The title of this recording is "Human rights and civil unions". It is described as: Dr Alison Laurie talks about human rights and civil unions in New Zealand. It was recorded in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand on the 11th January 2011. Alison Laurie is presenting.  Their name is spelt correctly but may appear incorrectly spelt later in the document. The duration of the recording is 14 minutes, but this may not reflect the actual length of the proceedings. A list of correctly spelt content keywords and tags can be found at the end of this document. A brief description of the recording is: In this podcast Alison talks about human rights and civil unions in New Zealand. The content in the recording covers the 1980s decade. A brief summary of the recording is: This summary covers the key points from a podcast by Dr. Alison Laurie, who contributed significantly to the discourse around human rights and their application to sexual orientation in New Zealand. Through the podcast, Laurie recounts the historical context and evolution of rights for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and broader communities, especially concerning civil unions. Dating back to the post-World War II era, human rights emerged as a global concern with figures such as Eleanor Roosevelt aiming to prevent atrocities seen during the war. New Zealand's own journey began with the Human Rights Commission Act in 1977, which outlawed discrimination based on various characteristics but did not prevent hate speech nor cover all forms of discrimination, leaving certain actions and attitudes unregulated. Laurie explains that the act of prohibiting discrimination in specific areas such as employment, housing, and access to goods and services, is central to human rights, which are not to be misconstrued as special rights. It was, however, the 1980s that heralded more in-depth discussions and actions toward extending these rights. The National Gay Rights Coalition (NGRC) became a pivotal group in these efforts. Notable was an incident in July 1980, where the Wellington City Council refused to allow the Lesbian Center to advertise on city buses, sparking debate and a clear recognition of the prevailing inequality. The initial push for inclusion of sexual orientation within human rights legislation faced setbacks, particularly with the debated Homosexual Law Reform Bill. However, successfully decriminalizing male homosexual acts in Part 1 of the bill was a profound step. Yet, Part 2, which intended to add sexual orientation protections, was subsequently defeated due to heavy opposition and the risk of potential discriminatory amendments. It wasn't until 1993 that significant strides were made. With the advocacy of Katherine O'Regan, among others, the Human Rights Act was amended to explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This Act, effective from 1994, applied to both private and public sectors with governmental compliance expected by 2000. Additional amendments in 2001 further held the government to the same standards as private entities, eliminating prior exemptions. Following the legislative groundwork laid by human rights advancements, the Civil Union Act of 2004 created legal recognition for same-sex partnerships. While Laurie notes that this legislation did not equate to marriage and received considerable opposition, it was still a substantial legal provision for same-sex couples. Subsequent legal developments included the Relationships Statutory References Act of 2005, aligning various laws to treat civil unions on par with marriages. This had both beneficial outcomes, such as inheritance rights, and some disadvantaged effects, such as decreased benefits for some same-sex couples. More progress was seen with amendments to the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Act, reflecting the interests of lesbian mothers in birth certificates. Despite these achievements, Laurie underscores that the transgender community is yet to achieve full legislative protection. The journey for complete inclusion of all communities in human rights legislation continues. The full transcription of the recording begins:  This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity Hi, I'm Dr Alison Laurie. I was the Gender and Women's Studies Programme Director at Victoria University of Wellington, here in New Zealand, for many years. I'm a writer, oral historian and lesbian and gay activist. Today I'm going to be looking at human rights and how these apply to lesbian and gay, bisexual and others, and the inclusion of sexual orientation as a human right. This matter starts being discussed here in New Zealand with the original passage of the Human Rights Commission Act in 1977, which includes a number of areas where discrimination is outlawed. It's outlawed on the basis of sex, marital status, and so on. Now, human rights don't include everything. It's a question of prohibiting discrimination in specified areas: employment, housing and access to goods and services. What goods and services mean is often subject to interpretation. Clearly it would be being able to go to your public library or to go to the park, access to insurance and things of that kind, but it's often a matter of discussion as to what that actually means: access to goods and services. So, protection is not absolutely for everything. We don't have, in this country, legislation against hate speech, so people can express negative opinions about lesbians and gay men or about homosexuality. That is not covered by human rights. So, it's specified access. Human rights are not special rights, which is what anti-gay people have often tried to say: Oh, they're asking for special rights. These are not special rights. These are ordinary rights that everybody in the community should be