Christian Porter says Australians should not be denied the opportunity to vote in a plebiscite on marriage equality because of a “concern about risk” to the LGBTI community, adding that the “organs of civil society” will keep the debate in line.
The social affairs minister made the comment in response to what he described as a leading question from the audience at Guardian Live’s special election event in Melbourne on Tuesday night.
The questioner at the Malthouse theatre had asked Porter if he shared prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s “naive optimism” that campaigns around the proposed plebiscite would be well-behaved, and also what his risk management strategy was to ensure “that kids don’t suicide based on the hatred that’s about to come”.
Porter said he trusted the Australian people to engage in a civil debate and referred to recent polling, which he claimed “says that people really want this plebiscite”.
“I don’t think that’s a debate that should be taken away from the Australian people, and a process that should be taken away from the Australian people, because of a concern … about risk,” he said.
The former state prosecutor said there would “always be extremes and edges” but that Australia’s multifarious legal and administrative institutions that would “stop people from becoming radically intemperate”.
He added: “I think we can trust those organs of civil society to do the job that they have done for years.”
Opposition families and disability spokeswoman Jenny Macklin, sitting on the other side of the panel that included Guardian Australia’s political editor, Lenore Taylor, deputy political editor, Katharine Murphy, and the journalist and writer George Megalogenis, disagreed.
Macklin said the Labor party, which has proposed to scrap the plebiscite and introduce marriage equality laws by way of parliamentary vote within its first 100 days of government, if elected, was concerned about the damage a divisive public debate could cause.
The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, has described the plebiscite as “a taxpayer-funded platform for homophobia” while the ALP frontbencher Penny Wong this week said it was a “licence for hate speech”.
Turnbull has maintained the debate would be “respectful”, and told ABC’s Q&A program on Monday night: “I will vote yes. I will encourage others to vote yes, and I’m confident it will be carried.”
Asked how he thought the Liberal party would fare in his home state of Western Australia, where Labor is confident of picking up at least two, possibly four, new seats, Porter said, “I think it’s a seat-by-seat proposition.”
I reckon @cporterwa just acknowledged @AustralianLabor will do well in WA "the conservative vote had a high watermark in 2013" #GuardianLive
— Ben Davison (@ClubeGaffer) June 21, 2016
With 10 days until polling day Megalogenis said the race was too close call but, when pushed, said he expected Turnbull to retain government with a small majority and a high number of maverick independent or micro-party MPs.
“As soon as the Coalition seat count goes below 80, you know you’re in a very volatile situation,” he said.
His prediction belied the Coalition’s message that the options were either a stable Coalition government or a chaotic Labor-Green minority government. Macklin said that message was untrue: Labor was aiming to win in its own right.
Megalogenis said the result would be chaos no matter who won, saying the likelihood of a very broad Senate crossbench meant “the parliament will be unworkable whichever way you look at it”.
Porter was unworried about the possibility of more independents. “Welcome to democracy, that’s how it works,” he said.
