Gay marriage could affect Australia’s image in Asia: Barnaby Joyce

Legalising same-sex marriage could disrupt multiculturalism and Australia’s image in Asia, warn two cabinet ministers.

Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce pictured with Tony Abbott yesterday. Picture: Yuri Kouzmin

Two senior cabinet ministers are warning that same-sex marriage could have a disruptive influence on the nation’s different multicultural groupings and even change Australia’s image in Asia.

Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce today cautioned that Asia would view Australia as a “decadent” society if the parliament legalised same sex marriage.

Similarly, Social Services Minister Scott Morrison suggested the advocates for same sex marriage underestimated the impact it would have on different cultural groups and religious traditions within Australia.

Mr Joyce, who is promoting the government’s agricultural competitiveness white paper, today warned that redefining marriage could create more problems than it solved.

“Every kid has a right, (an) absolute right, to know her or his mother and father,” he told the ABC’s Insiders program.

“I want to stand with the current definition of marriage. I think it has been trialled by time, by thousands of years across multiple cultures, across multiple faiths,” he said.

Pressed on the reaction of Australia’s Asian neighbours to the possible legalisation of same sex marriage, Mr Joyce warned that it would lead to negative judgments being made.

“When we go there, there are judgments whether you like it or not that are made about us. There they see in how we negotiate with them whether they see us as decadent. People would say that’s outrageous,” he said.

Mr Joyce said he did not believe same sex marriage was a threshold equality issue — only that heterosexual and homosexual relationships were different and should be recognised as different.

“I don’t think if you go into the parliament, passed a piece of legislation and said that a diamond is a square it makes diamonds squares. They’re two different things. It’s not making a value judgment about either. They’re just two different things.”

Social Services Minister Scott Morrison also told the Ten Network’s Bolt Report today that he had sympathy for a plebiscite to help gauge community sentiment on the redefinition of marriage.

Mr Morrison said he believed the advocates for same sex marriage had underestimated the scale of the change and its impact in multicultural societies, including Muslim, Hindu and Christian religious traditions.

Reaffirming his commitment to the tradition definition of marriage, Mr Morrison said the government was focused on economic and national security as its priorities.

The question of gay marriage would be dealt with in the “normal course of events” and receive no special treatment, Mr Morrison said.

Leaks of cross-party negotiations last week revealed that Coalition MPs Warren Entsch and Teresa Gambaro had agreed to co-sponsor a private members bill to be introduced next month with support from Labor, the Greens and independents.

“As the Prime Minister I think has rightly said, there is no normal process which would see those sorts of bills readily voted on in the parliament,” Mr Morrison said today.

“The more general debate now I think has shifted to issues of process and issues of plebiscites and whether Australians more broadly should have their say on these issues … they’re matters that should be discussed more I think over time.”

“There are a whole range of other alternatives about how this can be addressed,” Mr Morrison said. “A whole range of other alternatives about the process, whether it’s a plebiscite, or a vote in the parliament or even a referendum for that matter.”

Mr Morrison said the change was not something that should be “rammed through the parliament”.