Australians want marriage equality dealt with now - Andrew Wilkie

Independent senator Andrew Wilke has made a short speech in favour of bringing the current marriage equality cross party bill forward and dealing with the issue now once and for all. He makes the point that it would be better to do so for the Lieberals instead of spending 2 years pressing them on the subject. Politically it makes huge sense for Turnbull just to allow a free vote.

We aren't going away. The gov may think it's pushed the marriage equality issue further into the future, using the argument that it was the plebiscite or nothing (their way or no way) and so now the parliament is supposed to be bound by some invisible rule that says that because the plebiscite is dead there is no other way to deal with the issue until after a new gov is formed.

Pathetic. The elephant in the room is of course Malcolm Turnbull. We could have marriage equality in a matter of days if he grew a spine. This is about the Lieberal party, not about David and I. History will not remember them well for being so inept as to not be able to deal with such a simple human rights issue as this. All it would take is a change to the marriage act that Howard changed in 2004 to explicitly exclude same sex couples.