It’s been quite a week in Australian politics. You might have heard that the Turnbull government (a coalition of the centre-right Liberal Party and slightly further-right-but-mostly-rural National Party) have been debating marriage equality and have launched something called a postal-plebiscite. To understand why this is a Big Complicated Deal, we have to go back to 2004.
Before 2004, the Marriage Act (1961) of Australia did not take note of gender when establishing the federal definition of marriage. In 2004, long term Liberal Prime Minister John Howard passed the amendment to the Marriage Act with the express purpose of ‘[ensuring] that same sex marriages are not recognised as marriage in Australia’. At the time, no major Australian political party endorsed marriage equality, and no party blocked passage of the bill.