Liberal frontbencher Michael Sukkar says the blame for any hate speech and negative consequences generated by the continuing debate over marriage equality should be directed at advocates in favour of marriage equality.

- Advertisement -

“The adverse impact of having this discussion, using their logic, since February this year has been a lot worse than if it had been dealt with in February. By their own admission this issue has dragged on and continued to be spoken about in the public domain.” Sukkar told the ABC this morning.

“If as they say, it has negative consequences, then they are the authors of that, because this would have been dealt with in February this year.”

The Assistant Minister to the Treasurer was appearing ABC’s News Breakfast when he made the comments.

The MP said the government had made a clear cut decision yesterday to keep it’s election promise of allowing the people to have a say on marriage equality.

“This is an important matter of principle, we’ve got a situation where on one hand we’ve got advocates of change, same sex marriage advocates using, in a sense, the moral authority of polling that say strongly supports their case, well lets put it to the people.”

Sukkar, who is opposed to same-sex couples getting married, said marriage equality advocates were desperately trying to frustrate the Australian people, which would lead to them not being trusted.

If the “full blooded” plebiscite is knocked back by the senate a second time, Sukkar would be happy with a postal vote alternative.

Sukkar said the government had never promised that their decision making process would be a compulsory plebiscite.

“Before the election, we just said ‘a vote of the Australian people’. After the election that took the form of a compulsory attendance plebiscite, we didn’t stipulate that necessarily before the election.”

“I think a postal plebiscite would fulfill that commitment.”

Sukkar said he would honor the outcome of any plebiscite proposal and he believed all politicians should respect the will of the people.

The MP called on people supporting marriage equality to promise they would stop campaign for change if any plebiscite mechanism delivered a ‘no’ vote.

“My challenge to same-sex marriage advocates is, now that you’ve demanded that of somebody like me, I want to hear the same from them.”

Sukkar said he believed that the vast majority of Australians are opposed to marriage equality and a postal plebiscite would have a high turnout.

“I think a no vote will be returned, that’s why I think same sex marriage advocates have been very disingenuous.”

“Why wouldn’t they put it to the people, people don’t act against their own interests. If same-sex marriage enthusiasts are so confident why aren’t they asking for this to be dealt with?” Sukkar asked.

The MP said it was marriage equality advocates who had been using stalling, delaying and aggressive tactics, and he believed that privately supporters knew they did not have the support of the public.

OIP Staff