Tony Abbott's Marriage Equality Suicide Bomb

Late Tuesday night, I saw the news regarding marriage equality in Australia that Prime Minister Tony Abbott had decided not to allow his MPs to vote for marriage equality if they so chose, instead binding them to the party's position against it.

Initially, I was disappointed. But this has actually turned out to be a very good outcome.

Before I had often discussed with my parents (who both support marriage equality) whether or not he would allow a free vote. I argued to my mother that he would, while she argued the opposite. My contention was that there would be a massive backlash if he didn't, which she disputed. Ultimately, she was proved right on the conscience vote, but I was proved right on the backlash.

The backlash

First, let's cover its scope. The Leader of the Opposition in my state of Victoria is in Tony Abbott's Liberal Party, but was fucking furious, to say the least:

Tony Abbott and his Canberra colleagues are "poisoning the well of good will" by failing to support a free vote on same-sex marriage, Victorian Opposition Leader Matthew Guy has claimed.

In an explosive spray aimed squarely at his federal colleagues, Mr Guy has effectively accused the Prime Minister of failing to show leadership and betraying a core premise on which the Liberal Party was founded.

"I think Australians are just utterly sick of federal politics and I'm not surprised why."

"They are poisoning the well of good will for all other elected politicians in the country.

"People who feel that members should be bound on matters of conscience by a party vote, well, they need to go back and look at the rationale on which our party was founded by Robert Menzies - it wasn't one of binding votes, it was one of conscience."

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull actually held a press conference to criticize the lack of a free vote:

Mr Turnbull has publicly lobbied in favour of same-sex marriage and criticised the decision to prevent a free vote now.

"One of the attractions of a free vote is that it would have meant the matter would be resolved in this Parliament one way or another in a couple of weeks," Mr Turnbull told reporters.

Education Minister Christopher Pyne, one of Abbott's staunchest friends and allies, used some very loaded language to criticize Abbott's decision to include the other party in his Coalition government, the National Party, in the discussions over a free vote.

Education minister Christopher Pyne accused prime minister Tony Abbott of “branch stacking” after the PM suggested the Coalition party room, and not the Liberal party room, should decide whether MPs have a free vote on same-sex marriage.

"Branch-stacking" is a very serious political accusation (but you probably know that). :)

Others made the same accusation:

Advocates attacked the Prime Minister's tactic, with some MPs calling the inclusion of Nationals in a Liberal Party policy discussion a "breach of faith" and an "ambush".

Even opponents of marriage equality were critical of the process in which a free vote was denied:

Even supporters of traditional marriage said the Prime Minister's handling of the day's events was "messy" with one senior Liberal describing it as "madness".

"I have never seen anything as mad as this," the senior Liberal said.

"They were literally making it up as they went along."

Some Liberals are just generally annoyed:

"Abbott has totally lost sight of the politics," said another insider.

"A number of Liberals could lose their seats over this, because about 70 per cent of Australians want change and now it's only Labor that can promise it."

"This meeting is stacked," said another Liberal.

Liberal supporters of marriage equality are lining up to announce that they will defy Abbott:

Backbench Liberal politicians Dean Smith, Wyatt Roy, Kevin Hogan and bill co-sponsors Teresa Gambaro and Warren Entsch would all cross the floor in a vote on marriage equality.

Country Liberal MP Natasha Griggs has also previously indicated she would vote for the reform, with or without a conscience vote.

The rebellion is in direct defiance of prime minister Tony Abbott, who said on Wednesday he would be “disappointed” if backbench MPs went against the party position.

Why people are upset

I've put down the reasons for the backlash down to five big ones:

1. Abbott has taken a position in direct contradiction to the clear wishes of the majority of the people. Two polls in the last couple of weeks and months have found support for marriage equality at 68% and 69%, so the people being pissed off when you block it is a simple reflection of democracy. In a democracy, the government does what the people wants. If it doesn't, the people will be pissed off. This point is not really specifically about marriage equality. It's about the insult the people feel when they make themselves clear and their leader ignores them.

2. Marriage equality is an issue of priority. This might be surprising, but it is. The anti-equality group Marriage Alliance commissioned a poll to try to prove the opposite. While they did prove that it ranked 13th in importance, they also found that 59% of Australians rank it as a medium or high priority issue. It is in the interests of equality opponents to not have to deal with it at all, as opposed to defeat it democratically, so they want it to be a low priority. But it backfired.

3. This is reflective of a never-ending road block against marriage equality. As such, it is worse than if the bill failed with a conscience vote, because at least some progress has been made. But denying a free vote means that it is almost impossible to happen in this Parliament. The impossibility of it happening frustrates and annoys people more than if it is considered properly and fails.

4. This is the second time the Abbott Government has stood in the way of marriage equality. They first did so in October 2013, when they challenged a law of the Australian Capital Territory legalizing it, a challenge they won in December 2013. My sense of that was that people didn't like it, but were willing to put up with it. It was only three months into his term, and they would still prefer no marriage equality over the admittedly chaotic previous Labor government. But when you do block marriage equality again, people start to get much more annoyed at how strongly you're resisting.

5. This continues a perception of Abbott as a bad leader. Apart from being annoyed at having their wishes ignored, the people now have a reinforced view of Abbott as someone who doesn't know what he's doing. The process by which he denied a conscience vote was extremely messy, and it has put the government in disharmony and in disarray. Instability and infighting is never good for a government, but it is happening because of this. Additionally, this government has had many other catastrophes just in the past couple of weeks. Firstly, they continued to support the Speaker of the House of Representatives even after it was revealed that she had spent bucket loads of taxpayer money for completely inappropriate travel purposes and after she refused to apologise for weeks. Then, this week, it was revealed that the Liberal Party had invited the head of an investigation into corruption by unions to speak at a Liberal Party fundraiser. These three incidents have caused massive problems for the perception of Abbott's capacity to lead.

