Australia’s conservative prime minister is under fire for blocking a legislative route to legalize same-sex marriage.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott called a surprise political meeting of Members of Parliament (MPs) today and behind closed doors the group voted against allowing MPs to vote their conscience on same-sex marriage. That was a win for Abbott in the short term, as the conservative prime minister is vociferously opposed to marriage equality, but already is eliciting anger toward the embattled prime minister. Now MPs will be forced to vote as their party directs, which would scuttle any marriage equality efforts.
Abbott is accused of stacking the deck. He could have organized the political vote without the conservative MPs but chose not to.
Immediately, the man trying to unseat Abbott and take his place, Labor Party leader Bill Shorten, sent out this tweet:
Abbott said same-sex marriage is a “deeply personal … subject on which decent people can differ,” and suggested the people might be allowed to vote on marriage at the polls sometime after the 2016 elections.
“Going into the next election,” Abbott said, his party “will finalize another position. The disposition of the party room this evening is that our position going into the next election should be that in a subsequent term of parliament, this is a matter that should rightly be put to the Australian people.”
72 percent of the Australian people support marriage equality for same-sex couples.
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Image by US Embassy Kabul via Flickr and a CC license