Senator Brandis says the passing of the same-sex marriage legislation is an historic occasion and pays tribute to the Prime Minister.
"Malcolm Turnbull is the first Australian prime minister to have advocated and prosecuted this cause. And it will stand as one of the signature achievements of the Turnbull government," Senator Brandis says.
"It rises above tawdry day-to-day politics as an imperishable legacy. If I may draw a comparison, nobody today remembers the arguments about the state of the economy or the policy controversies or the political intrigues that took place during the government of Harold Holt. Like all political they have faded into ephemera, they have faded into history."
"But people do remember the 1967 referendum, that great act of inclusion of Indigenous Australians. As the years and decades pass, its significance only grows, and I predict that, like the 1967 referendum, this decision by the Australian people enabled by their government and enacted by their parliament, will come to be seen as one of those occasional shining moments which stand out in our nation's history, about which people will still speak with admiration in decades, indeed centuries, to come. One of those breakthroughs, which have, as the wheel of history turns, defined us as a people."
12:23pm
"I want to reflect for a moment on the message this will send, in particular to young gay people, to the boy or girl who senses a difference from their friends, which they find difficult to understand, and impossible to deal with," Senator Brandis says.
"By passing this bill, we are saying to those vulnerable young people, 'There is nothing wrong with you. You are not unusual. You are not be a normal. You are just you. There is nothing to be embarrassed about. There is nothing to be ashamed of. There is nothing to hide. You are a normal person and, like every other normal person, you have a need to love. How you love is how God made you. Whom you love is for you to decide andthers to respect'."
12:22pm
Senator Brandis: "With the passage of this bill, we will demolish the last significant bastion of legal discrimination against people on the grounds of their sexuality. At last, Australia will no longer be insulting gay people by saying different rules apply to you. So this bill is important not merely because it will enable gay people to marry, just as everybody else is able to marry. It is more important than that. After centuries of prejudice, discrimination, rejection and ridicule, it is both an expiation for past wrongs and a final act of acceptance and embrace."
12:20pm
"These late spring and early summer days of 2017 will always be remembered as a time when the Parliament heeded the wishes of the overwhelming majority of Australians that ours should be a society defined by greater decency, truer equality, more complete freedom," Senator Brandis says.
"The full legal equality of gay people will, at last, have been recognised. Marriage equality will be a reality by Christmas. To change the legal definition of marriage so as to include same-sex couples is a profoundly important social reform."
12:04pm
Attorney-General George Brandis is making the final speech in the same-sex marriage debate.
He says the legislation will complete a long journey for gay Australians from criminality to "embrace".
"Marriage equality will be a reality by Christmas," Senator Brandissays, calling it a "profoundly important reform". Back to top
11:56am
For a while now there have been some mutterings about what a handful of Labor MPs might do on the issue of same-sex marriage.
