A push within the Labor party for a binding vote on same-sex marriage would strengthen the resolve of conservative Liberals who oppose a free vote on the issue, three government senators have warned.
Two senior members of Labor’s left faction, Tanya Plibersek and Penny Wong, are leading the push for the party’s national conference in July to adopt a stronger position in favour of legalising same-sex marriage.
Labor has a policy of supporting such legislation but its members are free to vote according to their conscience on the floor of parliament. The shift, if accepted at the national conference, would bind Labor MPs and senators to vote in favour of a bill to allow same-sex marriage.
Such a course of action could raise difficulties for several outspoken members of the right faction, who have vowed never to vote for the policy. Labor parliamentarians who cross the floor are expelled or are required to quit.
When same-sex marriage legislation was debated in the previous term of parliament, Liberal members were bound to vote against it, but advocates of change have repeatedly urged the party to allow a conscience vote to increase the chances of majority support.
Liberal frontbenchers Malcolm Turnbull, Josh Frydenberg, Simon Birmingham and Kelly O’Dwyer and backbencher Wyatt Roy are on the public record as supporting a free vote.
The conservative Liberal senator Cory Bernardi said he believed Plibersek’s proposal to bind Labor MPs “would strengthen the Liberal party’s position in the public eye as a party that would be standing by traditional marriage”.
“Tanya Plibersek’s idea illustrates the totalitarian nature of the left of politics. She’s basically saying there’s no room for a difference of opinion in Plibersek’s Labor party or you’ll get kicked out,” Bernardi told Guardian Australia.
“Not only would Plibersek’s argument wreck the Labor party, it undermines any attempts by those within the Liberal party seeking to change the party’s position.”
Bernardi, from South Australia, has opposed efforts to allow a conscience vote within the Liberal party. But he emphasised that Liberal MPs and senators were allowed to cross the floor on any issue without being expelled from the party. Frontbenchers, however, must resign from their posts if they do so.
Dean Smith, an openly gay Western Australian Liberal senator who supports same-sex marriage, told Fairfax Media he was “personally disappointed” by Plibersek’s push because it would undermine “the slow and cautious approach to achieving a conscience vote”.
The NSW Liberal senator Arthur Sinodinos agreed with Smith’s assessment.
“This will set it back because within the Liberal party there has been increasing discussion about having what’s called a free vote or a conscience vote and Tony Abbott had indicated it would be up to the party room to make a decision on that in due course,” Sinodinos told the ABC’s Q&A program.
“It would be much easier for the Liberal party leadership to say, ‘Well, we are going to stick with our current policy because Labor is forcing its MPs to toe a particular line’.”
Plibersek said she was not convinced by Smith’s claim that a conscience vote had been under active consideration in the Liberal party room. She defended her stance during an appearance on the ABC’s Q&A, saying it was an issue of “whether we support discrimination as a party or whether we don’t”.
The deputy Labor leader said she was not proposing that churches be forced to marry people and was “not trying to compel [MPs] to go against their conscience”.
“I think this is an issue of legal discrimination against one group in our community. Do we have a conscience vote about [whether] we allow racism, sexism or ageism? We don’t,” she said.
“This is legal discrimination which prevents one group in our community accessing the legal rights and obligations marriage confers and it’s discrimination that prevents one group in our community from accessing the social acknowledgement of their relationships which, in many cases, are longstanding, loving, committed relationships.”
Plibersek’s comments prompted warnings from the conservative Shop Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association that such a decision would result in some Labor parliamentarians crossing the floor to oppose a bill.
Chris Hayes, the Labor MP for Fowler in NSW, said he would contribute to the debate at the national conference but he stood by the views he had previously expressed in the parliament.
Hayes, a member of the right faction, was quoted by Fairfax Media in 2011 as saying he would never vote for gay marriage, even if party policy dictated it. “I can’t apologise for my beliefs,” he said at the time.
On Monday, Hayes refused to be drawn on whether he would cross the floor if a binding vote was adopted at the forthcoming national conference. “There’s a lot to go before people should start to talk about that,” he said.
The WA Labor senator Joe Bullock, another right faction figure who has previously been quoted as saying he would rather be expelled than vote for same-sex marriage, said on Monday: “My position on this matter is unchanged. I’ve said a bit about it over the years and I don’t want to further [comment].”
The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, who is from the right faction, supports same-sex marriage but wants to maintain a conscience vote.
Even though the push for a binding vote is being advocated by senior members of the left, the idea is not universally accepted within the faction. Labor’s health spokeswoman, Catherine King, a member of the left, told the ABC she continued to support same-sex marriage but was “a bit worried that this idea around not having a conscience vote might distract from the overall issue and it’s potentially picking a fight we may not need to have”.
