Australian MP proposes national referendum on marriage equality issue

Whatever Cabinet decides, the Government will have to get it through Parliament.

Ministers reflect on the painfully thin agenda before the cabinet: thin in subject matter as well as substantive submissions.

But it appears unlikely that bill will get to the vote stage, although it is possible there could be a move, which would be doomed, to try to suspend standing orders to bring on a debate.

By engaging in party-room chicanery, he’s also cast himself as someone willing to divide his own team and undermine one of the fundamental principles on which his party was founded.

However the prime minister drew criticism from the opposition as well as the Coalition MP who is set to introduce the bill, both labeling Abbott’s calls to wait until after the next election as stalling measures.

The only reason for having a referendum is because a “no” vote would enshrine discrimination against same-sex unions into the Constitution for decades.

Now the Prime Minister’s handling of this issue has, ironically, presented that opportunity.

Mr Morrison said on Wednesday that same-sex marriage was “the type of issue that could be canvassed under section 51 of the constitution”.

Shadow Attorney General Mark Dreyfus dismissed Morrison’s view and, according to ABC News, said the minister was “talking nonsense”.

Campaigners for marriage equality are anticipating that tomorrow’s rally to be Australia’s largest ever rally for marriage equality in Australia’s history with over 20,000 people expected.

“Tony Abbott can gag his party room, but he can’t gag the Australian people who will vote strongly in favour of marriage equality at a plebiscite”.

The thing is, the majority of the community either supports same-sex marriage or couldn’t care less either way. The Prime Minister has indicated a disposition to have this considered after the next election. His tactics are as much directed at his colleagues as his political opponents.

Warren Entsch, a 65-year-old former crocodile farmer who has been dubbed a progressive redneck in the media, introduced a private member’s bill that would allow same-sex marriage throughout Australia.

The government continues to announce policies that are long on columns of smoke, large in cost and short in detail.

Mr Shorten reacted: “Millions of Australians will have woken up this morning bitterly disappointed with Tony Abbott”. Defence analysts argue that all this spending is within the existing envelope of the defence budget so isn’t a huge issue.

“But he was, I imagine, unaware that as listed two years ago the High Court had made a decision in the ACT same-sex marriage legislation case in which it had unanimously, and without any qualification whatsoever, concluded that the marriage power, as now written, would enable the Commonwealth parliament to make a law in relation to same-sex marriage”. It would overcome the problem of individual candidates holding, expressing and exercising views contrary to party policy.