Same-sex marriage advocates are adamant the senate’s rejection of a planned plebiscite won’t stall momentum on the issue. Government legislation to enable a national vote was defeated late on Monday night after Labor, Greens, the Nick Xenophon Team and independent Derryn Hinch opposed it.
Australian Marriage Equality spokesman Alex Greenwich says his organisation won’t give up and will continue to lobby federal politicians for a parliamentary vote.
“On marriage equality peoples’ hearts and minds do change and their voting pattern changes,” the independent NSW MP told ABC Radio on Tuesday.
Whether the reform gets up next week, next month or next year the case for same-sex marriage remained strong, he said.
But the federal government has warned the senate defeat will likely push the issue off the agenda for this parliamentary term. Several gay senators, including Labor’s Penny Wong and Louise Pratt, made impassioned pleas against the plebiscite, telling parliament it would denigrate their families and subject them to hate speech.
Gay Liberal backbencher Dean Smith was absent from the upper house for the final vote, after earlier speaking out against a plebiscite.
He had argued a plebiscite was an abdication of parliament’s responsibility and would undermine parliament’s sovereignty.
One Nation’s Pauline Hanson had questioned why same-sex couples would want to marry, commenting that having married twice herself it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
“Why do you have to take the word ‘marriage’ which was defined between a man and a woman,” she told parliament.
“If you truly love someone do you really need to have that certificate that says you’re married?”
Independent senator Jacqui Lambie told ABC radio those opposed to the plebiscite had “killed off people power”.
She is talking with One Nation leader Pauline Hanson about putting legislation to parliament to hold plebiscites on same-sex marriage, indigenous recognition and euthanasia at the next federal election, likely to be in 2019.
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