Topics: Plebiscite on same-sex marriage
EO&E…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
ATTORNEY-GENERAL:
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. As I think you are now aware, last night the Cabinet decided and this morning the Party Room agreed that legislation to establish a plebiscite for same-sex marriage will be introduced into the Parliament later this week. The bill will be introduced by the Prime Minister into the House of Representatives. The bill provides for there to be a plebiscite of all the Australian people on Saturday the eleventh of February. The question which will be put to the people at that plebiscite is: ‘Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?’ In the event the plebiscite were to be passed, then I would introduce legislation to give effect to the will of the people to amend the Marriage Act shortly thereafter. In legislating for a plebiscite, the Government is giving effect to a commitment made during the election campaign and endorsed by the Australian people.
The one person now standing between the Australian people and their right to have their say, their voice heard in what would be, on any view, a very, very significant social change, is Bill Shorten. So I call on Bill Shorten to get out of the way, to allow the plebiscite bill passage through the Senate, to allow the Australian people to have their say and importantly in the event that there is a Yes vote in the plebiscite, to allow there to be marriage equality in Australia by early next year. That is now the only clear path for Australians to have marriage equality very soon. If Mr Shorten could stop playing politics with the lives of gay people and put the interest of a cause he claims to believe in first, then he would support the plebiscite bill. We would expect that he would campaign for a Yes vote in the plebiscite and were there to be a ‘Yes’ vote in the plebiscite, we would expect the Labor party to join with the Government in passing amendments to the Marriage Act.
Now in preparing the submission that was taken to cabinet last night, I have been joined, or collaborated with my colleague Scott Ryan, the Special Minister of State, the person who is responsible for the design features and the mechanics of the plebiscite and I’ll ask him to say a few words on that, and about other issues.
But what we have striven to do and I believe we have achieved, is to ensure that there is a completely fair process, a completely neutral question, not loaded in one way or another to favour one side or another, so that the Australian people can make their choice, can make their decision. And if they decide to change the definition of marriage by allowing same-sex couples to marry, I have complete confidence that the Parliament will respect the wishes of the people. Scott?
SENATOR RYAN:
Thank you, George. In terms of the mechanics of the proposed plebiscite, we have sought to replicate the provisions in the Referendum Act and the Electoral Act as far as possible so they are familiar to most voters. It will be a compulsory attendance ballot with normal access to pre-poll voting, postal voting and declaration voting. The result of the ballot will be determined by a simple majority of formal votes cast, as is the case of a referendum. So the majority will be determined by ballot votes Yes as opposed to those with ballot votes No. There will be the requirement for authorisation of materials as is normal in the Electoral Act and we will be seeking to include that to apply to what I might refer to as new communications mechanisms, such as robo-calls and SMS messaging.
There will be Yes and No advertising committees established. This is based again on precedent, having looked back at the 1999 Republic Referendum. There will be $7.5 million provided to each Yes and No committee. There will be 10 members of those committees. There will be five members of Parliament – two provided from the Government, one provided from the cross-bench and two by the Opposition. The other five members – those members and the other five members will be appointed by the Attorney-General and myself, as was the case in 1999.
In 1999 the budgets for the Yes and No advertising committees had to be approved by the then Ministerial Committee on Government Communications, whose parallel now is the Service Delivery and Coordination Committee of Cabinet. That process will be adopted again, as will clearance of the materials and advertising. Deductible gift recipient status will be provided to these official Yes and No committees so that they can take tax-deductible donations. The tax deduction will be capped at $1500, which is again, the same that applies to political parties in the electoral act. So as you can see, we have sought to replicate existing practise and process as much as possible.
JOURNALIST:
[inaudible]SENATOR RYAN:
There will be two committees of 10, a national Yes committee and a national No committee, and as I said, there will be five members of Parliament, there will be a chair appointed from amongst the two Government members, and there will be five non-parliamentarians. And the Attorney-General and I will seek public submission for membership and we will appoint those as was the case in the 1999 with the Republic Referendum. In that case of course, we had the Constitutional Convention to draw from, and there is no similar parallel now, but we have adopted the process as far as possible.
JOURNALIST:
Have you sought any advice or re-examined whether a plebiscite could be held without legislation, that is in the event that the legislation is not passed through the Senate could you hold a plebiscite, for example a non-compulsory plebiscite, without legislation, and is that an option you considered to put through your election policy?
