private member's motion moved by Rob Oakeshott on debt forgiveness for developing nations, and the role of 'vulture funds'.

Debt and Vulture Funds
25 June 2012

Debt is not the most serious issue that developing countries face, but unsustainable debt burdens can, in certain cases, be a barrier to development. So the HIPC Initiative was launched in 1996 by the IMF and the World Bank, and its aim is to ensure that no poor country faces a debt burden that it cannot manage.

HIPC has a two-step process. The decision point requires that countries must fulfill the following four conditions: be eligible to borrow from the World Bank's International Development Association, countries must face an unsustainable debt burden, have established a track record of reform and sound policies, and have a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper. Of the 39 countries that are eligible or potentially eligible for HIPC Initiative assistance, 32 are receiving full debt relief from the IMF and other creditors after reaching their completion points. We know that, for these countries, debt relief has freed up resources for social spending. Before the HIPC Initiative, eligible countries were spending a little more on debt service than on health and education combined. Now their expenditure on health, education and social services has gone up and averages five times what they spend on debt payment. For the 36 countries that have debt relief, debt service paid, on average, has declined about two percentage points of GDP over the noughties. So the HIPC Initiative has been successful.

I think it is important that in considering any issue of debt relief we bear in mind the purpose for which debt is acquired. Debt is not of itself a bad thing. Just as we would not want to shut off credit markets to low-income Australians, so too we want to make sure that any reforms in the area of debt do not shut off access to credit for well-managed developing country borrowers. In fact, what is particularly striking is that more finance is not flowing to the world's poorest countries. The return on capital ought to be highest for countries that are furthest behind the world average incomes, yet it has proven difficult to attract investors to these countries.

The concept that I find most attractive in this space is Michael Kremer and Seema Jayachandran's notion of 'odious debt'. They define odious debt as sovereign debt that is incurred without the consent of the people and not for their benefit. They give the example of debt incurred by apartheid-era South Africa. They argue that that debt should not be transferrable to successor governments. They argue that the development of an institution which could truthfully announce whether regimes were odious could create an equilibrium in which lenders have a strong incentive not to loan to odious countries but in which regimes in low-income countries that are spending borrowings for the advantage of their people could still obtain access to credit markets. To me, the notion of odious debt is particularly attractive, because it focuses on how the money is spent rather than on how much money is acquired. I would urge the House to do what it can to pursue the notion of odious debt.

The big shift since the creation of the HIPC initiative has been the rise of China as a donor. This is transforming overseas direct assistance. China currently operating largely outside the OECD DAC framework means that it is difficult for other countries to know what aid China is providing and to work in with that aid. So anything that we are doing in the space of odious debt, vulture funds or the HIPC initiative needs to take into account how the Chinese government will respond. To the extent we can, we need to bring China in to the community of nations that believes that overseas aid should be used to further the wellbeing of individuals rather than simply of regimes and leaders.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/CWaq0cDxmCg

I spoke in parliament today about the changing media landscape, and its impact on those journalists who live in my electorate.

The Changing Media Landscape
21 June 212

I rise to speak about the policy and personal implications of changes in the media. In 1970 there were more daily newspapers sold than televisions in Australia; now for every daily newspaper sold there are four televisions. We used to say of the political coverage in Australia that the media cycle had become a cyclone, but that cyclone now seems to be sweeping across the journalists themselves. My heart goes out to the 1,900 Fairfax journalists whose jobs have been lost in the recent restructure. I am particularly aware of this, representing the north side of the ACT—the ACT being the jurisdiction probably more affected by media losses than anywhere else.

For many other people in this place, they probably only see journalists in the press gallery when they are working, but, as a local member of parliament, I can assure the House that journalists are very much part of the Canberra community. Without naming any names, I am thinking of the Age journalist who lives around the corner from me and whose kids we often play with at the local park, of the News Ltd Sundays journalist who often approaches me to discuss issues about local schools, of the Canberra Times journalist who is working to raise money for maternal health overseas, and of a Sky journalist who recently joined me on a fundraising run to raise money for local charities. Put another way, journalists are people too. The decline of the Canberra press gallery, from 283 working journalists in 1990 to around 190 now, has significant implications on a personal level and on a policy level.

I commend the minister for communications for commissioning the Finkelstein Media Inquiry and Convergence Review, which grapple with some of the issues in a changing media landscape, and I commend the member for Wentworth and the Minister for Communications on joining together to call on Gina Rinehart to sign the Fairfax Media Charter of Editorial Independence.

