Process for February 2017 Plebiscite

What we know so far. The question for the 11 February 2017 poll is: “Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?” (appears straightforward). Voting will be compulsory  – compared with voluntary voting for the three-choice 1977 vote on the national anthem, the last plebisite conducted; result will be by simple majority; there will be oversight (unpecified) of robocalls and SMS. If YES gets up, the Government says it will introduce legislation to amend the Marriage Act but there is no Government guarantee that it will pass.There will also be $7.5m for each of the YES and NO cases (same as for the Republic referendum in 1999, hasn’t been indexed – this isn’t much funding and isn’t going to go very far). Each case will have a 10 member committee, chaired by a Government MP, to decide how the money will be spent consisting of five MPs and five members of the public.The bill is expected to be introduced into the House of Representatives this week.