entitled to have. The notion of human rights begins after the Second World War, spearheaded by people like Eleanor Roosevelt working within the framework of the United Nations, concerned about the things that happened during World War II where people were denied their human rights, Jewish people for example; that started with not being allowed to attend certain universities or all of that kind of thing. So, there's been a discussion about these matters since that time trying to ensure that everybody in a society is entitled to the same rights. A terrible example of that was apartheid in South Africa where black people were not allowed the same kinds of rights, even though the governments of that time tended to say that it was separate but equal, clearly it was not. So, this has been a matter of some discussion during the latter part of the 20th century. In this country the National Gay Rights Coalition, the NGRC, becomes active thinking about the extension of the Human Rights Act to include sexual orientation, and that begins to be discussed right from 1977. And they made submissions, unsuccessful submissions, to the Human Rights Commission. And for example in July, 1980, when the Wellington City Council refused to place a Lesbian Center advertisement on city buses a big campaign emerged. The sign that the lesbian center wanted to put on the buses was a simple sign that said: Lesbians – Contact your local community. Write to PO Box Whatever in Wellington. And the Wellington City Council refused to allow this advertisement to be put on the buses and said that that was very undesirable. In fact the town clerk, McCutcheon, claimed that a small boy might see it and ask his mother what a lesbian was, so that would be undesirable. So, this was a matter of some discussion. The Lesbian Center contacted the Human Rights Commission, which said it could do nothing about this, and then the Chief Commissioner, Downey, claimed that some sorts of discrimination should not be legislated against. A human rights campaign emerged, and that wanted to include sexual orientation in the Human Rights Act. So then a number of groups were fighting to achieve this, and the first measure of success was the introduction of the Homosexual Law Reform Bill, Part 2, which would have added sexual orientation to the Homosexual Law Reform Bill. And sexual orientation was defined as having a heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian or bisexual orientation. So in other words, any kind of sexual orientation within those areas is protected. During the campaign for this bill, although Part 1 of the bill, which decriminalized male homosexual acts, was passed eventually after a very hard-fought campaign, the MPs and the opponents of the bill fought just as hard against Part 2 of the bill, and in particular that you couldn't have protection for homosexual teachers, you shouldn't have protection for homosexual soldiers, for firemen and for all this kind of thing. And in the finish there were just going to be so many amendments that the lesbian and gay groups themselves thought that it would be far too dangerous to pass it with those amendments because that would look like permission to discriminate against people in those areas, especially for homosexual teachers. So, that was lost at that time. Then, eight years later the intention of Part 2 of the bill was reactivated when Katherine O'Regan, who was the National Member of Parliament for Raglan, Waipa, proposed amendments to add several new grounds to the Human Rights Commission Act of 1977 to include sexual orientation. And others of these grounds included the presence in the body of organisms which could cause disease, so that was to provide some protection for people who were HIV positive or had AIDS. And in July, 1993, the Human Rights Act was passed which prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, defined as homosexual, lesbian, bisexual or heterosexual orientation. So that was very important, and although there was a campaign against this it was not such a hard-fought campaign as many of the others. This act came into force on the 1st of February, 1994, and it applied immediately to the private sector, however government had various exemptions to give it time to bring laws and policy into line with the intention of the act. It was supposedly supposed to do that by the year 2000. Then the Human Rights Amendment Act of 2001 was passed. It came into force from the beginning of 2002 and that said that the government was no longer exempt from fully complying with the human rights provisions, because the government had been delaying on the implementation of this with a great deal of discussion happening through that decade. As a consequence of this the Civil Union Act of 2004 was able to be passed, which created legal partnerships for different and same-sex couples, with many of the provisions of marriage. Tim Barnett, an openly gay MP was someone who fought very strongly to get this legislation passed. However, it is the case that whatever government was in would necessarily, unless it had repealed aspects of the Human Rights Act of 1993 or the Human Rights Amendment Act of 2001, would have been obliged to pass something like the Civil Union Act because if you say that lesbians and gay men have access to the same goods and services this does imply marriage or partnership, and certainly when we come into questions like the provision of inheritance and all of those kinds of things, something like that would have had to be passed. There were a number of gay and lesbian individuals who were concerned that the civil union legislation provided for a second class kind of marriage. They would have liked to see actual marriage. There were other lesbians and gay men who in fact were opposed to civil union and