Equity, choice and inclusion

This emphasis on equity, choice and inclusion contrasts sharply with overseas schemes. Heterosexual and non-sexual partners are excluded from the UK civil partnership scheme, which also has no official ceremonial component. Most other schemes also exclude non-sexual partners and insist on an “I-take-thee”-style ceremony, even when a couple doesn’t want or need one.

This is because of the most fundamental difference between Australian and overseas schemes. Civil unions in other places have generally been established as politically-expedient substitutes for same-sex marriage. In contrast, Australia’s registries have been developed as an alternative to marriage for couples who can’t or don’t wish to marry.

In other words, Australia’s civil partnership registries can and should exist side-by-side with opposite and same-sex marriage, and with legal protections for de facto couples, in the kind of three-tiered system of legal recognition that already exists in Canada and the Netherlands.

Figures from Tasmania and the ACT demonstrate that there is a need for the kind of flexible recognition registries offer with the proportion of partnership registrations matching those of overseas civil union schemes, and with couples taking up both the ceremonial and non-ceremonial options, regardless of their gender.

In light of this, it is a double tragedy that the Rudd Government has consistently put forward registries as an inappropriate response to the demand for same-sex marriage.

Not only does it divert attention from marriage discrimination and the harm this discrimination does to both same-sex couples and the institution of marriage. It also diverts the anger of gay couples about this discrimination to the wrong target, civil registries.

We urge the Australian public not to be deceived by myths and misunderstandings that distort and diminish registries. Instead, we urge call for a more honest and better informed debate about relationship law reform, one that tackles same-sex marriage in its own right, but also takes us beyond marriage to a choice and equity-based system of relationship laws within which registries play a pivotal role.