Speech to the Senate - Marriage Bill
Marriage as a social unit pre-existed the nation state and parliaments. It is common to all cultures. It's very rationale was about the best way for raising and socialising the next generation, providing the certainty and stability of their biological parents and the diversity of a female and male role model. In its variations between cultures, the 'man, woman, children' element of marriage is the common denominator. It is not about the adults, but the potential children. It is 'other' focused, not 'self' focused. As even the atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell opined, it is through children alone that sexual relations became of importance to society and worthy to be taken cognisance of by a legal institution. Our own Australian Law Reform Commission noted that marriage in Indigenous communities is a central feature of traditional Aboriginal societies, and the union was considered to be strengthened by the birth of the first child. So, here, too, we have marriage and raising children inextricably interlinked.