Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to push plebiscite back to February 2017
Image: Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
AUSTRALIANS will be asked to vote on legalising same-sex marriage in February next year, with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull expected to announce the pushed-back plebiscite in a party room meeting next month.
Turnbull had previously said the government hoped to hold the public vote by the end of this year.
However, a spokesperson for Turnbull told Fairfax that the government had been advised to push the plebiscite back by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC).
“The government has always said that a decision on same-sex marriage will be made by a vote of all Australians in a national plebiscite to be held as soon as possible,” the spokesperson said.
“That commitment hasn’t changed… late last week the AEC provided advice that strongly recommended against the conduct of a plebiscite this calendar year.”
The question expected to be asked during the plebiscite next year is: “Do you approve of a law to permit people of the same sex to marry?”
The wording of this question has led activists in the LGBTI community to question how inclusive it is.
Lobby group Just.Equal’s spokesperson Brian Greig believes the wording of the question opens the door to exclusion and segregation.
“Many trans and intersex people are not legally or medically recognised as being either male or female,” he said.
“This is why the federal government allows the use of the ‘X’ category on passports in relation to gender, rather than the ‘M’ or ‘F’ choice.
“The wording is also deeply concerning because it suggests the government wants to create a separate area of marriage law only for same-sex couples, rather than include them in existing laws.”
Former High Court Justice Michael Kirby believes the plebiscite will create a dangerous precedent where MPs avoid making decisions on controversial issues, and opt for unnecessary public votes instead.
“Our Parliament, our parliamentary institutions in Australia and elsewhere are really not working all that well at the moment and what we should be doing is strengthening parliament and ensuring it gets on with the job,” Justice Kirby told ABC radio.
For the plebiscite to go ahead, a bill enabling it will still need to pass parliament, by both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
The AEC has previously estimated a plebiscite will cost taxpayers around $160 million.
I sort of lost interest in voting in the plebiscite. I married in New Zealand, and the plebiscite for us is apartheid. I am not participating in a rigged plebiscite where the majority of LNP members said they will ignore the vote. Violence was part of the Irish experience for many, but here in Oz not only does Turnbull give 15 million to hate groups so they bus nutters in at polling booths, but he changed the wording. If the marriage has to be an opinion poll where is the plebiscite for Malcolm and Lucy? Now people are thinking about the plebiscite it is another mess, like Turnbull’s copper NBN that a future leader will have to fix.
Howard didn’t need a plebiscite to write his discriminatory bit of caustic wording into law…This, is b*llsh*t.
Equality only has ONE definition.
It’s 2016, not 1816.
Find your spine, Turdball.
Our politicians rely on advice from various Government Departments and Agencies. The Australian Electoral Commission has advised Malcolm Turnbull that it does not think it can be ready in time to get this absurd, non-binding, $160+ millions, absurd plebiscite in place before the end of the year. Therefore the next best date is February 2017. Don’t forget our oh-so-badly-paid politicians will probably close up shop about the middle of October 2016 and re-open in mid-February 2017 during which time most of them will swan off on Tax-payer-funded junkets to the fleshpots of the world with their parasitic partners and children in tow.
No-one seems to want this absurd vote.
Cancel it and let our politicians – remember them? They are the people we PAY to run the country and do what is best for Australia and us. Given that changing the Australian Marriage Act ( a Secular Act which does not impinge on the Rights of any Religion to refuse to marry Same Gender people in their Churches, Temples, Synagogues, Mosques etc.)has Bi-partisan support and with the extra support of The Greens in both houses, just as the homophobic John Howard altered the Australian Marriage Act with the bi-partisan support of the ALP so, too, can Malcolm Turnbull alter it and get it through both the Reps and the Senate.
Malcolm, Bill, extract the digits and get on with the job. It is what we pay you to do.