The concerns about Mrs Rinehart's involvement with Fairfax stem mainly from the concern that she may not be solely concerned with maximising the revenue of the brand. Magnates have of course owned media before but, unlike other media moguls, most of Mrs Rinehart's ownership is not in media, and that raises questions about how mining issues would be reported were Mrs Rinehart to take control of Fairfax. I call on Mrs Rinehart to sign the Fairfax Media Charter of Editorial Independence, which says, in part, ‘full editorial control of the newspapers, within agreed budgets, shall be vested in the editors.  They alone shall determine editorial content and appoint, dismiss, deploy and direct editorial staff.’ Labor's concern with Mrs Rinehart's involvement in the media is that it may threaten our democracy itself and the vibrancy of views that are so essential to an open society.

On Sky AM Agenda this morning, I spoke with host David Lipson and Liberal MP Kelly O’Dwyer. We discussed Gina Rinehart’s refusal to sign the Fairfax Charter of Editorial Independence, the reforms needed to put the Eurozone back on track, why Australia shouldn’t be ashamed of our economic strength, and the fact that Australia will this year join 25 other OECD countries in putting a price on carbon. At one point, Kelly O’Dwyer incorrectly claimed that the Australian carbon price is economy-wide, when in fact it covers around 60% of domestic emissions (you can argue about whether that’s good or bad, but it’s the simple fact).http://www.youtube.com/embed/bS7Hkzi0ZTc

I spoke in parliament last night about the late Frank Walker.

Frank Walker
19 June 2012

Frank Walker did more in public life than many of us can ever hope to do. During his time he suffered more than any of us probably ever will. He lost his two sons, Michael and Sean, to suicide. Both died at age 33, and he found both of them. But he contributed an extraordinary amount to our public life. He spent his first years in a Coogee housing commission home. His family moved to New Guinea in 1948 after his father, Jack Walker—a brickworks dragger and a member of the Communist Party of Australia—was black-listed. He was a campaigner for the underdog, and perhaps part of that was formed by those early years in Papua New Guinea, sitting alongside indigenous children in coastal villages.

In 1950s Australia, at the age of 13, he staged his first political act, sitting with segregated Aboriginals at the Sawtell picture theatre. He joined Charlie Perkins on the freedom ride to Mooree in 1965. He devoted decades of his life to public life, and it was in the latter years that I first came to know him. At university I decided I would write a paper on the New South Wales left. Frank was generous enough to give me two hours of his time sitting in his electorate office. I look back on my notes today and see that on 22 April 1994 I went to the Robertson electorate office and sat with him, talking through some of the old stories of the faction. Perhaps the one that caught me the most was when Jack Ferguson - the member for Werriwa's father - stepped down as Deputy Premier and there was a question as to whether Frank would succeed him. He did not. In somewhat controversial circumstances he was beaten out in that internal ballot.

He was a full participant in some of those very difficult times for the left. He voted for Paul Keating in both the leadership ballots and ran for the ministry without the support of the left. But he took stands on principle. When Prime Minister Bob Hawke spoke on the Iraq war, Frank Walker was one of a handful of members who left the chamber, earning themselves substantial opprobrium in the process.

I remember Frank very much as being generous with his time with me, a young whippersnapper and surely the least important thing on his agenda, but it was a reminder of how those of us in public life should behave when people come to learn from us. I enjoyed very much the story Senator Faulkner told in the other place about when he arrived in his office in Sussex Street to receive a Christmas present from Frank Walker—a New South Wales ALP rule book with every page blank because, as Frank's annotation read, the Sussex Street machine just ignored the party rules anyway. Senator Faulkner has lodged Frank's Christmas present in the National Archives of Australia.

My friend Macgregor Duncan, a family friend of Frank's, said the following:

‘… I would say that Frank lived his life with great dignity and nobility. As has been well documented, he suffered great sorrow and sadness in his life, enough to make most of us resign in despair and unjustified guilt. But Frank never gave into those emotions. He summoned the will to rise above it all. He was loyal, generous and kind to his friends. And he was an exemplary parliamentarian and minister. For a man who'd had so much taken from him, he gave so much back to his friends, family, community and country. And in a democracy, where we collectively rely on the private exertions of our public leaders, it's important that we celebrate those contributions when so noble and hard-fought.’

Vale Frank Walker.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/t8mDsjYhQAQ

Peter van Onselen hosted Kelly O'Dwyer and me on his Showdown program last night. We talked about the excellent performance of the Australian economy under the guidance of the Gillard Government's economic team, the real spending cuts in the latest budget, and the worldwide move towards carbon pricing.