opposed to marriage because they took a more radical view of partnerships and didn't see why sexual relationships should be privileged over other kinds of relationships. So there was a spectrum of different ideas even in the lesbian and gay communities. There was, however, tremendous opposition to this legislation, with Brian Tamaki from Destiny Church raising a lot of antagonism, having a big street march, protesting against it, and with large numbers of submissions which raised all kinds of questions about that. So this was actually a very hard-fought campaign as well, but it was passed, as was also the Relationships Statutory References Act of 2005, which provided for consistency for same-sex and de facto couples across a large range of existing laws which affect married couples, from trivial things like whether you can fix somebody's electrical wiring in their house, because you can do that for your marriage partner or civil union partner, but you can't go and do that for your neighbor. So, it's some rather trivial things, but very important things as well, including superannuation, benefits and inheritance. There were some losses in this as well. It meant that because it applies to de fact relationships as well, that particular act of 2005, it means that for a same-sex couple living together for more than two years the same provisions that apply to a married couple or a civil union couple will apply to them unless they've made a special statement before they began to live together opting out of that. So it means that common property will be a matter of consideration should they break up their relationship. And a difficulty also is that one person can't be working and the other person on an unemployment benefit. In the case of lesbians both people could not be on a domestic purposes benefit, so there are some losses like that as well. And for older lesbian and male couples it means that they would get a lesser rate of superannuation because it's based on the couple's rate rather than two single superannuations as you might have before. So there were some losses, but generally the gains are that you can inherit equally, that you are treated equally under the law, and so altogether, generally this has been supported by the various lesbian and gay communities in this country. Then in 2008 the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Act of 2004 was amended to take account of the technological and social developments to allow lesbian mothers and their partners to both be reflected on birth certificates. So that's been an important addition as well, which starts to take account of the circumstances of people who have children and what might assist their family life. There is still a way to go. As far as the transgender community is concerned those protections have not been incorporated into law. Some legal opinions said that they thought they were covered by sex. There was an attempt to put forward a legislation benefitting this community by our first transgender member of Parliament, Georgina Beyer, but that didn't happen and there is still a way to go on legislative change so far as the addition of human rights for all of our communities are concerned. But we've come quite a way further than many other countries have done. Transcript by cyberscrivener. com The full transcription of the recording ends. A list of keywords/tags describing the recording follow. These tags contain the correct spellings of names and places which may have been incorrectly spelt earlier in the document. The tags are seperated by a semi-colon: 1980s ; Africa ; Alison Laurie ; Brian Tamaki ; Civil Union Act (2004) ; Destiny Church ; Eleanor Roosevelt ; France ; Gay Line Wellington Trust ; Homosexual Law Reform ; Human Rights Act (1993) ; Human Rights Commission ; Member of Parliament ; National Gay Rights Coalition ; People ; Queer History 101 ; Raglan ; Rule Foundation ; South Africa ; Tim Barnett ; United Nations ; Vienna ; Wellington ; Wellington City Council ; Wellington Lesbian Centre ; access ; activism ; apartheid ; benefits ; bisexual ; capital ; change ; children ; church ; civil unions ; class ; community ; council ; discrimination ; employment ; family ; gay ; gender ; government ; hate ; hate speech ; heterosexual ; homophobia ; homosexual ; housing ; human rights ; inclusion ; inheritance ; insurance ; law ; legislation ; lesbian ; library ; march ; marriage ; other ; partnership ; policy ; public library ; relationships ; religion ; scene ; sex ; sexual orientation ; social ; spectrum ; speech ; success ; support ; time ; transcript online ; transgender ; trust ; unemployment ; unions ; university ; women's studies. The original recording can be heard at this website https://www.pridenz.com/queer_history_human_rights_civil_unions.html. The master recording is also archived at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, New Zealand.  For more details visit their website https://tiaki.natlib.govt.nz/#details=ecatalogue.1089355. Alison Laurie also features audibly in the following recordings: "Alison Laurie profile", "Legal background for LGBT communities", "Early lesbian and gay groups", "Hagley Park killing", "Gay Liberation", "Law reform in New Zealand", "Frances Hodgkins", "Parker and Hulme murder case", "Meeting places", "Labels", "Katherine Mansfield", "Lesbian organising", "Ursula Bethell", "Alison Laurie - KAHA Youth Hui 2009", "25th anniversary panel discussion on homosexual law reform", "Alison Laurie - Bigot Busters rally", "Criminal cases", "Rainbow Pride Community Honours (2015) - Part 3", "Part 1 - Opening ceremony at Parliament - Wellington Pride Festival 2016" and "Stonewall 25". Please note that this document may contain errors or omissions - you should always refer back to the original recording to confirm content.