The Victorian Liberal Jason Wood says if MPs manage to bring on a new bill to legalise same-sex marriage, the Turnbull government will be in conscience vote territory, and he will vote in favour of the change.
Wood told Guardian Australia on Monday the plebiscite had been the number one way of dealing with marriage equality, “but if this becomes a debate in the parliament, it becomes a conscience issue”.
He said if government MPs managed to work with Labor to successfully suspend the standing orders and bring on a marriage equality bill for debate once parliament returns from the winter recess, he would be a yes vote.
Wood said he was unlikely to be the only government MP to take the view that the Liberal party was no longer bound by the plebiscite policy if the new marriage bill made it successfully to the floor of the parliament.
“I have no doubt that a number of other members will look at this as an open debate – I think that would be the view of a number of members,” Wood said.
Wood’s intervention is significant because it widens the renewed marriage equality push beyond a core group of gay Liberal MPs, and the long-time campaigner Warren Entsch, who have been attempting to get the government to move to a conscience vote position in this parliamentary term.
A group of Liberal MPs are currently considering whether or not to cross the floor and trigger the debate once a new private members bill is ready to be introduced to parliament.
Asked in Perth on Monday whether he could stop backbenchers from crossing the floor and voting in favour of a marriage equality bill, Malcolm Turnbull said that wasn’t an option.
“In our party, backbenchers have always had the right to cross the floor,” the prime minister told reporters.
“In the Labor party, you get expelled for doing that. It’s always been a fundamental principle in the Liberal party and indeed, the National party. So it’s a very different political culture to the very authoritarian Labor party.”
Government conservatives in recent weeks have rallied around the plebiscite in an effort to hold off the fresh push by moderates to resolve the Liberal party’s long-running internal battle on marriage equality with a conscience vote in this term of parliament.
Wood’s comments in an interview with Guardian Australia follow a declaration on Monday morning by another Victorian Liberal, Tim Wilson, that the Liberal party had now discharged its obligation to the plebiscite, and needed to find a prompt resolution on same-sex marriage.
Wilson made it clear on Monday he had “discharged his responsibility” to the plebiscite, and he said the government now needed to decide the next steps.
Wilson told Sky News 77% of his electorate favoured a change to the law, according to a poll he had undertaken. He said 96% of direct feedback to the office was in favour of change, and only one person had argued in favour of the plebiscite.
He said as a gay MP he had a personal conflict with the plebiscite, which “torments and challenges me” on a daily basis. “I’d like to see this issue resolved,” he said.
Queensland Liberal MP Warren Entsch told Guardian Australia on Monday it was time to move past the plebiscite, because neither a postal plebiscite, nor the original proposal, would work, particularly when MPs had signalled they wouldn’t be bound by the result. “The only option is a free vote, and it is important that it be free”.
He said the time had come for government MPs to be given the opportunity of expressing their views on the question, whether that be support or opposition. Entsch said MPs without settled views could absent themselves from the chamber.
Entsch declined to answer whether he would cross the floor to bring on a vote. He said he was hopeful the party room could debate the issue and move to adopt a free vote position.
“I would like it if the party room would understand this is the most practical way to deal with this question,” he said.
The Liberal senator Dean Smith has signalled he will bring forward a marriage equality bill when parliament resumes after the winter break in early August.
Writing in the Australian Financial Review on Monday, Smith said the Liberal party needed to move past the plebiscite because it was clear parliament would not support it, and some conservatives had made it clear they would not be bound by a positive result.
“While it’s true the government has an election commitment to pursue a plebiscite, it is also true that despite its best endeavours the parliament will not support it because of its $170m price tag, $15m in public funding for ‘yes’ and ‘no’ campaigns and most importantly the admission by some Coalition parliamentarians they would not be bound by its result,” Smith said in Monday’s column.
“Far too much time and energy has already been consumed by this debate. It is time to resolve the matter, in parliament, as our constitution provides.”
Another Liberal MP, Trevor Evans, told the Australian on Monday the quickest way to resolve the issue was “to allow politicians to have a free vote … and I support that”.
At the conclusion of the marathon Coalition party room meeting on marriage equality in 2015, which delivered the plebiscite policy, Tony Abbott said: “I’ve come to the view – I believe this is the party room view – that this is the last term in which the Coalition party room can be bound, although we will definitely maintain the current position for the life of this term.
“Going into the next election, we will finalise another position.”
Abbott has now backtracked on those comments, and says the government must maintain the plebiscite as the policy until the next federal election. Fellow conservative Peter Dutton has proposed a postal plebiscite as an option to resolve the issue.
Any move to push the party into a conscience vote position during this term of parliament would be incendiary internally.
In a recent interview with Guardian Australia, the deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce expressed profound frustration with the new marriage push by Liberal moderates, and said he wasn’t sure what would happen to the Coalition agreement if the push succeeded.
“I have no idea. It just frustrates me,” Joyce said.
Joyce said the government needed to stick by its policy of putting the legalisation of same-sex marriage to a plebiscite, and he said voters would be furious if they were not given a say on an issue that remained divisive in some communities.
The Nationals say the plebiscite is part of the Coalition agreement between the Liberal and National party.
