The Prime Minister himself tables the same-sex\u00a0marriage\u00a0plebiscite bill in the House of Representatives. The bill confirms the details that had been made public two days earlier (see News of 13 September) as well as some others: the result will be determined by the majority of votes for YES or NO minus the informals (we are yet to find out if writing anything on a ballot paper other than Yes or No will make it informal); surplus funds, including those donated to the YES and NO committees,\u00a0will be transferred to the DisabilityCare Australia Fund Special Account – this seems to be fashionable after the proposed Medicare co-payment was to be put\u00a0into the Medical Research Fund. No text or automated phone messages will be allowed, much to everyone’s relief.\u00a0The 35 page\u00a0bill borrows heavily from the lengthy Referendums Machinery Act so the vote will be complete with postal and pre-poll voting and other referendum add-ons, thus requiring a 48 page explanatory memorandum! No effort has been spared to get everyone to vote given it’s compulsory at a cost of $170m, to which the PM commented “What price democracy?” and left it at that (we agree). Labor has\u00a0heavily hinted that it will not support the bill on the basis of public funding of the YES and NO cases; its potentially\u00a0divisive nature and exclusion of those affected; the unusual nature of the vote\u00a0on a matter that\u00a0would be\u00a0ordinarily be\u00a0decided by Parliament\u00a0and its cost. On the other hand, we still don’t know what legislative changes the Government intends to table and when, if the vote gets up as\u00a0would be known\u00a0ahead of\u00a0a referendum to change the Constitution.\u00a0This includes potential\u00a0amendment of\u00a0the Sex\u00a0Discrimination Act to protect businesses\/individuals who refuse to provide services for same-sex weddings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Prime Minister himself tables the same-sex\u00a0marriage\u00a0plebiscite bill in the House of Representatives. The bill confirms the details that had been made public two days earlier (see News of 13 September) as well as some others: the result will be…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-16","wpcat-16-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1232,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1231\/revisions\/1232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}