Madam Speaker, the member is asking two questions, one about civil unions and the other about politics.
Obviously the nature of this place is such that one side is going to say that the other side is wrong. We saw what happened in the last election. We saw what happened in the reports of the debates of the leaders' speeches. This is a very emotional topic. People take their positions very carefully and strongly. To my mind, this matter should be debated in, if I may put it this way, a very legalistic manner, to take a look and see what the ramifications are.
From the point of view of civil unions, my answer would be this. If we take the analogy of a hockey game, particularly a Stanley Cup hockey game, one never worries about the next game until one wins the period one is in. There is no point in even discussing civil unions if the bill passes, because if the bill passes we will have same sex marriage in this country. To my mind, the object is to defeat this bill. Once Parliament has spoken and the same sex marriage bill is defeated, then Parliament will have to come to grips with what the alternatives are.
Clearly one of the alternatives is civil unions. That was discussed when we were speaking to the pension benefits act. It was spoken to in a whole series of discussion groups, both within the Liberal Party and across the country. It is one of the alternatives that has been suggested. The member is absolutely right: many countries have adopted it.