More MPs support latest relationships bill

By HELEN TUNNAH

A planned law to end discrimination against straight and gay couples has gathered more support among MPs than the contentious plan to set up civil unions as an alternative to marriage.

The Relationships Bill passed its first hurdle in Parliament yesterday by 77 votes to 42 in a conscience vote.

It will now go to the justice and electoral committee for public scrutiny, alongside the Civil Union Bill.

All 119 MPs managed to cast a conscience vote yesterday, including New Zealand's first Muslim MP, Ashraf Choudhary, who voted for the bill. Last week he was criticised by Muslim and ethnic communities for not voting in the civil union debate.

The proposed law will end discrimination against couples based on their marital status. It will give equal recognition to marriages, and gay and straight civil unions or de facto relationships.

The bill will amend more than 100 laws, including allowing de facto couples to be granted next-of-kin status, and stopping some people in same-sex relationships claiming welfare benefits at the higher single rate, rather than the married rate. That could save the taxpayer about $12 million a year.

Associate Justice Minister David Benson-Pope said when introducing the bill that the lack of legal recognition for de facto couples had led to significant difficulties for many.

He cited cases where a de facto partner had fewer rights than a married spouse if a partner died and in coroner's hearings. De facto partners were even banned from being buried in the same cemetery plot.

"Contrary to some reported views, the Government's motivation is not to undermine marriage, far from it.

"Marriage will remain protected and continue to be solely available to a man and a woman. But we are working to support all committed, exclusive and stable relationships."

Mr Benson-Pope said he believed discrimination on the basis of marital status or sexual orientation ran contrary to the sense of fairness New Zealand had as a nation.

But National MP Nick Smith said it was a fiction that all relationships were the same. "In Labour's eyes it just makes no difference whether a couple is two men, two women, or a man and a woman, it is all the same."

Under the Relationships Bill, he said, the terms marriage, civil union and de facto would be interchangeable.

New Zealand First MP Dail Jones said de facto people lived in that relationship because they did not want to marry.

Now the law would recognise them as married whether they wanted it or not, he said.

Act MP Stephen Franks appealed to the conservative Maxim Institute and others opposed to the legislation to concentrate on saying what they wanted marriage to be, and to not attack gay people.

Labour Cabinet minister John Tamihere, who voted against the Civil Union Bill last week, yesterday supported the Relationships Bill being sent to a select committee.

He commended the legislation ending the ability of same-sex beneficiaries to access welfare payments at a higher rate than married couples.