Marriage Act 1961 (Australia) - Marriage Amendment Act 2004

Marriage Amendment Act 2004

On 27 May 2004, approximately two months after the UK proposed its Civil Partnership Act 2004, the then federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock introduced the Marriage Amendment Bill 2004, to incorporate the common law definition of marriage into the Marriage Act 1961 and the Family Law Act. In June 2004, the bill passed the House of Representatives. On 12 August 2004, the Senate passed the amendment by 38 votes to 6. The bill subsequently received royal assent, becoming the Marriage Amendment Act 2004.

Read more about this topic:  Marriage Act 1961 (Australia)

Famous quotes containing the words marriage, amendment and/or act:

    Adultery is the vice of equivocation.
    It is not marriage but a mockery of it, a merging that mixes love and dread together like jackstraws. There is no understanding of contentment in adultery.... You belong to each other in what together you’ve made of a third identity that almost immediately cancels your own. There is a law in art that proves it. Two colors are proven complimentary only when forming that most desolate of all colors—neutral gray.
    Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)

    [Asserting] important First Amendment rights ... why should [executions] be the one area that is conducted behind closed doors?... Why shouldn’t executions be public?
    Phil Donahue (b. 1935)

    Think of those barren places where men gather
    To act in the terrible name of rectitude,
    Of acned shame, punk’s pride, muscle or turf,
    The bully’s thin superiority.
    Anthony Hecht (b. 1923)