The mistakes Abbott made

1. Abbott did not take his marriage equality policy to his cabinet:

The policy argument has caused significant bad blood among Liberals with both Mr Abbott's deputy leader and Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop, and his Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull criticising their leader for the way he has conducted the debate.

According to a source, the two moderates noted that the policy had never been to cabinet and neither had it been to the leadership group.

2. Abbott included the National Party in the meeting. The National Party is one of two parties that make up the Coalition government, the other being the Liberal Party. The National Party is more conservative and more opposed to marriage equality than the Liberal Party. It was not necessary to include the Nationals to get the party room vote on a conscience vote to fail. There weren't enough Liberals to support a conscience vote, even without the Nationals. But Abbott included the Nationals anyway, and this was the result:

But pro-change MPs were livid that the debate was suddenly brought forward, and even more incensed that the socially conservative junior coalition partner the Nationals were invited to participate.

"This is so obviously a thumb in the eye to the pro-equality Liberals because Abbott knew he had the numbers to win without bringing in the Nats," said one Liberal.

3. Abbott is seeking an alliance with the hard right. To be honest, I have no idea why. If there is a challenge to his leadership, it's going to come from the Left, not the Right. There is no way that the people would vote for someone even more conservative than him. But that's who he's chosen to ally with anyway.

4. Abbott warned the members of his cabinet that if they broke from party policy and voted for marriage equality, they would have to resign. Admittedly, this is standard procedure, but I think it was a mistake to reiterate it. I previously mentioned Malcolm Turnbull, the Communications Minister, who is therefore in the cabinet, and who is a strong supporter of marriage equality. This puts him in an interesting spot. If marriage equality comes up for a vote, he can:

a) vote against it. This would allow him to stay in the cabinet. As Abbott is currently extremely vulnerable, and with the possibility of an election as early as March next year, this would allow Turnbull to keep his chance of gaining the leadership, which may happen if Abbott does not improve. If Turnbull did gain the leadership, I'd put legal marriage equality at better than even odds.

b) vote for it. This risks him being kicked out of the cabinet, however; he would be daring Abbott to kick him out. This puts Abbott in a lose-lose situation: if he fires Turnbull, the party would look in complete chaos and disarray. Senator Eric Abetz, a strong opponent of marriage equality, has already called for Turnbull's resignation, to which Turnbull replied, referencing two polls:

One thing I did learn as leader is that it's probably best to keep the team together. We are eight points behind in Newspoll, 14 points behind in Morgan. Are you seriously saying that having ministers resign would be good for us?

But if Abbott doesn't fire him, then he looks like a weak man who can't keep his word.

5. Abbott has backflipped twice. The first backflip is over the issue of who gets to decide: the parliament or the people. When Ireland passed its marriage equality referendum, he said:

Questions of marriage are the preserve of the Commonwealth Parliament.

That didn't last long:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has thrown an olive branch to supporters of same-sex marriage, announcing the Coalition will look at holding a referendum or plebiscite on same-sex marriage to solve the issue once and for all.

The second one was over the questions of how Parliament should act. Back in May, there was discussion over who should introduce the bill to legalise it. He said:

If our Parliament were to make a big decision on a matter such as this, it ought to be owned by the Parliament and not by any particular party.

But he's now completely destroyed any chance of that happening.

Why did he do it?

Typically, decisions on binding votes or conscience votes are made unilaterally by the leader, but he made this decision after going to a party room vote. The reason he denied a conscience vote is simple: he opposes it too strongly to give it any chance. I underestimated that in him.

What might he do next?

I've seen one theory on what could happen next. Given the political minefield he's now in (as I will demonstrate next), he could be trying to deny a conscience vote at the moment so he can introduce it later on if he is still in big trouble and he thinks it will win him votes.

How are the ordinary citizens responding?

We are not happy at all (but I'm actually pretty happy, considering the backlash). A poll (albeit non-scientific) conducted by Fairfax Media asked if people were more or less likely to vote for the Coalition because of marriage equality. Here were the results:

I first saw that poll when there were 13,000 votes, and the numbers were exactly the same. So that is absolutely an accurate reflection of the demographic that voted. Now, the poll isn't scientific, but 50,000 is a big number. It could very well be reflective of broader community sentiment. And if it is, then the government has just lost a full quarter of its support over marriage equality alone.

Then there's this poll that came out on August 16:

Tony Abbott’s grip on the prime ministership was further weakened by a series of political missteps last week, with a new poll showing the Coalition on track for an electoral wipeout if he remains Prime Minister.

A Fairfax-Ipsos poll published late on Sunday revealed the Coalition would have been swept from office on the back of a devastating 7.5 per cent swing had an election been held at the weekend.

The poll showed the government remained unpopular on issues such as marriage equality, for which public support remained high at 69 per cent, and global warming, where nearly six in 10 voters thought the policy response to date had been “too little”, Fairfax Media reported.

The poll, of 1402 respondents taken from August 13 to 15, also showed that Malcolm Turnbull had a comfortable lead over Mr Abbott as the most popular choice as Liberal leader and Prime Minister across all major voter groups.

The poll followed a horror week for the Coalition, including the claim expenses crises embroiling Bronwyn Bishop and other MPs, internal party divisions about same-sex marriage, and allegations of bias within its trade unions royal commission.

69% of Australians support marriage equality, and he's told them 'no'. He would have lost 36 seats had there been an election. In a House of Representatives of 150 seats, that is enormous.

Marriage equality alone is causing massive problems for him. He could lose government just over this. Why? Because Australians know that marriage equality is the right thing to do. We know it is time for it. And we're sick of a government that tells us no, when our wish is so clear.

A suicide bomb, indeed.