Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the senator for that question. It's right of course that the government has announced that we have decided to keep faith with our commitment to the Australian people to give everyone on the electoral roll a say on whether or not the definition of marriage should be changed. We want this to be a fair process to both sides of the argument and we want all Australians to have the opportunity to have their say in an appropriate environment. Of course, the government's first preference was for this to be conducted under the auspices of the Electoral Act as a compulsory plebiscite, but the parliament decided against that, which is why we are conducting this instead as a voluntary postal plebiscite through the Australian Bureau of Statistics under the ABS Act and the Census and Statistics Act.

A whole range of legal protections are in place under laws generally, including when it comes to certain offences that may be committed in relation to mail. For example, there are offences in relation to the stealing of mail, the tampering with mail and the interference with mail. There is a strong framework already in place for the prevention of hate speech and incitement to violence. There are also existing civil and criminal penalties under state and territory law that will continue to apply to ensure that appropriate penalties apply to those who commit certain offences, and so on.

But what I would say is that the government's preference clearly was for all of the usual arrangements under the Electoral Act to apply. If both sides of the argument—the advocates for the yes case and the advocates for the no case—were of the view that it would be desirable to have these protections in place, we would urge them to make representations to parties represented in the Senate, in particular, to that effect, and the government would be open to consider legislation to make sure that whatever additional appropriate safeguards would be sensible to be included in this exercise can be included. (Time expired)