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I didn't say they're left-wing so I have no idea who you're quoting there. I just said that they're not conservative, and I stand behind that.

On the plebiscite/postal survey though: the government in Australia isn't bound by the results of it. It's just a survey. The fact that the Liberal Party put the result into law[0] within 48 hours is their own doing, submitted by an LGBT member of the party no less.

A conservative party would fundamentally not do this.

You can scroll down in the linked Wikipedia article to see how everyone voted. You won't exactly see significant, genuine opposition. There was arguably more opposition from the left-leaning alternative, the Australian Labor Party, that had the most people abstain in the senate.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_Amendment_(Definition...

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This is a pretty misleading comment that ignores much of the context of the vote as well as the different parties that vote for it. It's easy to point to the vote totals of two parties (missing out the Greens and Nationals votes of course, because that doesn't fit the narrative) and skip the months of complaining from the Liberal Party before they demanded an antiquated and expensive (AU$80 million) plebiscite. The Liberal Party was forced by the voters to pass this amendment, and they certainly didn't do it without a fight.

> and skip the months of complaining from the Liberal Party

It was clear the economic right faction of the Liberals wanted a mandate from the people so that they could push past the socially conservative faction.

They were being blocked for months by the left - because it benefited the greens and labor politically to position the Liberals as anti-LGBT.

Yes, the left blocked holding a voluntary postal survey to enshrine basic civil rights because it’s dumb on its face, but the Liberals threatening to end the careers of the people who would vote isn’t?

All the Liberals would have needed to say is “conscience vote” and it would have been done. That aside, if passing basic civil rights would threaten the stability of the party, then that’s kind of a shitty party.

> Yes, the left blocked holding a voluntary postal survey to enshrine basic civil rights because it’s dumb on its face

Yes, the left did block enshrining basic civil rights in order to play politics.

> All the Liberals would have needed to say is

The Libs don’t care about gay rights and they still got the job done.

Yet the Liberals threatening their own MPs with ending their careers if they vote their conscience wasn’t playing politics?

And you do know that there was real damage done through the process? Gay people got messages of hate and exclusion as it provided excellent fodder for the grubs to come out of the woodwork to spike vile hatred. There was real damage done during the process when all Turnbull had to do was a snap of the finger and it’d not get put through the process that it did.

Also love the part where you seem to be completely ignorant of Howard legislating to make gay marriage unambiguously forbidden. In 2004.

> Yet the Liberals threatening their own MPs with ending their careers if they vote their conscience wasn’t playing politics?

Of course they were playing politics - why would you sacrifice party unity when you can shame your political opponents on the left and still get the outcome you want?

You don’t seem to understand that your allies playing politics with something you really care about is completely different from your opponents playing politics with the same topic.

> Also love the part where you seem to be completely ignorant of Howard legislating to make gay marriage unambiguously forbidden. In 2004.

How does that help your case at all?

Wasn't it a Labor prime minister that called the Senate 'unrepresentative swill'?

> A conservative party would fundamentally not do this.

Experiences in Canada, Austria, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand (of particular relevance to Australia), Sweden, the UK where conservatives in power had at least some if not most of their representatives vote LGBT marriage in is evidence to the contrary. Or is it that they aren't really "conservative" either by some arbitrary yardstick?

And to say that they allowed its members to vote how they actually always wanted to vote (now there's a democratic deficit) within '48 hours' after delaying it for months and toddling around with a voluntary postal survey for BASIC CIVIL RIGHTS for months and months after years of intransigence is highly disingenuous.

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