South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill has revealed that the state will acknowledge the marriage status of UK man David Bulmer-Rizzi, who died in Adelaide last weekend.
Mr Bulmer-Rizzi’s death attracted national attention as it was revealed Australian authorities could not acknowledge his husband Marco Bulmer-Rizzi on his death certificate, due to a lack of equal marriage legislation here in Australia.
Mr Weatherill says the certificate has been edited to remove the phrase “not married”.
“As it happens we were able to catch the death certificate before it was issued and the offensive description of ‘never married’ won’t be included in the death certificate,” Mr Weatherill said.
“It will actually now have an annotation that will refer to the British marriage, so that’s a great source of comfort to him because it was very offensive to have the certificate issued in those terms.”
Mr Weatherill told media that the UK Government had also issued a death certificate.
“It’s [an] exceptional circumstance for them to do that for somebody that dies in Australia.”
Mr Weatherill says he is committed to enact a plan in State Parliament to prevent these circumstances from affecting others. The South Australian Premier has apologised to Marco Bulmer-Rizzi for the “senseless discrimination”.
OIP Staff
Sources
