October, 2017 RollingStoneAus.com | Rolling Stone | 41GETTY IMAGES
The appeal of a plebiscite for Abbott
was obvious: they don’t work. There’d been
three in Australia’s history: two failed dur-
ing World War One (to make conscription
the law and to increase Australia’s commit-
ment to overseas theatres of war) while the
third was a multiple choice vote for Aus-
tralia’s National Song in 1977, won by “Ad-
vance Australia Fair”.
So that was Abbott’s position: there
would be no vote on the matter, including
this joint legislation, during this term of
parliament, but he would consider the re-
sult of a “people’s vote” during his next term
of government.
Of course, after a successful leadership
challenge there was no new term of govern-
ment for Abbott – but after the government
of Malcolm Turnbull scraped into a one-
seat majority in the ill-chosen 2016 double
dissolution election, the new PM who per-
sonally supported marriage equality had
several diffi culties making it happen.
One was that the conservatives in his
party, most obviously Abbott, vehement-
ly opposed a free parliamentary vote. Sec-
ond was that the secret Coalition agree-
ment which laid out the requirements for
the support of the National Party suppos-
edly specifi ed that any progress on same sex
marriage would put the Coalition at risk (an
empty-sounding threat given the diffi cul-ties in disentangling the combined Liber-
al-National Party in Queensland, who had
merged in 2008).
And the third was that the unpopular
plebiscite wasn’t going to pass the Senate
in any case: an attempt to get it through
in November 2016 was blocked by Labor,
the Greens, the Nick Xenophon Team and
Derryn Hinch. Another try in August 2017
similarly failed.
A private members bill from Liberal
backbencher Dean Smith looked like a
way to get things over with, but instead of
shrugging and fi guring this would end the
matter, the government instead went for
Plan Stupid.
Plan Stupid is a voluntary postal bal-
lot, costing an estimated $122 million, ad-
ministered not by the Australian Electoral
Commission but by the Australian Bureau
of Statistics, and paid for with the discre-
tionary funds from the fi nance department
for “urgent and unforeseen” contingencies,
thereby avoiding the need for legislation to
approve the necessary funding.
Oh, also technically it’s not a vote or a
plebiscite because the ABS has no authori-
ty to hold elections: now it’s a survey.
A voluntary one.
Through the post.
But at least that’ll settle the matter,
right? Yeah, about that: If the voluntarypostal survey returns a “yes” vote, then and
only then will the parliament hold a con-
science vote, exactly as they could right
now. Those parliamentarians which mor-
ally object to the idea of two ladies getting
married will be free to ignore the result
and vote no, as if the survey never hap-
pened at all.
And that’s where things are at the time
of writing: the ABS, fresh from the debacle
that was the 2017 census, has been rushed
into handling a statistically-dubious vol-
untary survey on same sex marriage which
parliament can ignore.
Or maybe not: there are two high court
challenges coming up around the time this
story will be in print.
The fi rst is on the legal validity of the
ABS running the poll, the other on wheth-
er the government can argue that this
poll is “urgent or unforeseen” and there-
fore eligible for the advance from the Fi-
nance Department. Either or both could
scuttle the whole thing and put us back
at square one.
But the future is clear: marriage equal-
ity will happen, and it’ll do nothing but
bring happiness to people.
And when our children ask why it took
Australia so long to do something so obvi-
ously easy we’ll shake our heads and say,
“Honestly, kid; it’s a long, stupid story...”EQUALITY
A rally in support
of same-sex
marriage in
Sydney, August
2015.