Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has reportedly predicted the Equality campaign will be successful and the majority of Australians will have selected ‘yes’ in the postal survey he championed.

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Dutton, a leading conservative, conceded that the winner of the postal survey would be the ‘Yes’ campaign while speaking at an event in Sydney earlier this evening.

“My judgment is the ‘yes’ vote will get up and it will be in the order of… whatever it is… but it will be a win for the ‘yes’ vote and that is my judgment of where the outcome will be,” Mr Dutton said according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

Dutton was speaking at an event for The Australian Financial Review who were launching their annual ‘Power List’.

The comments are significant because Dutton, who is often touted as a possible replacement to current Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, was one of the architects of the postal survey process.

He is the first senior conservative cabinet minister to predict that the ‘No’ campaign will be unsuccessful. Dutton said the high turnout for the postal survey was a preferable pathway to a straightforward parliamentary process.

“The other aspect I might say about the postal vote is that I think it gives a greater legitimacy to a significant social change and I think for same-sex couples if there is to be change, if there is to be legislative change, I think that is best to be done with the support of millions of Australians demonstrated through a ballot as opposed to a five-to-midnight crossing of the floor of four people,” Dutton said.

The immigration minister told the audience at the event that holding the postal survey had allowed the government to avoid other pathways that would caused the Liberal party; “political difficulty in the extreme.”

Dutton has declared that he’s personally a ‘no’ voter, but indicated that he’ll vote for marriage equality in the parliament should the ‘Yes’ campaign be successful.

OIP Staff