SENATOR RYAN:
The Government’s commitment and policy is for a plebiscite conducted in line with the practise for referenda, and that would be a compulsory attendance ballot with all the provisions such that the AEC can operate, including things like the six-metre exclusion rule outside polling places, requirement for authorisation of materials and compulsory attendance at a polling place or access through a postal vote or declaration vote. That’s the Government’s policy, and that’s what we’re putting to Parliament and asking Bill Shorten to consider and allow the Australian people to have their say.
JOURNALIST:
You claim this establishes a level playing field, but religious organisations are already DGR, people can already donate to them for free. Doesn’t what you’re proposing just maintain an un-level playing field?
SENATOR RYAN:
No not at all, because we have treated both sides exactly the same here. There is tax deductibility in line with contributions to a political party, capped at $1500 dollars for tax deduction. There will of course, I would imagine, be supportive and opposing committees established outside the official national Yes and No committees, and they are free of course, to run their own particular campaigns as long as they comply with the Act. I should have mentioned sorry one thing I did omit, we are applying a three-day black-out period as is common at elections for electronic advertising, but that is not something in the Referendum Act. We are seeking to apply that in this bill.
JOURNALIST:
The result of the referendum is immediately viable. Will the result of the plebiscite be viable?
SENATOR RYAN:
I’ll let the Leader of the Government address that.
ATTORNEY-GENERAL:
Paul, what will happen in the event there is a Yes vote is that I will introduce amendments to the Marriage Act to give effect to that outcome virtually at once, as soon as the result is clear. And as I said in my remarks, I have no doubt, no doubt whatsoever, that in the event of a Yes vote the Parliament will respect the wishes of the people. There are many, many of my colleagues whom I know, who have said both privately and publically that they would vote No in the plebiscite, but in the event the plebiscite were to carry, they would vote Yes on the floor of the Parliament. So the question, the suggestion I should say that the plebiscite is not a useful vehicle because it doesn’t bind the Parliament is a false issue. There is no doubt, no doubt whatsoever that if the Australian people choose to vote Yes, both sides of Parliament will respect their wishes.
JOURNALIST:
What information will be available for the plebiscite? Will it be electorate by electorate, booth by booth, state by state? How will you know a majority view has been formed on the issue?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL:
I’ll ask Senator Ryan to deal with that issue.
SENATOR RYAN:
So the vote will be determined, the result will be determined by a simple national tally of formal votes, Yes formal votes versus formal votes No. Informal votes are always excluded in referenda in determining the result, in that case by state and by a national result. In this case the result will be determined by a simple national tally of formal Yes and No votes. However, as is normal practise for a referendum the result will be reported though the AEC by polling place, division and state, as well as a national tally.
JOURNALIST:
Attorney-General, what’s your message to Coalition moderates who have argued against public funding for both the Yes and No campaigns. Did you put the argument against public funding for both campaigns in discussions last night as I’ve been told that you did? And thirdly, Dean Smith is now saying he will not vote for the plebiscite in the Senate.
ATTORNEY-GENERAL:
James, what you need to know is that the Government has arrived at a position with which everyone or virtually everyone is comfortable with. There’s no secret that there was a variety of views leading up to this process but we had a very good and long discussion in Cabinet last night, a very good and respectful discussion in the Party Room this morning and the Government is united behind this process. Not everybody got everything they wanted but where we have landed is something that is acceptable to everyone.
JOURNALIST:
How can you be comfortable with the process though if the result is that Labor will block the plebiscite in part because…
ATTORNEY-GENERAL:
Well this is a test for Mr Shorten. This is a test for Mr Shorten because Mr Shorten now has to decide whether he will say to the Australian people ‘I don’t trust you to make this judgement, I’m not interested in what you have to say about this question’. If by the way, like me, you’ll be voting Yes in the plebiscite and would like to see marriage equality, it is Mr Shorten who stands in the way of that too. It is Mr Shorten who is saying to gay Australians, you can just wait while I play politics.
JOURNALIST:
The Referendum Act, doesn’t it provide that if one house passes legislation twice, then the Governor-General can issue the writs? If that’s to happen in the House, would you just proceed without taking it through to the Senate?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL:
Well that’s not the way … Senator Ryan can speak about the specific provisions, but the plebiscite mechanism will incorporate from the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act, those provisions concerning the conduct of the poll and so on that are appropriate, but there is no question at all, as Senator Ryan has said, that the definition of success in this plebiscite is 50 per cent plus one of the national tally of formal votes.
