The Victorian premier has accused Malcolm Turnbull of giving in to “extreme elements within his government” by holding a postal survey on marriage equality.
“There’s no need for us to be having this postal plebiscite, this postal survey, but the prime minister in his weakness has given into some extreme elements within his government,” Daniel Andrews said on Sunday.
“We’re now spending enormous amounts of taxpayers’ money, but if we’re going to do this we should do it right. People should be enrolled to vote and people should vote yes.”
Andrews made the comments alongside the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, at a marriage equality rally in Melbourne on Sunday.
He said allowing couples of the same sex to marry would make his own marriage “mean more” because “my wife and I, and our kids, will be in a nation that is prepared to make the change that is appropriate”.
“We will be part of a community that has said fairness and equity and decency means something,” he said. “Today is about reminding people that you can’t have your say, you can’t vote for fairness and treating people equally, unless you’re enrolled to vote.”
The roll closes this Thursday - check in with your family, mates that they've updated their enrolment at https://t.co/6MchM6qLmX #voteyes pic.twitter.com/GB9ngPzfQF
— Martin Foley (@MartinFoleyMP) August 20, 2017
The deadline for enrolling to vote in the postal survey is 24 August. The Australian Electoral Commission received 68,000 new enrolments or checks of enrolment in the first 24 hours after the survey was announced.
The chief statistician of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, David Kalisch, was first told on 7 August that his agency would be conducting the survey, the day the Liberal party room voted to stick with its plebiscite policy instead of offering a free vote in parliament.
Shorten said that despite opposing the survey he would encourage all Australians to vote.
Shorten: It's a spectacular waste of money.. we could literally cure kidney disease in remote communities." #loveislove @channeltennews
— Candice Wyatt (@CandiceWyatt10) August 20, 2017
“Labor didn’t want the survey, we think the parliament should just do its day job and many Australians, and I share their frustration, can’t believe that we’re going to spend so much taxpayer money to do a survey on something which the parliament still has to vote on,” he said. “But if the high court challenge against the survey fails, we do want Australians to participate.”
The high court has agreed to hear the challenge in the first week in September, a week before the ballots are due to be mailed out.
Earlier on Sunday the attorney general, George Brandis, defended the integrity of the ballot, saying it would not be broadened into a debate on religious freedoms.
Speaking on Sky News on Sunday, Brandis said attempts by opponents of marriage equality to twist the debate to focus on freedom of religion would not succeed, because there were already sufficient laws in place to protect freedom of religion and freedom of conscious.
“What I am not going to do is to be tricked by Tony Abbott and others who are trying to turn a debate about one issue – whether a same-sex couple be allowed to marry – into a broader debate about religious freedom because that is not what this is about,” he said.
What a legend. #marriageequality pic.twitter.com/NEYAPu0FGO
— Maxine Beneba Clarke (@slamup) August 20, 2017
The Catholic archbishop of Melbourne, Dennis Hart, had told Fairfax Media on Sunday that the church would not accept any of its employees, including teachers at Catholic schools, getting married to a same-sex partner in Australia.
“I would be very emphatic that our schools, our parishes exist to teach a Catholic view of marriage,” he said. “Any words or actions which work contrary to that would be viewed very seriously.”
