Recognising same-sex marriages that took place overseas would challenge Australia’s sovereignty by making the country “beholden” to foreign laws, Liberal backbencher Cory Bernardi said.
Bernardi, a vocal opponent of marriage equality, on Thursday spoke in the Senate to oppose a private member’s bill aimed at recognising overseas marriages.
He criticised the bill, put forward by Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, saying it “subverted” Australia’s domestic laws.
“At the heart of this bill is a challenge of sovereignty,” Bernardi said. “It is a way of subverting Australia’s self-determination.”
The law would make Australia beholden to international laws and was a Greens-initiated step towards “one-world government”, Bernardi said.
Australia should not be forced to accept foreign laws because it was “convenient to a group of advocates” who were “sneakily trying to advance the homosexual marriage cause”, he said.
“You’re trying to promote something that hasn’t been accepted in Australia as yet,” Bernardi said.
He questioned whether the law would recognise overseas marriages involving multiple partners, such as those legally conducted in some Middle Eastern countries where a man can take more than one wife, and whether Australia would recognise child marriages.
“That is a foreign marriage,” he said. “Should we be forced to recognise that?”
The bill to recognise marriages overseas is timely and follows the death of British man David Bulmer-Rizzi, whose same-sex marraige was not recognised following his death in Adelaide while on honeymoon.
Marco Bulmer-Rizzi had been fighting to be recognised as his late husband David’s next of kin. Because South Australia does not recognise overseas same-sex marriages, his death certificate would have said “never married”.
Labor senator Sue Lines said South Australia’s failure to recognise the pair’s union was “the final insult to this couple”.
“It’s something that would sadden you for the rest of your life,” she told the Senate. “It is the ultimate tragedy.”
South Australian premier Jay Weatherill has vowed to introduce laws so that the state will recognise same-sex marriage conducted overseas.
While state and territories may pass such laws, there is currently no federal laws mandating the recognition of such foreign unions.
The private member’s bill has not come to a vote, with debate expected to continue later in the parliamentary sitting calendar.
The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has promised to stick with the Coalition’s policy of holding a plebiscite on the question of whether same-sex marriages should be carried out in Australia. The policy was put forward by his predecessor, Tony Abbott, and is likely to cost taxpayers up to $160m.
Labor wants the government to hold a free vote on the issue in parliament, saying a plebiscite is divisive and a waste of money.
During question time on Thursday, Turnbull said the opposition was “entitled to the view” that the plebiscite was expense, but said it could not question its democratic credentials.
“It is a new approach ... and it is certainly not the approach that I favoured,” he said. “At the outset, I am a traditionalist. This was a case of democratic innovation. The innovator was out-innovated.”
The plebiscite is not binding, and some government MPs have indicated they would vote with their conscience if legislation is brought forward to enable same-sex unions.
Queensland LNP senator Matt Canavan opposed same-sex marriage, but has promised to heed the will of voters if the plebiscite, to be held some time after the next federal election, supports marriage equality.
“I will respect the views of my Queensland electors,” he said.
Regardless of the outcome of a plebiscite, parliament needs to vote to remove stipulations in the Marriage Act that restrict marriage to between a man and a woman before same-sex marriages can go ahead.
