Turnbull’s Legacy: Cold-hearted cruelty
Today in parliament Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull stood before the nation and appeared to take credit for the passing into law of legislation that, at long last, brings marriage equality to Australia. I suspect that he would like to think of this moment as his legacy. I suspect he will find that he is mistaken. His legacy will be the weeks and months that came before.
Turnbull’s legacy will be the cold, calculated and very deliberate cruelty of his government.
The Same-Sex Marriage postal survey was a farcical exercise, cooked up by a government that never truly wanted Marriage Equality granted. A party in the thrall of far-right religious and conservative zealots, with a notional leader who lacked the spine to stand up to them. A free vote in parliament is what should have happened. It could have happened, if Turnbull had wanted it to. But it didn’t, and one has to wonder at the choices that were made.. for each one seems specifically designed to cause the most harm to marginalised people.
For eight soul-crushing weeks, LGBTQI Australians were subjected to a non-stop barrage of hate and violence, while voices public and private equivocated over their right to be seen as equal under the law. The postal survey legitimised homophobic sentiment, unleashing a torrent of bile that no-one should ever have been put in the path of. A free vote would have prevented this, something Turnbull & Co must have known.
Running it as a non-binding postal survey facilitated by the ABS (as opposed to the AEC) meant that the usual laws governing the content of advertising material were circumvented. Again, the orchestrators of the survey knew this. Another deliberate choice.
And then there was the financial cost to the Australian taxpayers. For a political party that prides itself on being such great economic managers, they chose the most expensive option available to them. A free vote in parliament would have been... well, free. But no- the government chose to throw $122M at a non-binding, non-compulsory postal survey with no advertising rules, just hoping that people would be so disillusioned with the process that they would fail to turn up and so thwart the cause of marriage equality yet again.
In spite of all this, not only did the Australian voting public come to the party and return a majority Yes vote in the postal survey, but our elected officials in the Senate and the House of Representatives held enough numbers supporting equality that the Bill was passed without a single conservative amendment being made (proving what could have been achieved some time ago if only Turnbull hadn’t had his spine removed, but that’s as may be). And now Turnbull has the temerity to try and claim this as a personal victory?
No, Malcolm. Love and equality will not be your legacy. Your legacy will be the needless and cruel process you made everyone go through just so that all Australians could have equal rights. This cruelty will not be forgotten.
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