Deception and misdirection is the Liberal plan on marriage equality

At every turn, Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberals have sought to circumvent marriage equality, now even stooping to spending $160m on a useless plebiscite they refuse to even abide.

One has to wonder, why won’t Coalition MPs just do their job and have a vote in parliament?

“Why don’t we just short circuit the plebiscite and ask those Coalition MPs, who believe that their electorates feel one way or another, to walk into the Parliament and vote that way now,” said deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek.

“The plebiscite is a $160m divisive and disruptive opinion poll that the government is going to ignore anyway.

“They’ve said from the beginning that it doesn’t matter what the results of the plebiscite, not even the cabinet will be bound.

“Why are we going through $160m opinion poll that the government will ignore anyway?” she added.

Why indeed, especially when Coalition MPs aren’t willing to at least respect the views of the public?

“The plebiscite is a $160m divisive and disruptive opinion poll.”

“They’re not promising that they’ll respect the views of their constituents,” Plibersek said.

“If the electorates vote yes, are they promising that they’ll go in and vote yes if they’re opposed to marriage equality?

“They’ve said the exact opposite.

“We’ve had half a dozen Coalition MPs say it doesn’t matter what the plebiscite result is, they’ll be voting no, so why are we going through this?

“We actually don’t have a plebiscite when we send people to war.

“We don’t even have a parliamentary vote on that.

“We didn’t have a plebiscite to introduce sex discrimination legislation or race discrimination legislation or national native title legislation.

“We haven’t had a plebiscite about putting a price on carbon.

“We haven’t had a plebiscite about a $50b tax cut for big business,” she added.

This article originally appeared in the Labor Herald.