Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister was elected on the grounds of conducting a plebiscite, and yet the very people that he sought to speak to in making that commitment do not believe him. They have concluded that this process is a joke, that it will not lead anywhere and that it will not produce the results that people have been looking for.

This stands in very real contrast to the alternative pathway, the pathway that has served our democracy pretty well for more than 100 years, which is that the parliament takes its responsibilities seriously and takes seriously its responsibility to decide issues. That is why we are here. That is what we are elected to do. Labor takes that responsibility seriously. It is why we have introduced a bill into the House of Representatives today to legislate for marriage equality, as we have done so many times before. What does it say to LGBTI Australians that their issue is the only one that is so special that we need to have a special process to ask every Australian citizen about it specifically? What we want is a conscience vote in the parliament to let the majority of parliamentarians who support marriage equality have their say and get this done. But there is one thing you need to vote with your conscience, there is one thing you need to have a conscience vote, and that is the one thing that Prime Minister Turnbull seems to be lacking.