At one point in the interview, we discuss spending changes in the latest budget. From 2011-12 to 2012-13, spending rose from $373.7B to $376.3B. Kelly O'Dwyer argued that this should be seen as an increase, but when you take inflation into account, it's actually a 1.8% fall in real government spending. Put another way, government spending as a percentage of GDP fell from 25.3% to 24.3%. In over 20 years in office, the Fraser and Howard Governments never once cut real government spending.http://www.youtube.com/embed/5HNKs0pTt90

I spoke in parliament last night about the tax switch on 1 July, which will see taxes rise for polluters and fall for many workers. I also mentioned the Leader of the Opposition's pythonesque scare campaign.

Carbon Pricing
18 June 2012

A few years ago a Prime Minister of Australia said the following:

‘Implementing an emissions trading scheme and setting a long-term goal for reducing emissions will be the most momentous economic decisions Australia will take in the next decade. … This is a great economic challenge for Australia as well as a great environmental challenge. Significantly reducing emissions will mean higher costs for businesses and households, there is no escaping that and anyone who pretends otherwise is not a serious participant in this hugely important public policy debate. It will change the entire cost structure of the economy. We must get this right; if we get this wrong it will do enormous damage to our economy, to jobs and to the economic wellbeing of ordinary Australians, especially low-income households.’

Of course Prime Minister John Howard was just reflecting conventional economic wisdom when he said this in 2007. The first emissions trading scheme blueprints were produced in the 1990s.

On 1 July 2012, Australia will undergo a significant tax reform. Taxes on polluters will rise and taxes on all workers earning less than $80,000 a year will fall. In an article in Nature Climate Change, ANU Professor Frank Jotzo discusses some of the key features of the carbon pricing regime that Australia will adopt on 1 July. Our carbon price will cover around 60 per cent of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions. It will be a fixed price for the first three years, moving to a floating emissions trading scheme in July 2015 'with a fixed number of permits sold at auction, international trading allowed and permits bankable'. There will be 'a floor price starting at $15 a tonne and a ceiling price starting at $20 a tonne above the expected international price'. The policy foresees future linking with the European Union 'ETS and other schemes, subject to mutually acceptable mitigation commitments and compatible design'.

Professor Jotzo points out:

‘… that most lower-income households will be overcompensated for the increase in living costs, whereas households and higher-income brackets will bear most of the net costs.’

He also points out that the package involves tax reform. He says this is rare in practice, much less at this scale. He says:

‘Most cap-and-trade schemes have handed back the bulk of the revenue to emitters, missing out on the efficiency benefits from tax reform.’

Australia is not missing out on those benefits.

The impact of the carbon price will be around 0.1 percentage points per year on Australia's average income growth and, according to Treasury modelling, that will still see average incomes grow strongly under carbon pricing, increasing by about 16 per cent from current levels by 2020. Delaying global action by three years adds another 20 per cent to the first year global mitigation cost.

Meanwhile, the Leader of the Opposition has been going around the country running a scare campaign. After Norsk Hydro's announcement that it would shut down its aluminium smelter at Kurri Kurri, Mr Abbott said that this was the fault of the carbon price. After assistance, the impact of a carbon price will be about a dollar on a tonne of aluminium. Meanwhile, the world aluminium price is down $1,000.

The Leader of the Nationals told parliament in May that the cost of servicing a domestic refrigerator would go up by $300 a year. As the Minister for Climate Change has pointed out, that would involve calling technicians to the house about every five days to replace the entire refrigerant gas.

Senator Joyce has said that the carbon price will cause the price of a leg of lamb to go up to $100, to which I can only say: Pull the other one, Barnaby.

The Leader of the Opposition has said the tax is forever; the compensation is just for today. He misses the fact that there will be regular increases in payments and that pensions, allowances and family benefits are automatically increased for the impact of any future increases in the carbon price because they are indexed in line with the consumer price index.

The Leader of the Opposition has spent the last 16 months telling businesses they face electricity price rises of 25 to 30 per cent but the Chairman of the ACCC, Rod Sims, has said he cannot see any circumstances in which this would happen.

Mr Abbott is saying 'it's going to be a python squeeze rather than a cobra strike', but as the Minister for Climate Change has pointed out the only thing pythonesque about this is the Leader of the Opposition's Monty Pythonesque hyperbole. He should in fact be more worried about the dead parrot that is their Direct Action plan. As the member for Wentworth pointed out on Q&A on 25 July 2010:

‘You won’t find an economist anywhere that will tell you anything other than that the most efficient and effective way to cut emissions is by putting a price on carbon.’

I spoke in parliament tonight on same-sex marriage.

