Leadership and signals to Liberal base bound on same-sex issue

Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership faces a greater and more immediate internal test than the polling that confirms his failure of the public one.

Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership faces a greater and more immediate internal test than the polling that confirms his failure of the public test.

When the Liberal Party room meets next in two weeks, it will decide the form of what legislation will be taken to parliament to enable gay marriage — assuming the majority of Australians say Yes — and what legislation it will agree on to ensure the protection of freedoms. No issue has a greater potential to bring down an already divided house than does same-sex marriage for the Coalition.

While it will ultimately take the form of a private members bill, the Prime Minister will not have the luxury of avoidance.

He will have to take a position. And either way he goes presents a peril.

To ignore the demands of conservatives, who will live with Victorian senator James Paterson’s bill and all its broader protections, would presumably be fatal.

Turnbull’s decision to hold the line on the plebiscite and a promise of protections has so far ensured the conservatives remained an unwilling but critical pillar of support for his leadership. But it could easily turn on this issue alone.

Turnbull’s natural support base in the moderates, however, has lined up behind the bill of West Australian senator Dean Smith and its significantly narrower protections. Any further erosion of confidence from within this group could be equally incurable for Turnbull.

There are two compelling factors in the Paterson bill that will make for a difficult justification should moderate MPs, or indeed Turnbull, push back on it. Both are symbolic. Paterson may be a key member of the young conservative bloc but he is also an agnostic who has a longer history of public support for same-sex marriage than do many of the moderates — including Smith who started in the Senate on a platform of opposing it before becoming its chief advocate. On the substantive issue of same-sex marriage, he is aligned with the moderates. It would require a feat of political gymnastics to contort a way around a reasoning that promotes same-sex marriage under the same charter of freedoms while arguing against the rights of those who don’t believe in it.

At stake is not only Turnbull’s leadership but the ideological signalling of the government to its support base. Both are now bound to this issue.

The majority of Coalition voters demand significant and explicit protections for religious freedoms, freedom of speech and parental rights. The position Turnbull ultimately takes will confirm whether he intends to cede yet more ground to Cory Bernardi and One Nation or restore at least an artifice of centre-right politics.