George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I wanted to indicate why it is the view of the government that this debate should not have been gagged and why government senators joined with Labor senators on this occasion in resisting a gag.

Nobody in this chamber doubts that this is a very, very serious matter. It is an issue on which there is a variety of different views within the coalition, and we do not have any difficulty with the fact that there is a variety of views. Both the Prime Minister and I are on the record as being in favour of change to the law but we respect the fact that there are many of our colleagues who have a different view.

What we are all united on though is in the belief that this matter is one of those matters which, because of its peculiar sensitivity, ought to be resolved ultimately by the Australian people at a plebiscite, which is what the coalition has committed to do.

I might say that that is the view of the Australian people themselves. Only two days ago the research firm Essential published an opinion poll on this very question. The results of that opinion poll are very instructive. When asked whether the matter should be decided by a vote of members of parliament or by a national vote of the Australian people, fully 66 per cent of respondents agreed with the government that the matter ought to be resolved by the Australian people; only 23 per cent were of the view that it should be decided by politicians only sitting in parliament.

That view was uniform across all party affiliations: 68 per cent of Labor voters thought the matter should be decided by a plebiscite; 67 per cent of coalition voters thought the matter should be decided by a plebiscite; and 58 per cent of Greens voters thought the matter should be decided by a plebiscite. So whatever one's views might be of the ultimate question—and we in the government respect the fact that there is a variety of views—there is a strong, overwhelming preference by the Australian people that they should be included in this decision, which is precisely what the coalition is committed to doing. It is certainly, in light of those considerations, not the sort of matter that should be decided here today by the device of a gag on a procedural vote.