Act now on gay marriage, Turnbull told

Turnbull has yet to comment on the issue, but to be fair, he’s only had a couple of hours to get coffee, gloat, do a victory lap of Parliament House and schedule that meeting with Australian Marriage Equality, so we’ll see how this plays out. The Greens added that if a plebiscite is to take place, it should be brought forward and held at the same time as the next federal election, scheduled for 14 January 2017.

“There should be a vote in the parliament as soon as possible”.

‘The definition of marriage and the manner in which same sex unions are recognised are very important issues and they deserve to be considered calmly and thoughtfully. Turnbull’s often described as a “progressive” on issues like climate change and marriage equality, but now that he’s Prime Minister it appears he’s making an effort to placate the Liberal Party’s more conservative MPs on the very issues he once used to distance himself from Abbott.

The Australia Electoral Commission’s submission to a Senate enquiry last week estimated that if a plebiscite were to be conducted at the next Federal Election, it would cost $44 million.

‘The Coalition… has decided that the resolution of this matter will be determined by a vote of the people, all the people, via a plebiscite, to be held after the next election, ‘ Mr Turnbull said.

“Each approach has its advantages”, he said on Wednesday. The other one gives every Australian a say and it has a cost; democracy has a price.

The shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, seized on the Senate committee report, saying Turnbull had “sold out on marriage equality” and “abandoned his principles in a dirty deal to win the support of the hard-right of the Liberal party”.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was accused of “mansplaining” in Question Time on Wednesday – which clearly baffled a number of government ministers.

Opinion polls have found an overwhelming public majority in favour of same-sex marriage, leading activists to criticise the planned plebiscite as a stalling tactic. Elections in Australia do not have fixed dates but are called by the government.

“Apart from Mr Turnbull’s poor mathematics (there are in fact 226 parliamentarians) we agree entirely with Mr Turnbull’s statement”, Macdonald and Reynolds wrote. Matt Keogh for Labor is a supporter, along with the Greens’ Vanessa Rouland.