Andrew Bolt: Same-sex marriage broken promise insults voters

SAME-SEX marriage looks set to be delivered by four Liberal MPs breaking a promise. Is this really how they want to win? Hoaxing voters with a trick, asks Andrew Bolt.

Same-sex marriage looks set to be delivered by four Liberal MPs breaking a promise. Generic picture: AFP/ Tobias Schwarz

I ASK the gay Liberal MPs about to break a promise: is this really how you want to achieve same-sex marriage? With a trick? By hoaxing voters? By confirming suspicions that gay activists are bullies who will trample on anyone to get their way?

See, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull went to the last election with a clear promise — to let Australians decide in a public vote whether to allow same-sex marriage.

Voters would decide, not our politicians.

Poll after poll shows this is indeed a decision voters want to make themselves.

It’s simply too important an issue to leave to fame-seeking politicians.

But now four gay Liberal MPs — Trent Zimmerman, Dean Smith, Trevor Evans and Tim Wilson — have signalled they will break Turnbull’s promise and as early as next week.

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Four Liberal MPs, including Dean Smith, have signalled they will break Turnbull’s same-sex marriage plebiscite promise as early as next week.

Goldstein MP Tim Wilson is one of four Liberals indicating they will cross the floor on same-sex marriage. Picture: Gary Ramage

They’re expected to cross the floor to join Labor and the Greens to force a debate on a Bill to allow same-sex marriage. It is expected that the Bill will then be passed by a vote of parliament. Forget the people.

Wilson and the others say this is a matter of “conscience”. But isn’t keeping promises a conscience issue, too?

Back at the last election, I heard none of these MPs say there was a catch to Turnbull’s promise of a public vote in this term of parliament.

I didn’t hear one confess that if the Senate blocked this plebiscite — as it’s now doing — they’d instead legalise same-sex marriage with a vote of politicians, just as Labor wants.

Not one said before the election that this is what they’d do after it, because that would have exposed Turnbull’s promise as a con. How could Turnbull make a promise if it didn’t bind his MPs?

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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Picture: AAP/Richard Wainwright

So these Liberals were elected on a fake promise they’ll now break. Which seems to me dishonest. A cheat.

But I’ve warned for more than a year that this always seemed Turnbull’s plan, or at least a happy fallback.

He will deliver same-sex marriage and secure his legacy. He can then quit, job done, and let someone else try to save a Liberal Party he’s destroyed.

And the promise-breakers? They can boast to their friends how they brought in gay marriage, although not by a great affirming vote of the Australian people but by cheating.

But what else will they achieve, as their government falls and their party splits?

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