Blocking marriage equality plebiscite could delay it for years, Liberals warn Labor

Liberal MPs have warned that Labor’s likely decision to block the marriage equality plebiscite could spell the end of the issue for the next three years.

A strong signal from Bill Shorten on Wednesday at the National Press Club that Labor is positioning to kill the plebiscite has galvanised Liberal MPs to warn the opposition that with this it is all or nothing.

The Liberal MP Trevor Evans said on Thursday there was a “very real prospect” marriage equality would not be delivered for three years or more if the plebiscite was blocked.

The Victorian Liberal MP Russell Broadbent was even more direct. He said if Labor killed the plebiscite there would be no parliamentary vote in this term of government, “and they need to understand clearly that’s the proposition”.

“This issue was put to the Australian people and they are expecting a vote,” Broadbent said.

Craig Kelly expressed a similar sentiment on Sky News. He said Labor had an obligation not to block the plebiscite, which the Coalition took to the 2 July election as its policy.

“If there’s no plebiscite, it is simply off the table for the next three years,” he said.

Kelly’s comments echo a warning from the former prime minister, Tony Abbott, before the election that if the plebiscite was blocked there should not be a parliamentary vote, at least for this term of parliament.

Liberals believe the ALP plans to block the plebiscite to foment internal strife in the Coalition and land a strategic blow on Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership early in the new term.

Losing a mechanism in the new parliament to deliver marriage equality, and hold the conservative faction through that process, would be, as one MP who declined to be named, said on Thursday: “A disaster for the prime minister, because of his personal position.”

Some also believe Labor is also motivated by a desire to take credit for delivering the reform once it comes to the parliament for resolution.

Evans said he had come away from meetings with Labor and LGBTI activists “sadly disappointed ... that they seem more focused on who takes credit for any reform than about achieving any reform in the first place”.

He warned “the only way to comprehensively put this issue to bed is to have everybody own the decision”.

He said blocking the plebiscite would in effect be “asking a whole lot of MPs supportive of same-sex marriage, including Tim Wilson, Trent Zimmerman and me, the first openly gay MPs in the house of representatives in each of our states, to break our party’s promise to hold a plebiscite”.

The former human rights commissioner and now Liberal MP, Tim Wilson, said it was quite clear Labor wanted to stop any change “so they can claim credit for delivering reform when they are in government”.

“They are just using same-sex couples as political pawns,” he said. “Blocking the plebiscite won’t lead to a successful vote in the parliament, just many more years of waiting. Bill Shorten and Penny Wong know that.

“Labor had six years to change the law. Rudd opposed it on cultural grounds, Gillard on feminist grounds and then Rudd supported it and didn’t act, and now Shorten doesn’t want change unless he can claim credit. It is time to get this done so the country can move on.”

At the National Press Club, Shorten described the proposed $160m plebiscite as “nonsense” and “ridiculous”, saying that although voting would be compulsory Coalition MPs would be free to disregard its result.

“I am gravely concerned about the merits of the plebiscite,” he said.

Labor’s leadership group held a strategy meeting this week, but the ALP has not yet reached a final decision on the whether to block the plebiscite. There is considerable internal pressure on Shorten to block the enabling legislation.

With senators Nick Xenophon and Derryn Hinch indicating this week they would vote against legislation to enable the plebiscite, a parliamentary bloc consisting of Labor, the Greens, Xenophon and Hinch would be sufficient to block it.

Liberal MP and same-sex marriage advocate Warren Entsch attempted to hold a middle course on Thursday.

He said he would not speculate about what would happen if the opposition blocked the plebiscite, but warned “Labor has got to realise they’re not in government and we made a commitment to do this”.

“Bill [Shorten] doesn’t realise he lost the election,” he said. “One day he’s going to wake up and realise he’s in opposition.

“People would be attacking the government for not following through on its commitments [if we didn’t deliver a plebiscite].”

Evans said: “We now have the first prime minister in Australia’s history who has ever been consistently in favour of same-sex marriage, who has gone to the election with a plan to get this reform done, and was returned.

“The opportunity here is to get behind this and achieve a momentous reform, and it shouldn’t hold any of us back to think that achieving the reform will involve letting everybody have their say.”

Evans warned that LGBTI activists “are also focused on who gets credit” for marriage equality rather than achieving the reform.

“If those activists aren’t careful they will end up burning bridges with the side of politics that first raised LGBTI issues in parliament, the first party that achieved equality in superannuation and other laws, the first that elected openly gay MPs,” he said.