SENATOR RYAN:
I might just say that provision is in section 128 of the Constitution acts solely with referenda. This is a Bill for a Plebiscite. We have adopted the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act and the Electoral Act provisions to provide a familiar voting experience and to ensure that it is a fair process one which all citizens and all advocates are familiar with. So in this case, we are asking, and it does require legislation, through the Senate for the plebiscite to take place in the form that we have proposed and we are asking Bill Shorten to follow up on what he said a few years ago, that he was open to the idea of a Plebiscite and let the Australian people have their say on this important issue.
JOURNALIST:
What are the standards that the advertising has to meet? What control will you have over the content?
SENATOR RYAN:
I’ll read to you now the provisions from 1999 that we intend to apply. The budget was made available for research, including polling and market testing for the purposes of the advertising campaign; planning of the advertising campaign strategy; concept work; concept design; creative work; writing and production of the advertisements and media placements for the Commonwealth’s media placement agency. Proposed advertisements at that time are to be cleared by the then Ministerial Committee on Government Communications MCGC, now the Service Delivery and Coordination Committee of Cabinet, will ensure proposed advertisements do not infringe appropriate standards.
JOURNALIST:
Senator Ryan, do those rules apply to all advertising in the plebiscite or only to the advertising that’s run by the official Yes and No campaigns that have the tax deductibility status?
SENATOR RYAN:
We don’t have the existing regulatory power over standards for groups that are not funded by the Commonwealth or receiving DGR status as these are. That is a matter for the television networks.
JOURNALIST:
Will anti-discrimination laws be suspended for the referendum?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL:
No they won’t be.
JOURNALIST:
Senator Brandis, you’ve said that you’ve wanted this to be as close to a referendum as possible. Why not just then legislate changes to the Marriage Act and make them conditional on a plebiscite passing to make it self-executing. Why do you need to take it to Parliamentary vote? And secondly…
ATTORNEY-GENERAL:
Can I deal with that question first? There are two reasons. First of all, the whole point of this is for Parliament to be informed by the views of the Australian people. So the plebiscite would naturally come first, on the alternative model the Parliamentary vote would come first. But secondly, there are serious concerns about the constitutionality of a self-executing plebiscite. The Constitution provides for only one mechanism for changing the law by public vote, and that of course is under section 128 for amending the Constitution itself. Otherwise our Constitution provides for a very specific three stage process for amending the law. Passage of a Bill through the House of Representatives and the Senate, or vice-versa, and ascent by the Governor General. By introducing what would in effect be a fourth stage, there is serious reason to believe that it might be, were we to approach it in that manner, susceptible to constitutional damage.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Brandis, how do you allow essentially this plebiscite to be self-executing in the way that perhaps the word doesn’t originally mean? In allowing conservatives to have public funding you have given them the one thing that will mean Labor and the Greens can’t vote for it. Isn’t this just a plebiscite now that’s impossible to get through Parliament?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL:
I’m not responsible for whatever political games Bill Shorten might choose to play, but the process we have established and the architecture of this plebiscite, it’s completely evenly handed. Everybody is entitled to precisely the same funding, precisely the same tax concessional treatment when it comes to DGR status, the question is fair and even handed, this is a completely level playing field. Both the proponents and the opponents of change playing by precisely the same rules.
JOURNALIST:
Senator, I’m not entirely clear, just from Scott Ryan’s answer before, in the event that this plebiscite legislation does not clear the Parliament as looks pretty like a safe bet, Scott said it’s not your policy to mount an alternative non-compulsory plebiscite. But that doesn’t rule out doing it…
ATTORNEY-GENERAL:
Let me make it very clear – this is the way in which the Government proposes to deal with this issue, that’s what we took to the election. We were re-elected. That position was endorsed. All the public opinion poll evidence shows there’s a clear majority of the Australian people who favour this matter being dealt with in the way that the Government proposes to deal with it. The ball is now in Mr Shorten’s court because as I said before, he is the one person who now stands between the Australian people and their right to have the say that they want to have on this important social question, and he is also the one person who stands between gay Australians and their capacity to be admitted to the institution of marriage, which is something I strongly favour.
[Ends]