Labor's Bill Shorten to implement same-sex marriage bill once in power, agrees to maintain conscience vote

At Labor’s 47th national conference, leader Bill Shorten moved a motion promising to legalise same-sex marriage within the first 100 days of an ALP government. Although Shorten ensured at the end of the debate that the policy would not bind any of its members for another two terms of the government, MPs voting against it on religious or other grounds would face automatic expulsion, consistent with long-standing ALP rules.

While moving the motion, Shorten urged Prime Minister Tony Abbott to acknowledge love in all forms and attacked him, saying the issue shouldn’t be politicised. "If Mr Abbott fails to give his members of Parliament a free vote this year he has failed the challenge of our democracy, he's politicising the issue of marriage equality when he doesn't need to," he said.

Shorten believes LGBTI Australians have waited too long, and if decisions are not taken within time, then the existing government might just have to go. The motion was seconded by deputy leader Tanya Plibersek and Senator Penny Wong. However, Plibersek’s demand to impose a binding vote on all Labor MPs was crashed.

According to The Australian, an emotional Wong, a member of a same-sex couple, thanked the party members for continuously fighting to put an end to the existing institutional discrimination embedded in the structures of society. Although Shorten was very confident in asserting love should be equal before the law and people should be given due space to celebrate it, he recognised that this immensely sensitive issue would be seen as complicated by some people of some faiths.

MP Anthony Albanese praised Labor for its role in bringing about a change in the mindset of the party members while he spoke of how being gay or lesbian was considered a crime at the time of his joining. He criticised Abbott for being stuck in the past and expecting people to support him. “The nation is marching forward, and it’s marching forward towards equality,” he said. Meanwhile, it is to be noted that Abbott has never allowed his MPs to vote with their individual conscience so far.

The national director of Australian Marriage Equality, Rodney Croome, said campaign for a conscience vote would be on. He felt that same-sex “marriage equality will be achieved through a cross-party conscience vote,” reports The Sydney Morning Herald.

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