Marriage Amendment Bill 2012
18 June 2012

This is the fourth occasion on which I find myself speaking on same-sex marriage. I spoke in favour of same-sex marriage in this place on 13 February of this year, the day before Valentine's Day; on 24 August last year I reported back to parliament on the views of my constituents; and on 30 July last year I spoke to the ALP ACT national conference on the issue. So I wanted to use the opportunity today to read into Hansard some of the stories of my constituents which I have received over recent months. Daniel Edmonds writes to me:

'When I was young, I asked my grandmother what her view would be on having a gay grandchild. Her response was steadfast: "I could not support it," she said. "It would be against God, and against everything I believe in." Years later, I came out to my family before leaving home to move to university (an economics degree!). My grandmother was unsteady in the knowledge that she now had a gay grandchild, something that was seen as uncommon in North Queensland at the time.

'It was years before she was able to bring it up in conversation with me. However, when she finally did, it really moved me. "I want you to know that I will always support you, and love you, no matter who you love." Ever since, she has met my partners, opened her arms to them as part of the family, and consoled me when those relationships didn't last. I am very lucky to still have my grandmother, but I only regret that in all likelihood my grandmother will not be able to attend my wedding day. I appreciate you fighting for the right of future grandmothers, grandfathers, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters to be able to attend the wedding days of their beloved family members.'

Ian Brown wrote to me:

'My partner, Roger, and I have been together for (gulp) 40 years and were 'civilly united' in 2006 under UK law, as he holds a UK passport.

'We had our ceremony in the British consulate in Sydney—they said we could have a maximum of six guests so naturally we invited 30!

'It was one of the most exciting days of my life and I will always remember my late mother's tears of joy on our finally being 'married' after a 34 year 'engagement'!'

Another constituent, Bill, from Ainslie, wrote to tell me of his experience watching an interview with Bishop Pat Power on 7.30 last Friday. In that interview Bishop Power said:

'... where two people have that definite commitment to each other and if they make the decision before God well I would say that their blessed in that life that they're living and they do that with honour and respect for one another ... I would want those people to feel at home within the life of the church.'

Bill had written to me previously to say that he did not support same-sex marriage. He wrote to me after seeing that interview and said:

'Good Morning Andrew,

'For what it's worth and just to let you know, after hearing Bishop Power speak and having met and spoken to several Gay people myself I have now changed my mind and support Gay marriage.

'I felt that you treated my position then with respect and I appreciated that. I'm sure there are many others in the community who are wrestling with this issue and who will, with time and reflection, come to see the justice of the homosexual case.'

There are many people of faith who have taken the view that we should support same-sex marriage. Writing in the National Times, the Reverend Harry Herbert, the Executive Director of UnitingCare NSW.ACT, refers to the fact that in the latter part of the 19th century there was a campaign to remove from marriage acts the restriction that a man could not marry a sister of his deceased wife. When it was proposed by colonial governments in Australia to remove the restriction, churches led the charge against it. Reverend Herbert quotes the Reverend Adam Cairns, who at the time described the proposed change as a 'deliberate treachery to the cause of truth' and said, 'By the unchangeable word of God such marriage is incestuous.' Reverend Herbert points out that this seems to be a selective reading of the Bible because the Book of Deuteronomy in fact enjoins a man to marry his deceased wife's sister. But the broader point that the Reverend Herbert makes is that churches should not impose on nonbelievers a vision based on faith.

In his I have a dream speech, Reverend Martin Luther King spoke of the promissory note that African-Americans were bringing to be cashed. In that speech he said that America had defaulted on her promissory note as far as her citizens of colour were concerned but that they did not believe that the 'bank of justice is bankrupt'. The same principles bring gay and lesbian Australians to this House to call for us to support same-sex marriage laws. I do so with a respect for those who disagree but with a passionate belief in the justice of this cause.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/KRJK8EmQ96Q

I spoke in Parliament today about the late ABC journalist Alan Saunders, a polymath of the airwaves. My radio listening will be poorer for his passing.

Alan Saunders
18 June 2012

ABC's Radio National is one of Australia's great public institutions, and I rise to speak about the late Alan Saunders, who died unexpectedly last Friday. Alan Saunders spent 25 years with Radio National. He moved to Australia in 1981 to pursue research at the Australian National University's History of Ideas unit, where he received a PhD. He received the Pascall Prize for critical writing and broadcasting in 1992. He contributed to programs about food, design and philosophy. As Amanda Armstrong put it:

‘He was equally at home talking about Plato, the role of vampires in popular culture or the history of the restaurant. He wrote like an angel, and had a deep knowledge of music, among many other areas, including philosophy, gastronomy, architecture, design and film.’

I knew Alan Saunders mostly as a listener - delighting particularly in the By Design program - although I did get a chance to speak with him on Australia Day last year about social capital and some of the ideas in Disconnected. The topics to which Alan contributed are important. Others, such as Elizabeth Farrelly and Tim Soutphommasane, discuss design and philosophy, but none so gracefully as Alan. He will be greatly missed.