"The plebiscite is dead but we haven't held the funeral yet," Ivan Hinton-Teoh says.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
And according to same-sex advocates in Canberra, there are few who will mourn the bill Labor MPs have vowed to block in the Senate.
Mr Hinton-Teoh, who is a spokesman for advocacy group Just.Equal and the former national deputy director of Australian Marriage Equality, was at the Labor press conference when Opposition Leader Bill Shorten announced Labor MPs would vote as a bloc to kill the public vote on same-sex marriage on Tuesday.
He said while the the bill would still need to pass through the House of Representatives and be debated in the Senate on Wednesday morning, the announcement was an "enormous relief".
"It's been an enormous burden to know that it's by the work that I've been doing and that a large coalition of groups that I've been working with, to try and prevent this plebiscite," Mr Hinton-Teoh said.
"To actually achieve this today, to actually be in the room where Labor announced their position against this process was an enormous sense of relief."
The plebiscite was widely criticised as an expensive opinion poll, the fall-out of which could have harmful effects on members of the LGBITQ community.
However the Turnbull government has remained steadfast that the public vote was the only way to achieve marriage equality in this term.
A Canberra woman whose brief same-sex marriage was annulled by the High Court when marriage equality was overturned in the ACT has said she would rather wait years to marry again than have a plebiscite.
ACT Greens candidate for Yerrabi Veronica Wensing called the death of the plebiscite a "bitter sweet victory".
"I think it is a day for celebration and tomorrow we can get on with the job of getting marriage equality," Ms Wensing said.
"It is frustrating that we may now have to wait some years but I still would rather wait than have had hateful speech going on for a period of time that could cause so much damage."
Ms Wensing said the hateful debate about same-sex marriage had taken its toll on her.
"I've just noticed it's a little bit easier for the hurt to get in and I'm a strong, proudly out person. If it's affecting me in this way how must it be affecting those who are less sure of themselves, those who are still living with families where they have to stay in the closet, those who are still struggling with figuring out their identities?" she said.
Delia Quigley, president of DiversityACT, said many people felt the plebiscite was just "stalling tactics".
"Everyone wants love and acceptance and the ability to have that shouldn't be something that's used as a political football," she said.
"Parliament should get their act together and do their job and look at decent legislation that's inclusive legislation and working towards a solution that's not going to be damaging and for young people to not have to face the battles that older LGBTI people have had to face in obtaining rights and equality."
