Just in case anyone was having any fancy ideas, the Nationals MP Andrew Broad made a short sprint to the barricades on Tuesday morning.
While the Labor caucus was lining up to torpedo the marriage equality plebiscite, Broad was making it known he would withdraw support for the government (whatever that might mean, because the practicalities associated with his declaration were deeply unclear) if there was a parliamentary vote during this term without a plebiscite.
Broad was like a sheepdog, nipping at the heels of the sheep, just in case any of the rams suffered a startle reflex and made a run for it.
Meanwhile Labor ignored the sheepdog and the sheep and did what we knew it was going to do.
It met, it mulled, and then on Tuesday morning, it sunk the marriage equality plebiscite by unanimous vote.
So now the plebiscite is all done, bar the (predictable) shouting, here are the pertinent questions.
Will Malcolm Turnbull, after a suitable interval, now drift into some post-plebiscite phase?
It appears impossible on current indications, given everything that’s been said, and given this really is a do-or-die issue for conservatives. But it’s notable that one key government moderate, Simon Birmingham, was exercised sufficiently about the imminent defeat of the plebiscite to suddenly throw public funding on the table for discussion at the eleventh hour.
As cries for help go, that one really was something.
Moderates have been hoping until the last that Bill Shorten could be persuaded to step back from the brink, but this has been a miscalculation from the outset. Even if Shorten could be convinced, the internal sentiment within Labor, for a variety of reasons, was rapid set against killing the plebiscite.
Viewed from Labor’s perch, there are also two working scenarios over the medium term politically: Turnbull remains as prime minister and has to, somewhat uncomfortably, keep a lid on the community momentum for change; or Turnbull gets run over by conservative forces over the course of this parliamentary term, meaning that for Liberal moderates, all bets would be off on a free vote in the parliament.
Secondly, will Coalition backbenchers supportive of marriage equality be sufficiently exercised, particularly once a federal election looms in sight, to countenance voting for one of the cross-party bills?
It would be a very big thing to do, and if you were a Liberal backbencher contemplating doing it, you’d need to make peace with the idea that you wouldn’t be entering the ministry any time soon. But recent history tells us that nothing in politics is impossible.
While Tuesday has dished up a number of imponderables, a few things are certain.
We can be certain that marriage equality advocates will not step back from the public campaign, given its success in shifting public attitudes in Australia over the past decade.
We can also be certain that Labor will not step back from an issue it believes is politically dangerous for this prime minister and the Coalition, particularly whenever the internal dissent finds a means of entering the parliamentary arena.
