Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to spend a couple of minutes, if I could, on the importance of a plebiscite on same-sex marriage. My electorate has had this question asked three times in the last three years in a household survey where 165,000 ballot forms have been sent out. The participation rates are now approaching 25 per cent. It is very important to remember, though, if you are going to deal with an important topic like same-sex marriage as a community or household survey, that both sides of the debate are engaged in that process and buy into it. There is no point just sending out a politician's survey form and getting five per cent back. You need to engage both sides and raise public awareness around the debate in your own electorate.

My belief was that, in addition to surveying every household and giving them a say, in addition to running a really substantial social media campaign to promote engagement, we should do a suburb-by-suburb campaign. We promoted the delivery of those ballot forms to a different suburb each week. So there was full focus on suburb after suburb to raise awareness and to get people participating.

A lot of people will say, 'Twenty-five per cent—that's not a very big participation rate.' Well, 25 per cent of 55,000 households is probably one of the largest polls ever done by numbers on this topic anywhere in the country. Of course, there are skews. What is most important is to address them and identify them, to be aware that they are possible. The biggest skew is the propensity to walk down to a postbox and put your form back in, free post. You do have to actually get out of bed, pick up a pen and complete a form. If they cared enough about a topic, I reckon most Australians would do that.

The second skew is it was a household survey and not a survey of individual adults, and that is about the budget limitations of a federal office and how complex it is to work out how many voting adults live in every household, to start with. But, considering that households can fall one way or another or have divided opinions, that sort of washes out when you poll 55,000 of them. You still get a very, very clear picture.

Over the three surveys in my electorate—it is an average-earning, outer metropolitan seat—each time it has been within a few per cent of fifty-fifty. I have called it a knife edge issue in my electorate. That is why I am utterly committed to my entire community having a say. But that is not just me—there is the Griffith University Centre for Governance and Public Policy study showing that well over 70 per cent of Australians hold the same view that on issues of conscience they would like to have a say: physician assisted suicide, abortion law changes here in Queensland and so on. I did not say they were the same issues, but they are issues where Australians would like a direct say. Among Labor voters, that figure is 72.9 per cent. These are compelling numbers suggesting people want to get involved.

And yes, democracy costs. Yes, it is going to cost some millions of dollars, but that is the price of living in a vigorous civic democracy. So let's have that debate. We have promised to do it. The community will have its say, and I have committed to every one of my electors that I will vote in this place the way they vote in the plebiscite. I still cannot tell you until the plebiscite is held how I will vote.